Flash Fic: Terms of Surrender

 

"Major, East Gate is reporting movement. Rekati troops advancing at a walk."

Samwise Gordon raised an eyebrow at the report. "At a walk? That's different." Six months on Dimas 7-B had demonstrated that standard Rekati infantry procedure was to barrel headlong at a dead run against enemy positions. It was crude, it was wasteful, but it at least had the virtue of simplicity. "Any signs of heavy weapons?"

"No, Sir. Gate guards are reporting all the Rekati weapons are slung."

Gordon's other eyebrow joined its partner. Looking over at his aide-de-camp, the confusion was clear. "What do you make of this, Chief?"

Chief Warrant Officer Luca Carson frowned in thought. "Your guess really would be as good as mine, Major," he replied in a rumbling bass voice. "I suppose they might be trying to surrender, but that's about as novel as them walking towards us with their weapons slung."

"That it is, Chief. Unfortunately, that's about the only thing that fits." Gordon grabbed his parka and checked his sidearm. "Suppose I ought to go out and meet these folks."

"Nice day for it," Carson remarked as he threw on his own parka before checking the cut down "mare's leg" pulse rifle he used as a sidearm. "Only five below and not even a hint of a breeze."

Gordon and Carson left the command post and headed towards the East Gate, a six-man security falling in around them. The Dimas campaign had been hard fought, but with absurdly lopsided loss ratios. For all their speed and strength, the Rekati should have been trading closer to 1:1 in terms of losses inflicted. Gordon didn't mind keeping more of his people alive than the enemy, but he got suspicious when it was too easy.

As they approached the East Gate, Gordon made an eyeball estimate of the Rekati before him. Either one very outsized company or two fairly short companies stood at attention, their officers in the front rank. The seniormost officer was easily identified by the elaborate pattern of geometric shapes stenciled on the combat environment suit. Gordon stepped over to the officers and saluted them, receiving the Rekati equivalent in return. "Major Samwise Gordon, 230th Infantry Regiment."

The senior Rekati officer spoke through a translation mask, but even as he did, Gordon heard the pattern and knew something was off-kilter. "Sub-Division Commander Trel-ska of the 4038th Imperial Marine Regiment." There was a long pause. "In direct contravention of our orders from Imperial High Command, my unit is presenting itself to you to surrender. Please make our deaths honorable and painless."

Gordon took a deep breath and smiled welcomingly. "Commander, I am prepared to accept your surrender. We're a little short on facilities to house your troops at the immediate second, but we can at least bring you in out of the cold, have our medics check your people over while we deal with the paperwork. Understand, Commander, we don't execute prisoners just for surrendering. By surrendering, you've saved the lives of your troops, and it would be churlish of me to kill them for it. That's not how we handle this situation. It's a significant difficulty for me, but I'd much prefer having to cobble up shelters than dig mass graves."

Trel-ska seemed to sway a little bit, and Gordon swore that the translation mask output was somehow slurred. "My thanks to you, Major Gordon."

"Let's get you all over to the mess hall," said Gordon soothingly, "and we'll get the medics to check you out before we get some food in you." 

A few days later, Gordon came into the officer wing of the "detention camp." His troops had bitched and moaned in the traditions of good troops everywhere about having to assemble a whole new set of structures (as well as a covered access tunnel to narrow down the avenues of escape), but they made it happen in short order. But this was definitely a feather in the unit's cap. Nobody had taken Rekati troops alive before and everyone back home was buzzing about it. For his part, Gordon wished the "honor" had fallen on somebody else.

Knocking on the door, Gordon waited until he heard, "Enter!", then stepped inside Trel-ska's quarters. "Good afternoon, Major," the Rekati officer said pleasantly.

"Good afternoon, Commander. I wish I could say this is purely a social call to check on you and your troops. Unfortunately, it's quite serious, and there are some considerable repercussions which may be involved."

"Sounds ominous," Trel-ska said lightly.

"I see the Chief's sense of understatement is rubbing off on you," teased Gordon. He sat down next to Trel-ska and brought out a data-slate. "Commander, I am obligated to inform you that my line of questioning in this instance may reveal means and procedures which your military or your government deems sensitive and secret. Accordingly, I must remind you that you do have the right to remain silent. We can't use any information which you don't tell us."

"I stand reminded. Ask away."

