Chapter 16

	Even under all this concrete, I could smell the stench. Their were so many bodies out there, in the summer heat, you could smell it for miles. After so many days, even I would fight the urge to vomit. Overcome by temptation and finally accustomed to the sounds of explosions, scavengers had come to the battlefield. The flocks of them were the only form of shade in the sky. They ignored the bullets snapping past them as they ate, often being struck themselves and adding to the pile. The offensive could not be described as grinding to a halt. It was being fought every day. Perhaps it was better described as a constant broil.

	There were really two battles going on simultaneously. On one front, was the defense of the fortresses by their tiny garrisons. The universal howitzers fired artillery by day, ack-ack by night, and high velocity anti tank whenever it was needed. The machine guns raked the infantry and the fieldguns knocked out the baby assault mecha tanks. The mecha tankettes darted around  the battlefield looking like water striders. The proboscis like heavy machine gun and periscopes and antenna (literal, not metaphor) enforced the bug imagery of our enemy. They even tended to curl up their legs when they died.

	The other front was our front. What made these forts successful was that they incorporated an active rather than static defense. Sieging or directly assaulting a fort is not difficult from a strategic point of view -- though the men having to do it might have something to say about that! So what allowed us to defend these forts was to always prevent the enemy from applying the direct pressure needed to crack them. Not only did the sister forts shell the attacks, but we also used them as staging points to launch raids and counter attacks at all times. Despite attacking us at a single point, each brigade of the Earth Kingdom Army found itself attacked and besieged from all angles.

	As a special operations lance, it fell to us to conduct such missions. Now, the members of our squad sat in one of the hallways geared up and anxiously awaiting the signal to begin our next raid. Beside me, Koko covered her scalp in grease and was shaving off what little hair she had with her knife. Major Anaaya and her long hair strode past us down the hallway to wherever she was needed, only looking to us to give an affirmative nod that our operation would be underway.

	Following Anaaya were a pair of young soldiers, both of Water Tribe complexion. They were part of a squad brought up from the Capitol to replace the casualties we had taken during the loss of fort 17. Capitol guard. Reservists. They had never fought the insurgency and had yet to fight Earth Kingdom on our western front.

The two men stopped in front of Chang and one of them said, “Hey, native, you there.” Chang looked up at them.

“We caught you staring at the Major. You were staring at the Major, weren’t you?’

“No, I only--”

“Don’t lie!” the other reservist bellowed, towering over him. “Whaddya think your doing, huh? Think you get to disrespect one of our women, an officer, like that, you pervert?

“You don’t understand,” Thein Kyu interjected. “You must be mistaken, This man is a good man.”

“Shut up! You think I care what you have to say? You look like a bloody terr. You’re not one of those criminals are you?”

Crack!

Buno’s fist sent the first reservist reeling. The second tried to run, but Buno was larger and faster, and he found himself in chokehold. His feet were slipping on the ground, struggling to balance on the tips of his toes.

	“You little reservist puke!” Buno spat at him. “You don’t get to ever speak to my men like that. You clearly don’t know who any of us are, but while you were cowering in Capital City, each of us has killed more men than children you’ve swallowed. I know what you reservists are like and I’m willing to bet I’ll find your units mysteriously lost your morphine rations more than once. I can have you shot for that. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir! Yes, sir!” the man pleaded.

“Don’t you ever call me ‘sir,’ and don’t let me ever catch you even making eye contact with my men ever again.”

Buno squeezed. A few seconds later the man went limp and Buno dropped him like a sack of sea prunes. This might have been the only I had ever heard Buno speak profanely. The whole squad had stood up and left  before the man regained consciousness.

	Our squad traveled down into the depths of the fort, down through one of the underground passageways. This one split off the main tunnels and was only wide enough for a single man to walk through. A ten kilometer hike to a secret exit. Chang had begun to sweat. He had the shakes.

