Chapter 7 - A soldier's destiny:

  , than the one that walks through fire.

  

  No name shines truer than the one returned to dust.

  

  A soldier is born without glory and lives without it,

  

  or the only glory that ever belonged to us

  is to fall where no one else dares to stand.

  Victory is for others.

  Memory belongs to the wind.

  

  Death, that one, is ours.

  Night in Klynos was a cheap simulation: diffuse lights hung from the engineered sky, replicating stars that had not existed for centuries. Outside, the air carried that disinfected smell of a closed system, and yet something in the city felt dirtier than the front.

  Lin’s notification was still there, suspended above the table, floating like an insect trapped between planes.

  “We need you back.”

  It said nothing else. It offered no justification. It merely named him, summoned him. As if a man could be called by a verb. Return.

  He had ignored the message for days. He had opened it, closed it, opened it again. But he had not replied. Not because he doubted, but because replying meant admitting there was nothing else left.

  The ceiling lights flickered with that sick cadence only low power systems had, as if they were breathing. Dossian had been sitting in front of the dispenser for over an hour, waiting for the clock on the screen to change, even though he knew it would not.

  The panel was a gray rectangle embedded in the wall, its polished surface returning a distorted reflection. Sometimes he liked looking at himself there. Not out of vanity, but because that concave surface warped his face just enough to make it feel foreign.

  “Omnis,” he said, voice rough, still half asleep. “Double Cintue?o.”

  The verification tone took longer than usual. Then the synthetic voice replied with the exact calm of something that had never felt guilt.

  “Served minutes balance: 00:00. Transaction denied.”

  The message floated in the air for a few seconds, projected onto the wall. The letters had a pale blue tint, almost serene.

  Dossian swallowed and tried again.

  “Omnis, single Cintue?o.”

  “Insufficient balance.”

  “Water,” he murmured.

  The panel clicked.

  “You may generate minutes by performing level C three civic tasks. Would you like to receive available offers?”

  “No.”

  Silence returned, but it was not silence. It was the electrical murmur of the system breathing behind the walls, the pressurized air ducts, the neighboring modules vibrating like organs of a single body.

  He leaned on the dispenser. The surface greeted him with the coarse feel of plastic paint.

  “Give me water,” he repeated, barely audible.

  This time, the machine obeyed.

  A thin stream descended slowly into a recycled cup. The liquid trembled, catching the ceiling lights as if it held shards of glass. He took a sip but had to pull away. The water tasted metallic, like an old battery.

  He looked at the cup, then at his hand. His pulse trembled without control.

  He wondered, not for the first time, whether his body had actually aged or whether it was simply an Omnis miscalculation in counting his minutes.

  He checked the panel again. The counter remained at zero.

  00:00.

  A number that did not represent time, only its absence.

  He walked through the apartment. There was almost nothing. An unmade bed, a folding table, a screen with no use.

  He opened the blinds.

  Klynos stretched out like a living machine. The lower levels were a dense fog of yellow lights, the higher ones a false constellation of white LEDs.

  Everything seemed to vibrate under a single rhythm, a shared breath.

  But he was not part of it.

  The artificial wind of the ventilation system seeped in with an asthmatic rasp.

  Dossian closed his eyes. He heard the hums, a neighbor dropping something, the electrical snap of transformers.

  Everything sounded more alive than he did.

  He glanced back at the panel.

  “Transaction denied.”

  The phrase was still there, suspended, as if Omnis did not want to turn it off.

  He could almost hear it in his head, without sound.

  Denied.

  Denied.

  Denied.

  He sat down.

  He placed the cup beside him.

  The water rippled on its own from the floor vibrations, and the small wave briefly reflected his fragmented face. It did not look like a man.

  It looked like a faulty memory of someone who had existed in another era, when there were still minutes left to serve.

  There was nothing left but letting life pass, and life passed faster while sleeping. He shut down the system.

  Partly to sleep.

  Partly to avoid seeing his reflection on the screen.

  There was no sunrise in Klynos, only a programmed transition. The system lights shifted frequency, thermal filters raised two degrees, and a faint vibration spread through the walls, simulating atmospheric tremor as sunlight pierced the haze. It was a manufactured morning, and yet the most human one Dossian had had in weeks.

  The cup of water was still on the table, the same from the night before, with a thin film of dust on its surface. The air smelled of warm plastic and burnt motor. He did not remember sleeping, although he had been still all night. His back ached as if he had carried something heavy. Maybe his body still had not learned that the war was over.

  He rose slowly, feeling the floor with his feet until he found balance. The room was a shadowless cube. The dispenser was embedded in the wall, and the panel still flickered with the same blue light as yesterday.

  Dossian placed his palm on it, feeling the cold glass on his skin, and murmured:

  “Omnis. Double Cintue?o.”

