There was no other choice. Oxygen had to be rationed.


    Some hours into their chartless journey Cacliocos had ordered the purple compartment light to be turned off, to conserve fuel. The decision was made to set the APC''s oxygen regulators to 19% oxygen concentration, and given this it was suggested of the survivors of Jegorich First that they should sleep in order to reduce oxygen consumption.


    So exhausted were they that the entire troop were consigned to dreamland not ten minutes after the suggestion was made (some like Douglas in fact falling asleep the moment the lights went out). The contingent''s helmets were lined up into two neat rows down the middle of the troop compartment, and before long the space was filled with snores.


    In the end only Cacliocos and Betelgeuse and Corporal Jackson, who had taken over driving duties from the now-snoozing Private Reese, remained awake.


    No, it appeared that the woman, Misha Kern, was also awake. Betelgeuse observed her from the front end of the APC and found that she was sobbing soundlessly, her body sheathed in a strange and otherworldly aura.


    Betelgeuse shook his head. Nothing but sorrow and phantom reminiscences. Misha''s face was in her hands, and her form was shuddering. There was nothing else to it. The mind makes of life every special thing.


    "I don''t know if we can make it," whispered Cacliocos.


    "We have about nine hours. Ten if we really push it," Betelgeuse said. They were flying blind without comms. It was a calculated gamble, attempting to traverse the north-northeast tunnels. But then it was either do something or die. No use in worrying too much about it, was his view.


    "In the end, nothing mattered," Cacliocos said, and his dark eyes sat wide open within their sockets, their pupils reflecting numbness and emptiness and every little regret he had. Betelgeuse hadn''t seen him blink for a long time, as if his eyelids had been glued to his brows.


    "You say that like our deaths are predetermined," Betelgeuse returned. "Hrodwulf and the rest of them haven''t bothered to come after us. That gives us a better chance."


    "It''s pointless."


    "It gives us a better chance of survival. We need to look on the bright side."


    "I said it''s pointless. Maybe he knows we''re already dead. Maybe it doesn''t really matter," Cacliocos said. He stared staunchly out the windshield at nothing, deliberately avoiding Betelgeuse'' gaze. His lineaments were split into penumbras and shaded from gray to black and haunted by things unsaid and unsayable.


    "Sir," Betelgeuse said, placing a hand on Cacliocos'' shoulder. Seeing that the officer did not refuse the connection, indeed did not so much as show any reaction, he continued, "we''ve cast the die. We can''t jump to conclusions before it''s finished rolling."


    "Is that what passes for a truism on Earth?"


    "For a good number of people, probably. I guess I''m just looking at the kind of mindset that''s most likely to see us through this."


    "Very disingenuous," Cacliocos returned, tensing his jaw muscles.


    "It''s called being pragmatic."


    "It''s calledbeing calculative. There''s something about Earthians that makes everything about outcomes. I know how you people work, and I confess I hate everything about it."


    "Hrnh. You seem to think we''re all the same… but you will be surprised at how different we can be. Just like Desert, there are many peoples, many tribes. You mentioned outcomes—well, most children of Earth learn that before the Old Empire, before humans had splintered across the galaxy… they learn that duty and obligations were as important as outcomes, sometimes more important, and in any case no decision was made unassailable by virtue of its outcomes or purported outcomes alone. How to say it… they''re just another factor we take into account."


    Confusion. Talking over each other. It''s what he''s thinking. I can''t help it.


    "... What… It''s not what I''m talking about. I''m not like you. I think there is good and evil. I will not kill indiscriminately if I can help it." Shades heavy with bitterness and indignation were encroaching upon Cacliocos'' expression, and as he turned to regard Betelgeuse his eyes were brimming with wetness and deep sorrow.


    "Sir, if you believe that…" Betelgeuse said, wondering where to begin. The accusation leveled by Cacliocos felt to him misguided to an almost repugnant degree, and Betelgeuse wondered briefly if he should bring up for debate the instances of Jegorichians betraying Jegorichians he had personally experiencedover the span of the last forty-eight hours. Major Storr and LTC Pilix proved Jegorichians were not so different from Earthlings as Cacliocos would like to think. But the man was venting. It was understandable.


    "... You see Voke there," Betelgeuse pointed. Voke was breathing lightly and leaning on Thete''s snoring form to his left. "Voke Thatcher probably believes in the notion to a far greater extent than anyone I have ever known. And he knows the idea of good and evil is complex, and that it is mediated by survival. Outcomes are baked into good and evil. Voke is a true believer in God and his good and evil—do you know how rare that is?"


    ''Do not draw unjustified and invidious distinctions between us,'' was what one said and the other understood.


    Cacliocos remained silent. Neither of them were willing to break the connection, their eyes finding in each other an intimacy that both had rarely before felt.