	Chang had taken Peng’s death better than I thought he would have. It was after he had been shot in his helmet that he began to have the changes. Every time we could go on a raid since then, he’d get the sweats and the shakes. Chang was a ruminator. “Peng’s bought the farm,” he’d say after raids.. “I could have been next. I was shot in the head, just like him. What if the bullet pierced my helmet? What if that shell had landed in our pillbox instead of the one only a meter to the right? What if --”

“But it didn’t, Chang!” I shouted at him. “But it didn’t! You’re still here.” Why did he have to think about that? Why couldn’t he just be numb, like the rest of us…

	That same battle Chang was shot, Hei Bai had sent me into a tunnel exactly like this one by myself to kill fifty three sappers. When I returned I asked Hei Bai why he had sent me alone and he said, “The Earth Kingdom has come to kill waterbenders. So I gave them you instead.” I thought nothing of it since. But now, seeing Chang shaking in a safe tunnel surrounded by friendlies made me very uneasy. It’s alright if he was scared, you just don’t want to show it!

	When we reached the end of the tunnel we waited for a moment. Hei Bai extended a periscope up and began to survey the area. After giving an all-clear, we slinked up a trap door and into the dirt. In the cover of night, we crawled on our bellies through the dirt, cradling our rifles between our elbows. Behind us, we could see the ruins of fort 17 in the distance. It was occupied by the Earth Kingdom now, but that was alright. It had become a nice piece of shelter to bog down their advance.

	 We were behind enemy lines, deep in the midst of where the Earth Kingdom soldiers were entrenched. Our target was a communications dugout. The goal was to cut comms or pass along false orders, so the difficulty was how to attack them before they could send for help. “That’s it,” Hei Bai said. “We’ll take that trench.”

We crawled to the lip of the trench, seeing it was unmanned. It made a few twists and turns but gave us a path into the larger dugout. “Wish we had Peng here right now,” Koko whispered.

“We’ll have earthbender tryouts soon enough.” Hei Bai whispered back.

	One by one we slithered into the trench. There were no duckboards and the ground was dry and solid, masking our approach. The walls of the trench were bare and smooth with the clean cut that one would expect from an earthbender. We could hear the handful of soldiers in the dugout around the corner, less than five meters from us. With Hei Bai at the front, we inched our way to the corner in single file.

Hei Bai peered around the corner and gave us some hand signals detailing what he saw and what we would do next.  One guard. Hei Bai lowered his suppressed burpgun for a knife and after a deep inhale and exhale he rounded the corner.

Buno and I rounded the corner after him with our guns at the ready. Hei Bai had already grabbed the man. Muffling any sound he could make had grappled him to the ground with the knife in heart.

	Just then another soldier came round the corner from the dugout. No clear shot. He stood frozen for an instant at the sight of us and so much blood on the ground. Then he turned and sprinted as fast as he could for the dugout. Buno and I took off after him, sprinting in a mad dash to get him before he could shout for help. Buno raced ahead, pulling a the pin from one of his grenades.

As we rounded the corner following the trench to the dugout, it was too late. Another EKA soldier in the dugout had turned to face us, bearing no weapons, and settling into a powerful stance.

“Buno!” I screamed. “No!”

Eyes wide, I fell backwards as I tried to halt and my feet skidded out from under me.

Thwump!

Just like that, Buno was gone.

“Out! Out! Out!” Hei Bai screamed.

	The five of us rolled out of the trench as fast as we could. What unfolded next was a cacophony of gunshots form both us and the Earth Kingdom soldiers at point blank range. The whole world seems to shrink down as it takes every fiber of concentration to control your body during the automatic fire. the muzzle flashes pointed at you are blinding and deafening. The ineffable terror I felt in these few seconds has been seared into my brain, but I cannot remember what actually happened.

The soonest I can recall is that at some point grenades had been thrown over the trench at us. In the next moment I am in the dugout with Hei Bai, Chang, and Koko.

“Where is everyone? Is everyone OK?” one of us aks. I cannot remember if it was me.

“Buno! Buno!” Chang wails.

Chang pulls off his helmet and runs to the caved-in the trench. On his knees with both hand gripping his helmet he begins franticly scooping and scraping at the dirt. “Buno!” he wails again. “Buno! Come on! Please, Buno!”