  The system’s voice arrived with the slightest delay, barely perceptible but enough to seem like hesitation.

  “Served minutes balance: 00:00. Transaction denied.”

  For an instant, he believed that if he did not move, the machine might reconsider. The blue light vibrated, then steadied.

  “Single Cintue?o.”

  “Insufficient balance.”

  “Water.”

  “You may generate minutes by performing level C three civic tasks. Would you like to receive available offers?”

  “No.”

  The panel emitted a dry click, a sound that could have been mistaken for a sigh.

  The silence that followed had weight, as if the room were breathing with him.

  He leaned against the machine and lowered his head. The metal smelled familiar and harsh. War smelled the same, old paint and electricity.

  For a long moment, he stayed there, silent, until the system, perhaps tired of his stillness, released a short burst of water. He had not requested anything. It was an error, or mercy.

  He drank slowly. The water was warm, with a hint of rust.

  Each sip was a reminder that his body could still accept something without rejecting it. He watched his reflection in the panel, the sunken eye, the poorly healed scar, the beard failing to grow in the burned patches.

  He did not recognize himself.

  It was a face designed to receive blows, not words.

  Lin’s message still hovered above the table, floating in a translucent hologram.

  “We need you back.”

  The word “back” blinked at regular intervals, like breathing.

  Dossian stared at it without thinking. He did not hate it. It simply felt foreign. There was a difference between a calling and an order, and this belonged to the second category.

  He crossed the room.

  The floor had the texture of a material that had once wanted to resemble wood, but long ago had become nothing but plastic imitation.

  He opened the window.

  The artificial air seeped in with the same metallic smell as always, but outside the city already roared with the rhythm of a waking organism. From the upper levels, a rain of lights fell in vertical beams, as if the sky were being welded by hand. The streets were veins of light. Drones traveled from tower to tower with surgical precision.

  None of it was real, but all of it was perfectly functional.

  Dossian watched for a moment. From this height, pedestrians looked like shadows glued to the ground. A world made of movement that went nowhere. And in the middle of that flawless mechanism, him, a motionless body no longer part of the system that had built him.

  He turned back inside.

  The dispenser kept humming. Lin’s hologram kept flickering.

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  Everything was exactly where he had left it, except him.

  There was something new now, the awareness that no one would come knocking.

  He put on his coat. The synthetic fabric scraped his neck with unpleasant stiffness.

  He stepped into the hallway. The air smelled of diluted detergent. Light tubes vibrated overhead.

  A neighbor stepped aside as he approached. Another pretended to check his terminal. No one greeted men who carried war on their faces.

  He took the elevator. The descent was slow, accompanied by the pneumatic hum of valves. The curved glass reflected a trembling image.

  For a moment, he thought he saw behind him his own silhouette in uniform, the squadron insignia gleaming.

  He blinked.

  Only exterior lights flickering.

  The Labor Reassignment Center occupied the base of the civic district. A white block, too clean, its architecture designed to erase human traces.

  Inside, the temperature was steady, the air thick. Suspended screens displayed images of citizens smiling. No one spoke. The dominant sound was machines scanning records.

  Dossian sat to wait.

  Across from him, a young man, perhaps twenty years his junior, looked at him with a mix of curiosity and repulsion.

  That kind of look, he thought, was the true language of Klynos. Not fear, not contempt. Discomfort.

  When his number appeared, Window twelve, he stood.

  His knees protested with a soft ache.

  Inside, everything was white and edgeless, like a healed wound. The woman behind the desk greeted him with the precise smile of someone trained not to remember faces.

  The scene repeated, the questions, the pauses, the moment she finally looked at him.

  The breath that caught halfway through a sentence.

  The attempt at professionalism that was not enough.

  “We are fully aware of your contribution to the Universal Government and nothing could ever compensate for the sacrifice you have made for the Universal Government. However, I regret to inform you that we cannot grant you the job. Your appearance could cause discomfort.”

  That word, “discomfort”, cut deeper than any bullet. Discomfort. In war, no one got uncomfortable. They merely died.

  War. He needed the war.

  He went straight down to level eighteen A. Civil residences, class C, the ones that still had synthetic plants in the corridors.

  He had saved this address for months.

  Rellan Gaius’s widow.

  He knocked. He did not know what he expected to feel. Maybe she would not be there. Maybe she would not remember him. Or maybe she would curse him. Any reaction would have been valid.

  The door opened after several long seconds.

  She emerged in the dim light, thinner than he remembered. Hair tied back, hollow eyes. She was not crying. She did not seem broken. Worse, she was a woman who had managed to stay whole, and because of that, she was shattered.

  She recognized him instantly.

  “Commander Glass.”

  Her voice did not tremble. It had the dryness of someone who had erased everything that hurt and left only the empty structure.

