The war for our way of life ended two hours before Col MacHarper's relief column arrived. There was no defiant last stand, no heroic dual between leaders, no dogged squad holding against impossible odds only to be saved by the cavalry at the darkest hour. No, the war ended with three RSN soldiers crossing the blasted killing fields littered with the dead and dying, hoisting a white flag in one hand and a satellite phone in the other. It seemed a markedly queer thing for me to walk amongst the field of dead men and to not have them whispering to each other. The myth of immortality failed to reach this place though I sorely wished for such a comforting lie. I met my opposites out there upon that festering scar on my homeland, expecting they'd come offering our surrender. Little did I know, it was too late for that.

The High Mayor of Brunswick was on the other end of that phone call, delivering the news and my new orders. Due to the destruction of our headquarters and its long-range radios, we were the last to learn that the war was over. Brunswick had capitulated to a conditional surrender while we were selling our lives for its freedom. The news struck me hard. The leader of the RSN trio (I think he was a lieutenant though I couldn't make heads or tails of the looping scrawl on his insignia) clapped me on the shoulder.

"You woodmens fight good. Proud duty. Now is no more fighting." He said, smiling a gap-toothed grin. "You is little brother to great nation!"

He clapped my shoulder again and returned to his lines. I stayed were I stood. Disbelieving. Stunned that it was over and somehow I was still alive to see the coming days. We had survived because our leaders had sold us out. If they were going to surrender before the war was decided then why not sooner?! Why not before so many men died believing they were saving their beloved homeland?! A homeland that'd betrayed us, selling our community's soul so those corrupt politicians could remain in office. We'd all known of a soldier's duty but what of the state's duty to us? I couldn't rationalized it. Couldn't conceive of the bigger picture. Didn't we deserve better than this?

I must have been standing upon that killing waste for some time because a ruin of a man had clawed his way to me. He was tugging at my pantleg, beckoning me lower because his voice would not reach my ears at my full height. I squatted low, cradling him as a father would his dying son and to my horror I saw that this man was Sargent Blot.

"…D-Did we win?" He croaked from parched lips stained with dry gore.

Words failed me. What could I say to this man? That his loss, that the haunting death circling him this very instant, had been pointless. That our lives had been spent in bad faith, swindled on the false pretense that our deaths would have meaning. How could I tell him the truth? How could I lie to him on his deathbed in the offals of friend and foe?

"…Could use a drink." Blot rasped.

I wasted no time fumbling for my flask but he stopped me.

"No. Water."

"I'm afraid I don't have any water on me." I answered, the words slipping from me of their own accord.

"Damn… Have a drink for me when…"

"I will." I replied, but it was too late. He was already dead. Strange how the dying could cling to life right up until they couldn't. It was purpose that kept them going beyond their limits and once that purpose failed… It was a haunting thing but then, I suspected I'd be a very haunted man in the coming months. I had survived when so many who deserved to had not and that knowledge was like an anchor around my throat.

A chill shadow fell upon me as I lowered Blot's remains to the ground. A mercenary loomed, still armored in their hulking ironclad plate. The gore-smeared and battle-marred red devil of a war machine seemed completely at home amidst the grisly aftermath of combat. Those lifeless lenses glaring down on me were harsh things, devoid of humanity and that seemed fitting. Humanity had no place in war. Those robotic eyes reminded me of my own all-too-human weaknesses.

"The relief column arrived." The mercenary stated. "They're aiding with the wounded now and requesting your direction as ranking officer of the front."

"…We lost," I uttered and the immense weight of those two words threatened to crush me. "The High Mayor's orders are to… to form ranks and formally surrender our arms to the invaders. Brunswick capitulated while we were selling our lives for its freedom."

"Damn, that blows for you guys." The merc said dispassionately, as if the heart of my state being sold out from under me was some trivial thing.

"That blows?" I sneered in the instant before fury seized me. "This may be nothing but another job you dogs of war, you profit-hungry mongrels, you damned MERCENARY SCUM!!! This is our home! Our way of life! This was our duty and we staked our honor, our very lives on protecting what we held sacred. We thought we were making the ultimate sacrifice for what we believed in and for our trust we were betrayed."

The merc shrugged their hulking steel shoulders. "What's done is done. Go home. Try not to dwell on it."

"How? You may be able to take you money and walk away, but I can't. Go home? How am I supposed to face my wife having done what I did!? How could I go back to teaching after this!? How can I look my students in the eyes knowing their fathers died under my command? How will I face grieving widows and heartbroken mothers just to tell them 'your boy died prolonging the war for five bloody minutes until we surrendered anyway'? You can just wash your hands of this. You damned Mercs will get your pay, but the rest of us? My men? What do they have to show for this defeat but the wounds they suffered and the memories of brothers lost? These scars that will never heal!? It was pointless… all of it. Training, fighting, dying; all of that and for what? The only thing we accomplished was bloodying these bastards' nose a little. Maybe the next city they invade will have a few more days while the RSN occupy Brunswick and consolidate. Maybe… But what of it!? That next city isn't our city, our home! We weren't fighting for the next state down the line! We put it all on the line for Brunswick and those fucking bastards in office hung us out to dry! What was the fucking point, Merc? I can't go home, because that home nothing but a mirage. How the fuck can I return to polite company when they put this knife in my back? When they betrayed my men!"