“Stop it!” I yell, pulling him away. “He’s gone, Chang. Buno’s gone.”

“Where’s Thein Kyu?” Koko asks. Then we hear the groaning.

	As we climb over the top, Thein Kyu is a scant ten meters from the hole. He’s laying on his back in a pool of blood, clutching his belly. As we run to him, I can now see the blood pulsing from right thigh. Hei Bai swoops over to him. “Hold on! Hold on, Thein Kyu! Keep holding pressure.” Hei Bai takes his tourniquet and ties it above the bleeding on Thein Kyu’s leg until it stops before ripping apart Kyu’s shirt and stuffing his belly with gauss.

“Stop it. What are you doing?” Thein Kyu mutters.

“I’m trying help you. I’m trying to save you!” Hei Bai pleads as Thein Kyu grips his hand.

“It’s OK.” Thein Kyu says. “We’re far from home. I won’t make it anyway.” Even in the darkness, I could see that Thein Kyu had started to grow pale.

“Buno’s gone, Thein Kyu,” Hei Bai said. “I can’t lose you too. I can’t let you die like this.”

	“Hei Bai… I’m a murderer. A terr and a troublemaker. I've killed innocent women and children. I deserve neither pity, or mercy. The sentence for what I’ve done was always death; you’ve known this.” Thein Kyu lowered his hand to his thigh and popped the windlass on his tourniquet. “It’s been an honor to serve you. I only hope I’ve done as much as I could”

Thein Kyu lost consciousness almost immediately, but Hei Bai held his hand until he had stopped breathing.

Hei Bai fell backwards then, wiping back his hair with his hand and then streaking blood down his cheek. With tears in his eyes he stood up and bellowed, “come on! We have a mission to complete!”

	We set about looking for intel, but could find nothing. The only thing of note was a stack of firefighter’s respirators and what looked like strange raincoats. We patched into our fort’s frequency using their secure radio communications. No response. We hailed them again after a minute. Nothing.

	There had been no response to our raid from the EKA either and no chatter from the communications stations to suggest that they were on to us. We could see all manner of lights in the distance, however.  Peering through a pair of binoculars we could see a whole convoy of trucks and tanks moving forward toward the forts without a single trooper escorting them. “What’s going on? They should be shelled to pieces, moving like that,” I said. “It doesn’t matter now,” said Hei Bai “We have to get back to base.”

The hike back was long, and done in silence.

In fact, as my hearing returned to me I realized that it was silent. The sound of incoming or outgoing artillery had ceased.

	As  I began to climb down the trap door and suddenly I was gripped in an intense sensation of fear. I felt drool pooling in my mouth and at once felt as if I would vomit. “What’s the hold up?” Koko whispered to me. Before I could answer, Hei Bai shouted “Get out!” and began pushing me back up the ladder, stumbling like a drunkard. I grabbed the ladder but my hands had gone numb and my fingers tingled electrically at the touch. I struggled to move my arms. Hei Bai pushed me up from beneath as I vomited on myself, and then Chang and Koko reached down and pulled Hei Bai up next.

“Closhe da traff-door” Hei Bai slurred as him and I lay on our backs, gasping for air.

“What happened?” Koko asked

“I don’t know.” Hei Bai said, opening his canteen and and bending a shower of water over himself. “Get him, too,” he said, pointing at me.

“Hei Bai, sir, tell me what happened!” pleaded Chang.

“I don’t know. I only have an idea, but I’m going to find out.” Hei Bai said before rolling over to vomit for the third time. “We need to go back to that dugout.”

I started to feel a little better as Chang and Koko helped me to my feet and poured water over me. And then my guts began to twist inside out. “We can’t, sir. I don’t think I can.”

“I wasn’t asking you, Hiro. What else could you do now, if not the mission? We must find out the truth!”

