Overseas

The screech of metal sliding against metal--wake up call. Elliv opened his eyes to dim lamplight dancing on the sandstone wall through the bars of his cell. He made himself sit up, and felt so light-headed he might pass out. He made himself take a deep breath of dry, stale air, and tried to remember the date, to no avail.

He crawled across the cold floor tiles to reach the wooden cup just placed in his cell. His mouth was so dry. He drank the water too fast and felt so nauseous he thought he might throw it back up. But he held it down--he needed it.

His brown K.D.F. fatigues hung loosely from his arms now. Even the fabric of its sleeves was starting to feel like a burden to lift. He pulled out the front of his shirt to look at his withering body. A sharp pain struck his stomach.

He picked up his tray of dinner--or was it breakfast--a little bowl of yellow rice and a piece of flatbread, and brought it back to his blanket. He scooped some of the dry rice onto the bread and ate it slowly--he couldn’t afford to lose this meal. They had fed him twice a day for...however long it had been, but little in the way of protein, no meat. He even missed his field rations--salty dry meat. He swore he would never complain about them again if he ever got out of here.

Hearing heavy bootsteps on the floor tiles, he forced himself up into any kind of dignified position. A pair of Sabakuan soldiers stood outside his door, dark-skinned men in tan uniforms lined with light blue thread, a little sand clinging to their boots, rifles with bayonets attached in hand.

One unlocked his cell and slid the door open. “Come,” he said.

Elliv sighed and summoned his strength to climb to his feet. The two positioned themselves in front and behind him as they led him through the hallway. If they thought he had the ability to fight his way out at this point they were just delusional.

He examined the rifle of the one in front, a standard Sabakuan Oaskia-1571 muzzle-loading flintlock, with a body of light brown wood. Identifying it was something to focus on to distract from his exhaustion. His head hung down, staring at the tiles, an elegant pattern of white shards expanding from blue centerpieces. Even in a military prison the Sabakuans spared no attention to detail in their architecture.

He tried to keep track of the turns they made, but by the time they stopped he didn’t even remember leaving the cell. They came to a light wooden door and the lead soldier knocked. A shout in Sabakuan came from inside. They opened the door into a sparse room with a table and two chairs, two oil lamps burning on opposite walls. A man in an officer’s uniform stood across the table, light green pads on his shoulders marked with two yellow stripes--a lieutenant.

Elliv’s host sat down, and the soldiers pulled him by his shoulders to the other chair. He gladly took a seat. He turned around to see the others standing guard by the closed door. Ahead, the banner of Sabaku hung on the wall behind his interrogator--a blue oval with a green edge surrounded by a field of pale yellow.

“Private Elliv Alenkov, 401st Airborne, Kogaku Defense Forces,” Elliv said just as he was trained to, like he did every time he was brought before one of them.

“Is that all you can say?” the officer said. “You come here and lay waste to my country and my people and that is all you can say for yourself?”

He knew not to let them play mind games. He stayed quiet and kept his eyes on the table in front of him.

“You look like death. Have you not been eating? Some sort of hunger strike?” the officer said.

But he didn’t feel up to holding up such a barrier today. “I eat it, you don’t give me any meat, of course I’m sick.”

“My people do not eat the flesh of animals, we have none to offer you.”

“My people...” He clutches at his stomach. “My people eat quite a lot of flesh and I don’t think our bodies can handle going without it.”

“That would explain the trend of sickness that sweeps across our indigenous Kogakuan prisoners of war. If you had spoken sooner we may have found some way to accommodate you before now. We are not a cruel people like those you serve.”

Elliv returned to silence.

The officer pushed his head upward to stare him down with his amber colored eyes. “Do you know why you are still here, even though several of your compatriots have been traded in prisoner exchanges?”

Elliv stared blankly ahead.

“They do not want you. We offer your kind, they want five of you for the price that one of your white-skinned comrades trades for. We do not want to keep you here, draining our resources, we want our men back. Your officers have other ideas.”

Elliv’s eyes widened.

“I do not understand you!” He grabbed Elliv by the wrist and pulled his arm up off the table, his black skin against Elliv’s brown skin. “They steal your homeland and you choose to follow them here to steal ours? I thought you must be conscripts, but I have been told otherwise.”

Elliv offered no resistance and let his hand drop to the table.

“Have you no care for your own people and culture that you would disgrace it like this? Our peoples were once allies, friends! Are you such cowards now that you submit to the colonizer’s rule?”

Elliv’s hands balled into fists. “What do you expect to get from me? I’m nobody. Even if I gave you positions and movements, it would be weeks old intel.”

“I want to understand my enemies, invader. As your masters plunder and pillage across our land, I at least want to understand why you are with them.”

He looked down and closed his eyes tight, tears forming in them. His hands were shaking.

The officer stood up and slammed his chair into the table. “Take this pitiful shell of a man out of my sight!” He made sure to say that in a language Elliv understood.

When Elliv stood up, the room shook as he heard a muffled explosion from above. The officer started shouting orders in his own language, and the other two gripped Elliv’s upper arms tightly from either side and marched him out in a hurry.

Other Sabakuan soldiers scrambled through the hallways as they dragged him back toward the dungeon. More bombs--windows shattered--cannon and gunfire.

At an intersection of hallways, his guards turned their heads, let go of him and raised their guns. But their enemies were upon them too fast for them to get a shot in, charging down the hall with sword-bayonets. Elliv, unrestrained, stood in a daze watching the K.D.F. forces in their long brown coats engage the Sabakuans in melee, thrusting and parrying with their long bayonets like spears, until Kogaku’s forces overpowered and impaled the two--one through the heart, he died instantly--the other was eviscerated at the stomach, blood and bile spilled across the floor. Elliv stared, frozen.

“Elliv! Elliv!” The soldier coming toward him had dark blue eyes and pale white skin.

“Lein!” Elliv said, snapping to his senses, but wavering on shaking legs. He started to fall but he was caught. Next he knew, he found himself being carried on Lein’s back, watching the blue tiles go past below, stained with fresh blood or covered with dust and broken glass. White smoke, flashes and bangs, they felt so far away. He closed his eyes, and somehow they were outside, running across the loose sand. It was night, but a bright light shone down on them, and the roar of an engine blared in his ears.

Lein was running up a wooden ramp, and then a few moments later Elliv was sitting on the deck of an airship. The Kogakuan flag of overlapping black, yellow, and brown triangles blew in the wind ahead. Lein crouched down in front of him, his hand on his shoulder. He felt the ship lifting into the air. The gunshots grew more distant. The night air grew colder.

He looked all around at his fellow prisoners resting on that deck as officers came around with first aid kits. But there weren’t any like him on the ship. There were other indigenous Kogai in his unit captured that day weeks ago, but none among the rescued.

“Why me, Lein?” He looked up into his deep blue eyes, like the ocean.

Lein gripped his hand in between his own. “You’re my friend.”

He looked around the deck again. “But...why...”