    "It is true…" Cacliocos managed after several seconds, "... how rare it is to find someone believing in Ahman, believing with sincerity, in this day in age. But I do not know Voke Thatcher." Some of the fire had receded from Cacliocos'' eyes, and what remained was a mortal sadness.


    "I know him. As his…"—What is he to me, really?—"... as his friend, I can vouch for his never contemplating, as you describe, indiscriminate killing. I doubt any of us in Section Five have."


    Another window of silence interspersed, and phantom shapes assailed Betelgeuse. ''Is he really a friend?'' he second-guessed himself, suddenly thinking how much Voke resembled Frederica. Something about their characters felt cut from the same cloth.


    Cacliocos leaned forward through the front aperture to exchange several muttered words with Corporal Jackson, before pulling the aperture-shutters closed with a dull thud, plunging the troop compartment into pitch-black darkness.


    They spent several moments like this, bathed in the snores of their compatriots, when Cacliocos whispered again, his voice faltering. The sound of the man''s rare outpouring of expressivity felt closer to Betelgeuse than he would have thought.


    "So many things have happened. I am not sure I am equal to it. The enormity of what I have done."


    "... What is it you think you have done?"


    The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    "I murdered that Private. Private Joy, he said his name was. We needed to retreat, but I had to ensure there was no chance they could pin the breach of a direct order on us. We couldn''t afford more demerits."


    "It was a decision you had to make. What if Sergeant Khvalynsky had survived?"


    "He didn''t. There was no point. They all died anyway. I betrayed him. He thought we were on the same side and I murdered him for nothing."


    Betelgeuse blinked against the darkness, finding it had coalesced into massy protuberances that inflamed his imagination.


    "We make decisions that manage our risk. It is in the nature of risk to do so."


    "... I failed to prevent the killing of the Bejana. And… I caused the deaths of… I don''t know what to call them anymore. The TAF. Allies. Enemies. By extension I caused also the death of Asaghar. The deaths of Nano and Callagessa. The deaths of everyone here, it is becoming clearer by the second. All my efforts came to nothing."


    "Perhaps," Betelgeuse said, curling his lip. What was the point in talking further about it? Their frameworks were different, as far apart as certainty and risk.


    And yet they were very close, Betelgeuse and Cacliocos.


    "Their deaths weigh heavy on me. But… it is right? It is right, maybe. For me to bear the burdens of my conscience."


    Betelgeuse imagined there was guilt hidden in those eyes, but it was too dark for him to be sure. Cacliocos'' words were dripping with it. Guilt.


    Betelgeuse didn''t feel guilty much. It was a faraway concept with little bearing on his actions. Should he feel guilty, perhaps, for having killed Strionis? Lawrence? Storr?


    ''Guilt is the luxury of those lineages for whom survival has been easy,'' his father once said, and Betelgeuse always wondered about the particular experiences his father had codified in that aphorism. So it was that Betelgeuse had always held guilt in contempt. But after everything that happened… somehow Betelgeuse couldn''t believe that people really thought as if they were lineages. They thought as individuals, even buffeted as they were by geologic shifts in cultural thought. This survivor''s guilt that was overbearing Cacliocos, then—was it something to disparage?


    "It depends on what you can live with," Betelgeuse said.


    "What I can live with?" Cacliocos echoed vacantly, his figure turning in the darkness, and Betelgeuse thought he had perhaps turned to face Misha, the woman having by now retired into stillness. "I could live with it, if all of us made it back alive. I did it because I couldn''t live with their deaths. Danya. Eayn. Bader. My… my brother," Cacliocos'' voice cracked at this, and he broke off, hyperventilating for barely two seconds before he was able to arrest the violent egress of breaths. "... My brother. Maknon. He would have known what to do. Eternal rest grant untold Maknon Cacliocos, great Ahman, and let your perpetual light shine upon him…" Cacliocos trailed off, as if unsure how to continue.


    The elapse of seconds was punctuated by bumps and lurches. Betelgeuse felt that a universe of things was happening within Cacliocos'' mind.


    When he began speaking again his words were hoarse and raspy: "... All of them, all sacrificed… for whatexactly I do not know. I couldn''t have it happen again. But somehow…"


    But somehow it did, was his meaning.


    "… Cacliocos sir, I know very little of your life outside all of this," Betelgeuse managed, raising his hand and turning his open palm clockwise as if trying to encapsulate whatthis was, even though he knew the darkness obscured his meaning. "But I do know you have commanded us with integrity, and I think that''s all you can ask for. It''s too much to think we should all be able to go home. It''s too greedy to think we all have a right to live."


    "It tells me nothing of what should have happened and of what is going to happen."


    "What, do you really think you have control? You know most of us are still alive since you''ve taken command. Not a small feat considering what we''ve been through. We''re already ahead of ninety percent of those that that were dispatched on this failed operation, just by being alive. Forgive my language, but you really have to stop fucking around—we still have nine hours left to live."


