Exodus: The Orion War

by Kali Altsoba

  He looks down as she gets dressed in silence, into a crisp uniform of pastel-beige she takes from a paper package. It’s one of two resting neatly on the dresser top. Already he regrets what he’s done, but he can’t think what to say to change it back. She’s too hurt, and too angry.

  She’s turning ice-sheet cold and lava-tube hot all at once. Changing into his second-in-command as she covers herself with a fresh lieutenant’s uniform. Only now she’s vastly more unreachable than before inside her crisp wheat-colored cloth. A void is opening between them.

  “I’ll bunk with the NCOs tonight, sir.”

  He hears only a soft click as the magnetic door lock opens and a gentler clack as it closes, like slow-motion charging of a maser. He’s alone. Again.

  ***

  A week later and Madjenik is growing restless with too much food and drink and easy sex, with sleep and cheers and free drinks in pubs. And more freely offered sex and food and drink. It’s still waiting reassignment, told to just enjoy its deserved R&R.

  “You’re all heroes. You deserve it. Another round for the heroes of the woods!”

  From its quarters Madjenik can hear the daily combat at the berm line. At night it can see the walking wounded and litters bringing back the recoverable dead. The shroud-covered litters make the trip only at night, to hide the terrible sights of defeat and the dreadful numbers of lost fighters from the civilian population of Toruń.

  Madjenik feels too crowded and closed in, and useless. Anything but heroic. Every hour spent idling in Toruń grows heavier to bear. They want to be on the perimeter when the bloody dawn arrives, so they don’t miss the rumored day that’s surely coming soon. A terrible dawn when the whole garrison marches out to fight its last, losing battle outside failing city shields.

  A clutch of unsupervised NCOs, all quite roundly as drunk as the whole company, propose to march Madjenik back down the Grand Boulevard to the Berm Gate and volunteer for outside combat duty. To demand it. To not take no for an answer. In a rowdy session without the two officers that sees lots of shouting and pushing and threats, then three knock-down fist fights, everyone agrees to make the march to the Gate to join the last battle.

  “That’ll be a good day to die for Genève.”

  “No, it’ll be the very best day to die!”

  “And not just for Toruń or Genève, for the whole United Planets.”

  “Krevo, Krevo, Krevo!”

  “Fuck dying. We must take revenge for all our lost comrades on the trek to Toruń!”

  “And payback for the Great Burning of Pilsudski Wood and the Old Oak Forest.”

  “And for all the lost innocents on the Old Forest Roads!”

  No one has forgotten that. Or ever will forget. But most will go just to stick with their mates, to the very end. If pain and death is coming to find them all anyway, they want to die in good company. To fight with Madjenik in its last hour. To die together, if that’s what must be.

  “We’ll leave the berm laureled or casketed!”

  It’s a veteran of the sweetgrass fight, drunkenly shouting nonsense to a roar of approval from its survivors, and from all who joined in time for battles in Pilsudski and at The Crater.

  Zofia has to step in front of the drunken NCOs to stop them from leading all fighters to the berm without purpose or permission. They grumble loudly, bordering on insubordination. So she agrees to ask their captain to seek official orders to redeploy Madjenik to the battle line.

  Jan agrees to ask General Constance about it. He’s been called in to meet her anyway. He’s all dressed up when Zofia goes to see him. He’s wearing brand new weaves from the other paper package. The one she left on the small dresser as she robed in silence, then walked away.

  Ulysses

  General Amiya Constance sits behind a thick oak desk as Jan enters her chambers. She doesn’t raise her head as he’s shown in. She lets him stand before her. Waiting ... and waiting. He thinks her office smells like ancient oaks, which it does, and smoky incense. That one’s her.

  Now a combat veteran, Jan instinctively makes a quick scan of the environment to get a read on its dangers and possibilities. And on a superior he’s meeting for the first time. It reveals a yellow-and-gold bicorn general’s hat cut in the old-fashioned chapeau-de-bras style unique to the KRA, resting and dusty on a walnut stand. There’s no ornamentation in the room to denote military status or political authority. Or to reveal the personality behind the desk.

  The large suite doubles as Garrison Command and Governor’s Office, with six side-offices for her staff, all with wide-open doors. From panoramic windows Jan can see the whole city. If he stepped over to the window he thinks he could look right down to Old Towne Hall.

  A dynamic graphene-sheet mounted on a side wall shows RIK units and positions around the eastern curve of the city, a thick crescent surrounding the outer berm. Inside the red circle is a smaller crescent in parallel, made of blue symbology. Several blue units and more red are in motion, feinting or reinforcing. In three places red and blue symbols touch and meld.

  ‘Localized combat. Probably RIK perimeter probes-in-force.’

  Jan’s eye is drawn to a spot just outside the Berm Gate where a small black circle indicates a new feature. Around and inside the circle more red units are moving, with numbers.

  ‘RIK infantry redeploying to The Crater, readying for the final assault on Toruń.’