	Stumbling beside Koko, I felt too sick to say anything else. Hei Bai was moving as fast as he could with arm around Chang’s neck. The empty void of terror I felt from the last gunfight only seemed to open up within me with each passing step. The night had become so quiet now that even the cicadas had stopped chirping. No guns, no animals, no wind, only the sound of our own steps. But in the distance, we could see the never ending Earth Kingdom convoy

	I tried not to look at Thein Kyu’s body when we got to the dugout. It was unchanged on our return. We were ordered to leave it alone for the second time as Hei Bai had us collect the respirators and those rubber raincoat-like suits. Then, we walked back in silence again. Any attempts to ask about what was even happening now was met with a biting “Shut up.” from Hei Bai.

	One by one we helped each other slip into the body-condoms. Whatever these were, Hei Bai seemed familiar with them to instruct us and check us over. Each was as sticky and claustrophobic in the heat. Putting on the mask was a portal to an alien world. It felt suffocating as it cleaned the air. Every breath was loud and exhausting. Hei Bai disappeared into the hole first. Only the pressure of Chang behind me let me stumble down after him. The straight path we had to travel was exhausting. I fumbled around with each breath drowning out anything outside and sweat began pooling around my ankles. Then Hei Bai stopped.

“We’ll need to move them out of the way,” Hei Bai commanded as I struggled to look around him and see what was ahead of us.

	Filling the tunnel, to the ceiling, were over a half dozen corpses. Men and women, of both the natives and the Water Tribe. Their eyes were glazed over. Their mouths were covered in foam. Their limbs were twisted together in knots as they had tried to all squeeze through this passage at the time.

“Oh, Raava”

	We started at the top. Pulling the first body off with anything we could grab. Limbs, shirt collar, belt loops. After pulling her from the from the top where she slid down onto the concrete, we passed her body down the tunnel between our legs. We did this for the next body, then the next. And until we could begin to step over the blockage.

	We emerged from the tunnel and into the fort in horror. All around were the bodies of people laying twisted on the ground. I slipped on vomit coating the floor and only Koko caught me before I cracked my skull on the floor. I begged, I pleaded, “Hei Bai, what is the meaning of this!” but he moved with a singular purpose through the fort, scouring every dim surface with his flashlight. Everywhere was death.

	Some of them died at their posts. One was still sitting at the controls over his field gun. His whole body rigid. His face paralyzed in an expression of fear. Most did not die like this. Most had all scurried and piled into a single corner of a room, trying to find an escape. Their faces were covered in foamy spittle and emesis.

It was in one of these piles I found them, both Amarao and Major Anaaya. Their eyes wide. Their mouths agape. The humanity and color had been sucked out of them. Snuffed out. Only alien flesh was left.

	Hei Bai ignored my questions, still driven by task and purpose. That was OK. I already knew the answers to those questions, I didn’t want to believe them. But there were different questions I wanted to know the answers to, and knew Hei Bai would never answer them. I grabbed Koko by the hand and pulled her away from Hei Bai with me.

I put my finger to my respirator to tell her to stay quiet. We stepped over the dead as we made our way down the hallways. Straight to Hei Bai’s private quarters. I would find out the truth.

“This is what you wanted to know, isn’t it?” I shouted through my respirator to ask her. She began to take off her mask. “Stop! What are you doing!.”

She set it face down on the record player “I can bend the clean air from my suit around my head. But we’ll have maybe two minutes. Take yours off, too.”

I started to and then paused with trembling hands. Then i closed my my eyes and thrust the mask away from my face, gritting my teeth. At once, I felt a curtain of air wrap around my face. “Slow down you’re breathing!” she commanded. “You’ll burn though the air.”

	I tried my best but the two of us were in a rush. We scrambled through the the room, tearing it apart for binders and documents. Koko was looking for for anything she could read in time, but I knew exactly what documents I was looking for. And to my disgust, I found it. A single, thick manila folder, boringly labelled ‘Secret’

Time’s up.

	Koko and I put our masks back on. On our way out I stopped and poured fire from hands into the room. I sprayed fire at every book, every folder, every file I could. I wanted to burn all of it. If the sprinklers had let me I’d have burned this whole place to ground, and all the bodies in it.