"As part of the in-processing for your military personnel, are your troops given some sort of 'therapeutic' regimen to improve your combat capabilities?"

"We're provided with a panel of hormone and vitamin supplements to increase our muscle mass and fast-nerve firing responses. Such supplements are maintained, at lower doses, after in-processing and even after discharge or retirement."

"I was afraid you were gonna say that," Gordon sighed. "Trel-ska, I'm going to be completely candid with you. Your government lied to you. Your military leadership has lied to you. And they've lied to each and every Rekati soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine in uniform."

"Lied how, exactly?" asked Trel-ska cautiously.

"We sent a team to your camp to gather up records and such. They recovered a small sample of some of your concentrated rations. They didn't find any hormones, no vitamin supplements which could conceivably improve your combat performance to the degree we've observed. It would appear that you and your men have been genetically re-engineered to a rather significant degree."

"That can't be possible!" protested Trel-ska.

"Not only is it possible, it happened. And that's not the worst part of it. They also worked in a little kill-switch to ensure nobody would talk, even if they knew. You remember when you first got here and we fed your troops? Recall the dish you all ate so much of?"

"Yes. I believe your cook referred to it as 'three-bean casserole.' Where are you going with this?"

"Our doctors sequenced your genomes as part of the medical workup. Your superiors introduced a lysine deficiency into your genetic makeup. Without foodstuffs high in lysine, you basically shut down and die within a couple of days." Gordon looked at Trel-ska. "That's why you were all so lethargic. You were starving to death."

Trel-ska leaned back in his chair. "When I made the decision to offer our surrender, I put the remainder of the unit on half-rations to make sure we had enough energy to reach here."

"Which explains why you were just lethargic instead of dead," nodded Gordon. "Some of my kind tried similar stunts back about three hundred years earlier. They genegineered a histidine deficiency into combat troops, trying to avoid them getting around it like we did with your little problem. Naturally, it didn't work out like they wanted. Which is why it's a serious no-no among human forces these days."

Gordon leaned forward in the chair. "Officially, I can't make an offer like this. But, unofficially, I want you to at least consider the possibility of changing your allegiance. And I want you to consider it very carefully. We can probably reverse the process, or at least come up with something to mitigate the worst effects. You'd probably want to consult with Doc Severn about all that, but leave that aside for the moment.

"There's a certain degree of reciprocal loyalty required for any military force to function. You promise to execute the orders you're given, even the ones that lead to your death, but there's an expectation that you're not going to be uselessly spent for no good reason. You may die. But you want to die for a good cause. Good governments remember that, and good officers enforce it when governments forget how to do that. But your government and your higher-ups didn't do that. They didn't play straight with you. They outright lied to you about what they did and what their ultimate objectives are. They treat you and your men as completely expendable, no more consideration than a ration tin or a magazine of ammo for your weapons. And frankly, after six months fighting you guys, I kind of feel like you deserve better than to be used up for no return."

"What do you mean by that?" asked Trel-ska.

"Third Corps is doing the bulk of the fighting here in Dimas. Fifth Corps, which is what my unit is part of, is providing security for occupied territory. Third Corps just smashed the shit out of your sector HQ yesterday on Dimas 3. Because of what we found out from your surrender, we managed to take over a hundred thousand prisoners. In breaking into the secure databases, our intelligence weenies found correspondence between your Sector Marshal Egla-zur and your High Command. This whole shitty war is nothing more than an effort to make radical reductions in your population centers rather than risk efforts at trying to colonize second-tier harsh environment worlds. It explains a lot about the poor tactics and lopsided loss ratios we've observed. They were trying to kill you off."

"I can't believe it!" whispered Trel-ska.

Sliding the data-slate over to the Rekati officer, Gordon looked at his former enemy. "Believe it, Trel," he said softly. "Read it over. Think about it. And think about how your enemies seem to have a higher regard for your lives than your superiors." Gordon stood up and quietly left.

"How'd he take it?" asked Carson once Gordon was back in the access tunnel.

"Still digesting it all." Gordon shook his head. "Tell you what, Chief, I feel like kind of a bastard for showing him that slate."

"Maybe so, Boss. But you're just the messenger. I think he's smart enough to recognize that. And I think he's gonna get pissed off enough that he's gonna jump at any chance to do something about it."

(This piece originally appeared on r/humansarespaceorcs)