  An orange countdown clock in a corner of the vid-screen says just over eight Universal Standard Days remain. Fewer than eighty Standard hours, each 100-minutes long, each minute counting down from 100 seconds. Hardly any time left at all.

  ‘Counting down to what? The berm assault and battle? We can’t know when the RIK will launch that, not so exactly. No! It’s counting down to departure of the Exodus ships!’

  The launch is timed by flight engineers to account for a slightly elliptical orbit of Genève’s outer gas giant, Wasp 2B, to best align with its L2 jump zone at optimal angle and distance. A second critical timing factor for Z-day is the nearing limit of the city’s shield defenses, under constant attack by artillery. Soon flocks of Jabos will fly from close-in bases.

  Through an open door of an antechamber attached to the main office Jan sees a second holomap, this one of all Toruń. It’s perched atop a broad redwood table. It shows the tactical situation, clearer than the cribbed view on the general’s wall map. Around it hover at least six young staff officers in uniforms as bright and crisp as the general’s and his own. Not weaves. They’re wearing light cloth, only with e-ribbons warmly glowing over their rank insignia.

  ‘Not the way a combat officer dresses.’ Jan can’t help thinking it, a little too proud of his gruff humility. ‘Wear rank in the open or the woods and you make a perfect sniper target.’

  Only then does he remember that he’s also dressed in oakish uniform cloth and wearing shiny silver captain’s bars on his breast and collar. Remembers that he’s also showered, clean-shaven and carefully groomed to prewar KRA standards. He hasn’t looked this good in months.

  He turns back to study the general’s face. Much to his surprise he thinks: ‘She must’ve been very pretty, if not quite beautiful, in the bloom of her youth.’

  He feels stupid. Its not how he appraises female officers, and certainly not how he judges superior ones. ‘What the hell is wrong with me? Settle down or you’ll blow your last mission for Madjenik.’

  He does settle down, and finds that the general is both handsome and impressive in her advancing maturity, with a slightly matronly figure that sits square and upright in her oak chair, neither hiding nor displaying her sex. Overall, she has a firm soldierly bearing that he admires.

  He notes her tight, drawn-back hair. Her look of strength inside a finely gilt uniform. Her impeccable, seamless general’s weaves nearly match the desk color.

  ‘I like it. She wears her general’s ensemble lightly, without pretense but real authority. I’d like to see her in that silly hat, though. Always thoug
ht our generals’ hats were a bit much.’

  He’s giddy. Still sobering up after a night of heavy, solitary drinking. This is not the way he intended to meet his general, the officer who got Madjenik into Toruń. But he hasn’t been fully sober in a week. Not since Zofia walked out and closed the door on him and them.

  He explores and maps her face with his eyes. Its contours are like the coastline of a new-found-land after months at sea, rugged with unknown dangers yet promising safe harbor.

  ‘Ahh good, she’s well-suited. It’s time for someone like her to make the hard decisions for Madjenik. I just want to know who’ll be in charge when the company fights at the berm.’

  General Constance’s visage brooks no nonsense and her tone no contradiction as she finally looks up and appears to see him for the first time.

  “Welcome to Toruń, captain. Congratulations on getting Madjenik through the forest and across The Crater into Toruń.”

  Jan mumbles formal acceptance and gratitude for the role played by Relief One, adding needlessly that he speaks “in behalf of all Madjenik.”

  “Well of course you do. You’re the company commander.”

  She looks at him hard, saying nothing further. Daring him to speak. To spill his mind. Analyzing him, as she has from the moment of first coms contact while he was still outside the protection of her city. He feels oddly nervous. He almost blurts something about her hat.

  She breaks the tension. To help him along or force the issue?

  “Yes, Captain Wysocki? Now that you’re here, tell me what is that you want?”

  Terse. Direct. Efficient. Intimidating.

  He asks the one question he came to have answered. Can his hodge-podge unit redeploy beyond the berm from whence it arrived a week ago? He expects the conversation to be simple.

  “Sir, when will Madjenik take a berm position? The company wants to fight, general.”

  “No captain. I can’t permit it. You and Madjenik are too important to waste in yet another doomed battle. We’ve had our fill of martyrs here, around Toruń and on Genève.”

  He misses entirely her point about being too important to waste, but finds his voice at last in behalf of his fighters.

  “Sir, if I may. And with all respect, I think Madjenik has earned the right to decide the time and place of its dying. Aren’t we all doomed, anyway?”

  Her wood-grain eyes follow his to the wall map, then down to lock on his blues again. It’s a bold and too direct assertion, wrapped in way too much pessimism for her mood or taste. It’s brashness and near insubordination is also outside any and all proper discipline in wartime.

  “You forget yourself and your place, captain. What soldier ever earns the right to tell his general when he’ll fight or how or where he’ll die?”

  “Apologies, general. I only meant...”

  “Furthermore,” she interrupts him baldly and forcefully, “where there’s death there’s hope, captain. At least to make an honorable end.”

  “Such an end is what all Madjenik aspires to, sir. All that it wants.”