	Koko and I left the fort together and hiked out into the field. The once flat plain had turned into a twisted sea of craters, with unmoving cresting waves of dirt. We climbed in and out of them heading east to our rally point. We could see Hei Bai and Chang were waiting for us there, far enough from the fort that we could cover over it with our thumb held at arm’s length like he said. Off in the distance, still, we could see the lights of the uninterrupted Earth Kingdom Army procession.

“Koko! Hiro!” exclaimed Chang as we approached, “you’re OK! We thought something had happened…”

“Yeah,” I said. “We’re OK.”

“What happened?” Koko asked.

	“It’s not just fort 39. Everything on the defensive line for over twenty kilometers north or south of here has gone silent,” Hei Bai said. “I don’t know exactly how. I don’t know the method. I don’t know how they developed it. But I’ve seen this before. They’ve taken the tragedy at Chun Go Ku factory and turned it into a weapon.”

“I know what they used,” said Chang the farmer. “It’s pesticides and fertilizer poisoning. Insecticide! They’ve exterminated us like vermin!”

“How did intelligence not know about this? I thought you said Jian intelligence was thorough,” Said Koko

Hei Bai answered, “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I don’t know.”

“Stop lying to me!” She screamed. “You ought to know if you were ever any good at your job! How long were you going to keep lying to us?”

Chang asked, “what are you talking about?”

“This man isn’t a soldier, or an officer. He wasn’t ever even in the military! He’s a spook, Chang. We’ve been running around following orders from a civilian this whole time and now Peng and Buno and Thein Kyu are dead!”

“Is this true, Hei Bai?” asked Chang.

Hei Bai bit his lower lip.

“I’ve never lied. In Jia I am a captain, what I did in the Earth Kingdom is none of your concern.”

“I don’t care what phony title that Du Lin slaps on you. You’re a phony! Hiro and I saw everything in his office.”

“What Koko says is true,” I said.

Hei Bai retorted, “ Why don’t you tell everyone who you really are? I’ve kept your secrets, Hou Yi. I still keep your secrets…”

“We know all about yours.” Koko said. “Why don’t you tell Chang about operation boiling rock?”

“Whatever you think you know, you know nothing close to the truth.”

“All this talk of the rain goddess and the omens of drought, that was all a psychological operation. It was no coincidence that it rained on the day the Du Lin allowed the natives to vote. You were responsible for that too, weren’t you?”

“There’s no way what they’re saying could be true…” said Chang in disbelief. “Is it?”

“...it is,” Said Hei Bai, staring off into space. “It was all waterbending and silver iodide.”

“How could you!”

“I am trying to win a war! I am trying to save my people! You said it yourself, Hiro. Never trust a spook. Never trust intelligence. What do they know? Like I haven’t put my head in the filth more than anyone else here!”

“You have made a mockery of my people. You’ve defamed what we hold dear. Thein Kyu and Buno were the ones who stood up for me and now they’re dead.” said Chang, who was on the point of tears.

“Well,” said Koko. “we definitely can’t trust you now.”

	Hei Bai jumped to his feet and said. “You really think you have a right to be so indignant for not being told the whole truth? Thein Kyu knew everything you know from the start. And let me tell you there is so much going on that you don’t know you wouldn’t believe me if I told you right now! So go ahead. Hate me. Make Peng and Thein Kyu and Buno’s deaths be for nothing. But I have a mission and I will see it through to the end with or without you.”

“Hei Bai!” I snapped. “It’s over. The defenses have fallen. Hundreds are dead. There are only four of us now!”

“No! No, it’s not over. We have to try” Hei Bai said. “We have to defend Capital City. I’ll do it myself if I have to… I am sorry. I am so sorry. But right now I have to do what’s demanded of me… Koko… Hiro… Chang…”

“I am sorry, sir. But I can’t… it’s over. All that matters now is my family.”

	Hei Bai’s lip trembled, but he held his body rigid as a board. Taking a deep breath he made an about face, and then began marching off alone to motor pool. I could just make out in the distance the sound of and sight of a satomobile driving off into the night, heading due East for the Capital.

"And good riddance!" Koko shouted after him.