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The merc shifted from one tree-trunk leg to the other, lifeless crystalline eyes surveying the carnage surrounding us. Would that I too had a shell of steel between me and this horror. War was a grisly thing and having seen its desolation it made the sudden peace seem undeniably fragile. Would that I could wrap my home in a suit of armor and never again know the savagery beyond its protection. But those were the misbegotten dreams of a boy and I was a man.

"War is just another business." The merc answered. "We all buy in for something—Duty, Honor or just cold hard cash—and in the end, they sell us into the fucking meat grinder. Us on the sharp end? We aren't the ones cranking the wheel. All we can do is hope to come out the other side intact."

"Here lies an honorable corpse, betrayed by those he died for." I uttered, looking down at the still remains of Sargent Blot. "Where's the fucking glory in that? It's not exactly stirring stuff."

"The sharp end never is." The merc said with a rueful chuckle, like a man smiling on the executioner's block. "'Leading from the rear.' 'Minimizing risk to essential elements.' They've always got a fancy way of keeping themselves well away from the sharp end of this business. But as soon as the ruling elite face the consequences of their actions, the fucking instant they feel threatened, they weasel their way out. They burn bridges, sell souls and tear down everything they can if it means clinging to their influence for a few more seconds. They offer decent folks like you lot up on a silver fucking platter to save their own skin; thats when grunts like you suffer the most."

It sickened me that I was nodding along with the merc's words. A week ago I wouldn't have humored them for a second, but now… Now the world seemed a far darker place because I heard the truth in those words. It was a dreadfully heavy thing, the truth that is. I felt it crushing me already. It was a burden that would only grow heavier in sharing. The truth, I decided, was a cursed thing and it was my cross to bear alone.

"What do I tell the men?" I asked in a manic whisper. "We have orders to surrender. I can't- If they knew that this was all for nothing… that they must forever carry the scars of a pointless war-"

"No!" The merc interrupted with sudden fervor. "You sell them all the usual garbage with your back straight and that pity locked up where only you can find it. You tell your men they made a difference, because if you don't no one else will. You thank them for their service, you venerate their losses. You have to make them believe that this had a damned good reason when you know it damned well didn't. You tell their families 'they died valiantly' even when these men died sobbing in a ditch filled with blood and shit, scared and alone."

"You want me to lie-" I started but the merc hadn't finished.

"What I want doesn't matter! This is about those men who just went through hell. You're going to sell these people hope if don't want half of them to kill themselves within the year. That's what you're going to sell if you don't want orphaned children and manic widows acting mad out of despair. They need to believe that maybe all this wasn't for nothing. That maybe, just maybe their buddies, their sons and fathers, YOUR MEN didn't die for no good reason at all. That's the job, Captain Adams."

My legs threatened to fail me. My stomach was revealed as a leaden traitor too and I fought to keep from letting my disgust manifest as a font of bile. This was wrong! I wanted no part in this charlatan fetishization of war. Why should good men subject themselves to such horrors on behalf of those too cowardly to kill their foes themselves, too weak to risk their own lives, too dishonorable to own the consequences of their actions? These men had volunteered for this, willingly put all that they were in mortal peril because they believed their home was worth the price, and in kind their lives had been spent on nothing. That was how highly the lives of true patriots were valued in this day and age.

"You know, maybe if people stopped 'selling' war as this glorious crucible that crapped out heroes and always ending with the righteous conquering the foul, maybe there wouldn't be so many noble young men crippled and dead far too soon!" I roared. A few faces on the line turned towards us and a twinge of despair struck me. I silently prayed they hadn't heard my words. I prayed that those men didn't learn the truth. That they would never learn the truth. "They're good men, they don't deserve this…"

"Just so, Captain Adams." The red devil of a Cerc agreed. "Maybe you could spare the honorable, the duty-bound and the just from this battlefield, but then what? Let's say you get the truth out there and your little nation or whatever has another 200 years of peace. You get the whole planet on board and never again shall an undeserving man step foot on the battlefield. No noble Hanover fanatics. No dogged men of Brunswick. Just the sickos, the thugs, the murderers and the tyrants; the fuckers who want to be on this battlefield butchering one another instead of safe at home with their families living upstanding lives as good citizens of your utopia. If all your 'good men' do nothing, those ideals you're so quick to flaunt wouldn't mean jack shit when the barbarians come howling. Your precious city would still surrender or worse and you'd be at the mercy of monsters who don't know the meaning of the word."

"Evil triumphs when good men do nothing, eh?" I mumbled the ancient words. They tasted of the bitterest medicine on my lips.

The mercenary shrugged once more. "It's better than nothing, Captain. I wish you luck in the battles ahead."

"Some part of me doubts I'll live to see another battle like this…" I said, hoping there was some hint of prophecy in my words.

"Life's a battle, Captain Adams. What's important is to remember what you're fighting for. Duty, Honor-"

"Or cold hard cash…" I said, understanding the mercenary's meaning a good deal more than I cared to admit. I found myself wondering if this mercenary had once been a soldier much like myself. A soldier betrayed by their duty and honor. But cash in hand? It wasn't so insubstantial as ideals. As much as it irked me to admit, the mercenaries weren't so far beneath us as I'd once thought. We each had our principles.

The great warrior-philosopher gave another steel shrug. "Nobody's perfect."