  “Indeed. Well, you’re not alone in that. But we’ve had enough dead exemplars on Genève already, captain. I won’t add Jan Wysocki and your noble company to that long list. You’re far too good a combat officer and leader, and Madjenik is too important in other ways, to waste in a futile trench fight outside lost Toruń. I simply won’t permit it.”

  He doesn’t absorb the full implication of the comment, that Toruń is lost but all is not. He’s allowed little time to think and none to protest, or to point out that Constance plans to do just that herself, pick a place and time to die on her own terms. He’s seen broadcasts of her speech announcing to millions her intention to lead the garrison to the outer berm, there to make a last worthy stand before the Gate while the Exodus ships seek to fly the planet to the outer system LPs, and beyond. He also knows that she’s far more important than him.

  He’s no longer the man he was before the war, always uncertain, forever doubting his own convictions, his ability and courage. Well, at least sometimes he overcomes self-loathing these days. This moment in front of his general, this is one of those moments. It’s because he’s pleading for Madjenik and not for himself. So he opens his mouth intending to speak his mind.

  Constance stops him cold with that special look only seen on the faces of angry wives and superior officers. The look every husband and every soldier knows, the one that says he’s reached the outer limit of her formal patience and he damn well better weigh any next words very carefully. While he’s doing just that she steals the silence away from him.

  “You aspire to doom too easily, captain. In wayward words, at least. I choose to judge instead your leadership and actions. In those I see something more. Maybe even greatness. But not yet. For still those whom you fight you do not hate and those you guard you do not love.”

  ‘What does that mean? It’s vaguely familiar. Some old poet, I think.’

  All his self-doubt and loathing gathered since the MDL, and before, rushes back into him like an unstoppable return of the tide.

  “Excuse me, general?”

  “You heard me.”

  The room sways and spins like he’s on a tiny punt drifting away from shore in a rough sea, already too far out to safely swim back. He feels lost.

  ‘No, not lost. I feel … seasick! What the … ?’

  “Would you like a glass of water, captain? Orderly, some water for our recent hero.”

  ‘She doesn’t know me! Why does she say I don’t love my people or hate the enemy? It’s not true! As for greatness, what a foolish thing to say! About me? Phaah, nonsense!’

  “Madjenik wouldn’t be in Toruń without you, captain. They were beaten at the MDL, trapped in Pilsudski, fire-bombed in Old Oak, starved and hounded for three months on the trek here. You willed that company to survive. You got it past The Crater and through the Gate.”

  “That was your plan, general. You got us into Toruń. I just followed your orders. As did everyone in Madjenik. And we’re all grateful, sir. I mean, I speak for the company on that.”

  “Yes, it was my plan.”

  She doesn’t tell him that the day he arrived in the city she sent a detailed and secret dispatch to the War Government on Aral saying the exact opposite, praising his tactical skills and above all, his leadership in command.

  “But it was you who led them through fire and ash to fight at The Crater. Very few of my officers could have done that.”

  ‘She can’t believe those ridiculous Toruń street stories, child’s fables about me leading Madjenik to triumph after triumph as the “Ghost of the Wood.” It’s all rubbish!’

  It’s as if she reads his mind. “Your lieutenant and NCOs said a lot more than you did to my debriefers. But no, I don’t think you’re the unbeatable ‘Ghost of the Wood’ our people say you are. You’re right to think those are parables of false hopes that you can never live up to.”

  ‘How does she bloody know what I’m thinking? Is it my face? Am I that obvious to her? Zofia does it, too. Sees right through and into me. What is it about these women...?’

  “Don’t let your current adulation go to your head. The crowd is fickle and so far, you have been unusually lucky. Better men than you have failed and are dead in this war.”

  “Yes, sir. I agree wholeheartedly. I was lucky to get Madjenik here, and luckier still to meet up with your plan on the other side of the berm. When TCC called in, I was at wit’s end.”

  She doesn’t need his trite concurrence. She ignores his fawning riposte. She has already dismissed his flattery and self-deprecation once. He gains nothing with her from repetition.

  “Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. I’ll take luck from any quarter we Krevans can lay hands on it at this dire moment. And your bold legend can help us, captain.”

  “My legend? What legend? You can’t mean those ‘Ghost’ stories? What does...”

  “I’m not done!”

  She looks hi
m direct in the eye. He flinches and looks away, up to the map.

  ‘That was a general’s voice. I forgot the sound.’

  “Unlike myths about an imaginary past, legends have a basis in reality. In real acts and partial truths. Your legend is out there now, Jan Wysocki. In the streets of Toruń and across occupied Genève, coursing over mil-nebs on all other Krevan homeworlds and beyond. The legend of your bravery and trek to Toruń, and of your leadership in the fight at The Crater.”

  “I’m not a legend! I’ve done nothing special. Who knows anything about me? I’ve been wandering incommunicado in the woods for the last three months, not making legends!”

  “It’s true, nevertheless. Your story is part of a larger legend now, the story of the Lost Company and its Ghost leader, a tale of defiance in a desperate hour. It’s real and it’s growing. It’s very important here in Toruń and across Genève. And to the future of our people in Orion.”