  Dossian did not reply immediately.

  “Forgive me if I am intruding. I wanted to see you. Just to talk about him.” The words came out weaker than he had intended.

  She looked at him in silence, then glanced aside. She kept the door half open, arms crossed. She did not move from the threshold.

  “Why now?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Have you come to tell me how he died? To say he was brave, that he fell fulfilling his duty, that he did not suffer?”

  “No,” Dossian said.

  That made her frown, not in pain, but in confusion.

  “Then why are you here?”

  Dossian lowered his gaze. The floor was spotless and immaculate, but there was a rust stain on the lower hinge. For some reason, that felt more real than anything else.

  “To remember him. To say his name with someone. To not leave him alone in memory. I do not know.”

  She closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them, her voice sounded more tired.

  “And you think I have the strength for that?”

  “No. But I thought that maybe, if I have no one to do it with, perhaps you do not either.”

  She looked at him. Long and deeply. And for a moment, Dossian believed she would let him in.

  But she did not.

  “I have a granddaughter who asks about her grandfather every night. She asks why we do not draw him in the legacy records, why he has no plaque in the Plaza of the Brave. I do not know how to explain to her that no one wants to remember those who were not useful. Those who died without changing the cycle.”

  She paused. Took a breath.

  “If you want to remember him, do it. But do not ask me to carry that for you too.”

  Dossian nodded. Not in resignation. In respect.

  “Thank you for opening the door.”

  She looked uncertain about replying. Finally, she closed the door without another word. Not out of contempt or anger. Just the clarity of someone with no strength left to share her grief.

  Dossian remained there a few seconds. The artificial air felt colder in this hallway. He lowered his gaze, then heard a voice.

  “Were you Grandpa’s friend?”

  The girl must have been nearby the whole time. Sitting at the base of a water recycling tower, hugging a magnetic toy sphere that rotated in her hands. Dark short hair. Big eyes. Well fed. Well kept. But something in her gaze reminded him of Gaius, that silent attentiveness.

  “Yes. We were soldiers together,” Dossian said.

  “Then why did you not come before?”

  There was no venom. Just clear curiosity.

  “Because I did not know if I had the right.”

  She nodded, as if accepting it without fully understanding.

  “Sometimes I dream that he comes back. That he is in a hidden capsule and someone wakes him up. And he tells me everything will be okay.”

  Dossian crouched to her height.

  “And what do you tell him?”

  “That he does not need to say that,” she said, with a slight shrug. “I already know it will not be okay. But I am still happy to see him.”

  Dossian smiled without noticing. A small smile. His first in a long time.

  “Your grandfather would be proud of you.”

  The girl shifted back and stood up. Something changed instantly. She wiped her hand on her pants and stepped away slowly.

  Dossian understood at once.

  “Well, I should go,” she said. “Grandma gets mad if I stay outside too long.”

  And she left. Just like that. She slipped through the back door of the module and vanished.

  He stayed a few seconds longer. Not because he expected anything. Because he did not want to leave immediately. Because the silence in that hallway was different from the silence in his home.

  Then he felt the looks.

  Two adults at the corner pretending to check a console. A woman on a balcony. A child behind a window. They said nothing, but they watched.

  A gray soldier, a shadow faced man, speaking to a girl.

  He knew how it looked. He knew how they thought. His mark of Cain was carved into his face. Heroes were heroes on the battlefield, not in the streets.

  He walked without hurry. He did not flee. But he left.

  Back in his unit, he ordered a Cintue?o from Omnis and sat in front of the open file. Lin’s sentence was still there, unchanged, patient and precise.

  “We need you back.”

  He wrote a single line.

  “I accept redeployment.”

  Under it, his name.

  Dossian Glass.

  He hit send.

  Lin Jung passed his authorization card through the biometric reader without a word. The hallway leading to the military rehabilitation wing was lit with dim, steady lights, as if the system understood that brightness had no place here. The curved, silent walls seemed to close in with each step. A clinical aroma, intentionally odorless, betrayed Omnis’s perfect work at erasing any trace of prior human life.

  Unlike the rest of Klynos, there was no symmetry or beauty here. Only efficiency. Only forgetting.

  A short man in a beige coat, his face wrinkled by years of experience, greeted him with a formal bow.

  “Mr Jung, an honor. We spoke on the call. I am Doctor Lisenski.”

  Lin nodded briefly.

  “Pleasure, doctor. I need to see the status of the veterans catalogued in Section C.”

  The doctor hesitated for a moment, then nodded and led him to a windowless side room.

  “I would never question the actions of First Delegate Santiago, but I must ask. What brings you here?”

  Lin felt smothered under his coat. Avoiding Lisenski’s gaze, he said:

  “We need soldiers on the front. It is important to win Tau Ceti Four.”