    Somebody, probably Entuban, shifted in the darkness and bumped into the side of the APC chassis, causing the space to reverberate dully. Someone else''s breath hitched, then smoothed over and melted away into the undercurrent of snores.


    "I didn''t want anyone to die," Cacliocos was saying, his voice getting lower and softer and somehow more wracked by grief. "I don''t want anyone to die."


    Betelgeuse sensed bodies shifting in the darkness, and he pressed his lips into a hard line, wondering if any of the others were eavesdropping.


    <hr>


    They continued through that abyssal wasteland, crossing over carpets of crags and passing between shadowy promontories and fording shallow lakes of octane.


    The other Saltillan, Private Reese, had taken over driving duty, his deepset eyes never moving far from a singular point somewhere far into the claustrophobic darkness. Cacliocos had told Betelgeuse they would take turns looking over the shoulder of the driver, for what purpose Betelgeuse could only guess at; so there Betelgeuse was, scrutinizing the driver''s faint reflection as if it were a grim aspect of his own mortality, Cacliocos slumped over himself less than a meter away.


    Tap. Tap.


    Private Reese was indicating with his finger the oxygen percentage reading on the terminal.


    18.9%


    The regulators are unable to efficiently maintain 19% oxygen concentration.


    Betelgeuse nodded but remained silent. Over the past few hours the condition of his lungs had deteriorated to the point where his breaths would hitch every few seconds; it was everything he could do to maintain a veneer of self-possession.


    Private Reese glanced at him, his lineaments carved with exhaustion, his eyes simmering with a bitterness older than he. Corporal Jackson was awake now, too, and he joined the conversation of fraught looks.


    A dire thing must have passed between Cacliocos and the Saltillans, Betelgeuse realized, and there under the pressure of death old enmities were ready to trade, regardless of threat.


    But the day had gone on long enough. Their chance of surviving was diminishing quickly; if they lived, they would live by the skin of their teeth. There was no way they could afford any disturbance.


    The APC bumped and Private Reese returned his attention to the endless road of rock framed by tenebrous gloom. Corporal Jackson remained unnaturally still, staring with mysterious intent at Betelgeuse. If Edith were awake he imagined she would tell him that violence was on Corporal Jackson''s mind.


    Betelgeuse placed his hands on their shoulders, Corporal Jackson to his left, Private Reese to his right, and he lowered his eyes, telling them softly that he was no Jegorichian.


    Corporal Jackson muttered his invectives, and Betelgeuse repeated that he was no Jegorichian, that he hailed from Earth, and that they would reach safety soon, if only they would keep driving.


    Time is running out. We''re all going to die, Corporal Jackson said, the resentment palpable in his voice and demeanor.


    Time hasn''t run out yet. Our chances are lower if you don''t believe it''s possible. That it''s possible we survive. What do you have to lose? Betelgeuse kept his hands on their shoulders, and he squeezed gently, hoping that it would be interpreted as an act of friendship.


    It''s that Cacos'' fault—how do we know he''s not the traitor? Private Reese scoffed.


    Cacliocos is no traitor. I can personally vouch for it, Betelgeuse said; but in the circumstances he saw expressions ranging from indignation to anger flash across Corporal Jackson''s face, and a sense that he was losing control of the situation dawned with the curious experience of the sharpness of Jackson''s intentionality pricking at his brain.


    You''re nothing more than his lackey. Damned choolie shit-rimmer, Corporal Jackson was growling, becoming violent. I''ll not let you pull the hood over my eyes.


    Betelgeuse found it interesting that he could feel it. He could feel Jackson''s emotions through his fingertips. Or maybe it was an artifact of his brain; but he could feel it almost like any other emotion he felt. Jackson—the man an agglomeration of fear and anger and hate all bundled up in a thick exhaustion—was separated from him by an abstract membrane which allowed information to flow one way only: from Jackson to Betelgeuse.


    And with this realization came the intent to control. Jackson was shifting and looked to be grabbing something by his side, and Reese kept himself locked into the world beyond the windshield, his face stern and emotionless as the terrain he was guiding the APC across.


    No. I am not anyone''s lackey. I want to survive, and you will survive with me. Everyone here will survive. That is all that we can hope to do.


    The Incunabula secreted into the inner chest-pouch of his exosuit and pressed against his chest hummed. They hummed with a power that exhilarated and cleansed his shell-shocked mind, his war-blasted perceptions. There were two of them, one his and one Frederica''s, and both of them reacted to his intentionality with a keen vibration. The bodies of Reese and Jackson were vibrating as well, their forms buzzing under the palms of his hand, and the dark resonance was conjoined to his intentionality and then made to warp according to his will. There was a relationship of control, imperfectly established.


    Silence. The silence of the grave.


    I… I don''t know what came over me, Corporal Jackson breathed, the fire in his eyes supplanted by confusion. You… forgive me, forgive me. We will survive this together. Sir.


    No. Not sir. You will call me Betelgeuse.


    Yes… Yes, Betelgeuse.