Alice is a person, and she's killed a lot of people. But probably never one who allowed himself to be killed.
I wouldn't put money on that.
I mean, we authors do love to create the conflicted soldier who hates what they were but, on analysis was just somebody fighting a war, and never did anything questionable. War is hell, etc. Which is true, even if you do it "right." But doing it right is easier imagined than done.
Alice strikes me as the kind of person who would kill someone in these exact circumstances and call it square. The mission requires, so it will be done.
Of course, that's just her personality talking. Jeph only knows what kind of person she reall is.
I'm going to tell a story. Hopefully is will be short. There was an Attack helicopter pilot. A warrant officer, and the senior pilot on routine patrol in Vietnam, during the war. Nothing special.
Now, for context, understand that this man's last tour in Vietnam ended when he was shot in the back while flying an attack helicopter. While this even was in the future, compared to the story, it's relevant to understand the situation. Being in the air didn't make one safe from bullets, oddly enough.
As I said, this was nothing special, Just two gunships on patrol. As the senior officer, this man's job was to give direction. As a wingman, his job was to provide mutual support. Keep an eye out for threats his wing man might not be able to see, while his wing man (technically wing men, but roll with me) did the same for him.
Now, what happens next happens quickly, because war. While this man implies that he hold's himself responsible personally, he wasn't the only set of eyes in his aircraft. He was just the guy who saw it first.
A hut. An unremarkable hut. And his wing man was going to over fly it.
Shot in the back, while piloting. I said that was important. Because he had no idea why that hut was there. It could have been a hidy hole for a guy with a rifle, just waiting for a chopper to snipe. It could have been a mother and her son, Tiny Tim. He didn't know. He just knew his wing man was going into the danger zone around it, and it was too late to call a divert.
He, on the other hand, was almost lined up perfectly on it. I wasn't too late to eliminate "almost." So he did. Then he eliminated the hut with rocket fire.
That is war. Maybe he killed the enemy. Maybe he killed a hunter just trying to get dinner for the kids. Maybe he blew up a hut with nothing in it. He had a responsibility to the mission, and to the men in the aircraft. Doubly so as they were under his command. The calculus was simple. The call was the right one.
So you gotta wonder why he told me that story 20 years after the fact. No moral. No lesson offered. No justification.
Alice is the weapons system. If she doesn't have stories like that keeping her awake in the middle of the millennium, she wasn't really in a war. If she didn't "fire" at times it wasn't really clear she had to, she wasn't in a war. We have main battle tanks and jet fighters because they work. So weaponizing a woman implies they needed more than a super soldier. They needed something to get up close and personal with the enemy. And kill it with her bare hands.
After a while, the enemy stops being human.
After the war, it dawns on you how many humans you killed, or might have killed, or didn't kill and that's why you got to watch your buddy's head explode.
Maybe he did have a lesson in mind when he told me the story. After all, he did ask what I would have done. And I gave the only answer you can give. If I had been trained, I'd like to think I'd do the same, because I know it's the right call. Even if there were innocents inside. I couldn't know. I would have been trained, indoctrinated, to protect my people, and if protecting them means burning a bit of my soul, that's the job. But I wasn't trained. At the very least, I'd hesitate just trying to work out where my responsibilities lie. And if that hesitation cost the lives of men I was sworn to protect, well that's also a bit of my soul burned, isn't it?
How many huts has Alice burned? I bet there were a lot.
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