  The doctor’s stare burned the back of his neck, but Lin pretended not to notice. Lisenski clicked his tongue.

  “As you know, many are not in ideal condition,” he murmured, almost like a pre emptive apology. “Those who could serve would do so under medication and monitoring. Psychiatric, in some cases.”

  Lin did not respond at once. The silence thickened. When they entered the room, the smell of disinfectant and rust enveloped them.

  A dozen men and women were sprawled on stretchers, wheelchairs, or metal benches. None wore uniforms. Some muttered to themselves. Others slept with their eyes open.

  One, tall and thin, with a defective prosthetic arm, hummed a voiceless old hymn of the Universal Government. Another had a neural monitor attached to his temple. The irregular flashes showed he was reliving the same stored battle on loop.

  Lin stopped. Not out of compassion, but calculation. He observed with trained, cold eyes, like someone assessing pieces that could, with adjustments, fit back into place.

  “Which ones are functional?” he asked.

  The doctor did not take offense. Sensitivity no longer existed in this corner of the Government.

  “I would say seven could be deployed, though not without risk. Harald Inoss, for example.” He pointed to a man with a heavy jaw and a gaze locked in the void. “Severe trauma, but reflexes intact. His loyalty to the Government is unshakeable. He has been asking to return for a year. Others have partial cognitive damage, but remain operational under supervision.”

  “And the rest?”

  “With all due respect, sir, they should never see a battlefield again. Not even a simulated one.”

  Lin inhaled quietly and looked away.

  “Then transfer them to the public image commission. Let them appear on internal channels. At least that way they provide some use.”

  The doctor lowered his head, uncomfortable.

  Lin walked through the room. Each person was a fragment of war, like still hot shrapnel thrown here to cool into oblivion.

  He stopped at a particularly young man, barely older than new cadets.

  “This one?”

  “Episodes of depersonalization. Confuses real orders with training memories. Cannot distinguish past from present. Physically perfect. Mentally, a coin toss.”

  Lin observed him a moment longer. Then walked to Harald Inoss, the soldier Lisenski had mentioned, and sat in front of him.

  The veteran had gray hair and a glassy stare, but his posture was still straight. His plate read: Inoss, Harald. Retired Colonel. Commended in Eris Three.

  “How are you today, Colonel?” Lin asked, as if speaking to a colleague.

  “I have had better years,” Inoss replied with a half smile. His voice was sandpaper, but dignified. “Still, I am glad to have a visit from someone who is not bringing pills.”

  Lin gave him the faintest nod.

  “I am not here with pills. I am here with an opportunity. The front in Tau Ceti needs experienced men. I am sure you know what I mean.” Inoss nodded. “And, for political reasons, it also needs faces that inspire respect. Faces like yours.”

  Harald Inoss looked at him clearly for the first time.

  “And do they also need broken men?”

  Lin held his gaze.

  “As far as I am concerned, you are not broken. You have experience. We need men who can still hold a weapon. And choose to.”

  No immediate answer came. Lin placed a small projector on the common table. It contained the deployment path and the signed medical conditions. Nothing forced. Only an invitation, or so the form claimed.

  “The final list comes out tomorrow. Nothing will be required of you beyond what you choose to offer. But the Council would appreciate the commitment. And so would I.”

  Inoss stayed stoic, then nodded.

  Lin continued his inspection.

  Suddenly, the weight of everything pressed onto him. He leaned on a nearby chair and sat. He looked at the projection sunlight filtering from above with absurd precision. Lisenski approached silently.

  “What makes these soldiers return to the front, doctor?”

  “Sometimes guilt. Sometimes lack of choice. And sometimes, because at the front, at least they understand what they are supposed to do. Out here, they have no orders. No bonds. They just wait.”

  Lin nodded slowly. His eyes swept the room again.

  This is a warehouse, he thought. An orderly dump of forgotten sacrifices.

  And he had come to harvest them.

  “Write down the names of the viable ones. No more than five. The least unstable.” His voice carried the weight. “Public relations will handle the rest.”

  The doctor obeyed. Lin stood and shook his hand.

  As he left, the hallway felt colder. He walked slowly, hands in pockets, sensing the weight of the decision already set.

  In the reflection on a metal panel, he saw a neat, controlled man, but a wrinkle between his brows betrayed discomfort.

  Maybe this is how it begins, he thought.

  Then he felt Omnis’s soft buzz in his neural implant.

  A message floated in his inner vision, translucent, written in that typeface Omnis used when it wanted to seem informal yet inevitable.

  [New message received: Dossian Glass has accepted operational reintegration.]

  Lin stopped. He closed his eyes. He did not smile.

  But in his mind, he knew he had obtained what he needed.

  For now, that was enough.