by Terry Mixon
Talbot turned his attention to where the men were carrying him. There was a long couch set up on a dais ahead of them. On it, a man lounged.
A horribly disfigured man.
As Talbot was brought closer, he could see that the man’s face was terribly scarred, and he was missing his right eye. His salt-and-pepper hair and beard were crisscrossed with gray streaks that probably indicated scarring underneath.
The man lay on his side with his left arm resting across his midsection. His right arm was missing. There were no legs at the end of the couch, either. It looked as if the man were a triple amputee, and even the single limb that he had left was twisted, and the hand only had two fingers and a thumb.
The man gestured for the people carrying Talbot to set him down nearby. There were pillows scattered about, and the soldiers used them to prop Talbot up so that he could see the man on the couch.
Without speaking, the man gestured, and the soldiers retreated toward the doors. He waited until they’d exited the room completely before he spoke.
“When they told me that a group with people claiming to have Marine Raiders had arrived, I found that difficult to believe,” the man said slowly, his voice sounding dry and unused.
Talbot gave the man a lopsided grin. “When I heard that you were a Marine Raider and a god, I found that hard to believe.”
The corners of the man’s mouth quirked upward slightly. “That unwarranted title is something of a cosmic joke since I’m incapable of doing much of anything for myself. I’m no god, but I am a Marine Raider. Can those people in powered armor prove they are?”
“Yep.” Talbot reached out and grabbed one of the metal poles that were part of the stretcher that they’d carried him in on. He clenched his fist. With a loud groan, it bent and snapped off. He dropped it to the floor with a metallic clang.
For several seconds, there was nothing but silence in the room. Then the man blinked and shook his head. “That is not what I expected to see.”
Talbot started to respond, but his implants pinged with an incoming communication request. Shocked, he accepted.
The man’s expression became almost slack-jawed as he stared at Talbot. “Dear God, you have implants. Could it really be true?”
Of course I do, Talbot sent back through the implant connection. I’m a Marine Raider.
“I’ve got the full package,” Talbot said aloud, terminating the implant connection. “Augmented muscles with graphene coating on the bones and reinforced joints, augmentation in my eyes, ears, nose, artificial muscles, and a full pharmacology unit. Like I said, I’m a Marine Raider. So, who are you?”
The man’s smile became wry. “An anomaly. Before I answer that question, I want to hear you say that you don’t serve the AIs.”
Talbot shook his head. “We don’t. In fact, we came here to get something to fight them with. Something that can kill the master AI.”
The other man’s eyes narrowed. “You’re talking about Operation Imperium.”
“I don’t know what Operation Imperium is,” Talbot said, shrugging one shoulder. “Our people were settled on a planet far from the center of the Empire. During the fighting, the rebels used EMP weapons, and we lost our technology, but we managed to keep them from actually putting people on the planet itself.
“We lost all knowledge of what had gone on here at Terra over the next five hundred years. We’ve been learning bits and pieces once we started exploring again. For the moment, the AIs don’t know that we exist, though I suspect at this point they’re starting to get a clue. What I do know is that the master AI is at Twilight River, and we’ve come for something in the vaults that can shut it down.”
The man nodded. “Like I said, Operation Imperium. You’re looking for the override.”
Talbot blinked in shock. “You’ve heard of it?”
“Just like I know that Emperor Marcus sent Crown Prince Lucian to Avalon. Rather, Emperor Lucien, since he made him co-emperor before he led the AI’s forces away from Terra. Avalon is the planet you’re speaking about, right?”
Not sure how to interpret this turn of events, Talbot nodded wordlessly.
“Then I think we both have parts of the puzzle,” the man said. “I wasn’t joking when I said that I was an anomaly. Emperor Marcus ordered strike teams of Marine Raiders and regular marines to stay on Terra and fight a guerrilla war once invasion became imminent. This is going to be very difficult for you to believe, but I was one of those Marine Raiders.”
Talbot felt his eyes narrow. “That’s bull. Nobody lives that long.”
The man’s mouth quirked into a sardonic smile. “I’ve often wished that were true. I’m just too stubborn to commit suicide. My pharmacology unit has been out of pain medication for centuries now. At times, the agony is indescribable.
“Marine Raider nanites were brand new—less than twenty years—when I became a Raider. Before then, they had the same ones issued to the Fleet. No one had done any truly long-term studies on them at that point. Though, to be fair, I suppose long term is a tricky subject when talking about life spans in the Empire.
“It turns out that they do provide something at least approximating immortality. I don’t think I’ve physically aged more than a decade in the last five centuries. Maybe less. I’m so chewed up that it’s hard to tell.”
Talbot struggled to understand what the man had said. That couldn’t be true. The idea of someone living that long was ludicrous.
Nodding at his expression, the man continued. “I’m going to have some words with the ruling council. These people are all descendants of our original support teams. We made sure that we had plenty of technology hidden with them, and I’ve used it to keep them educated once the hammer came down about a hundred years ago.
“We’ve only been inside the Imperial Palace for about sixty years. It seemed like a good place to move to. Small and easy to defend, and very well shielded. Now, I think I really want to hear the story of how you became a Marine Raider.”
Talbot chuckled darkly. “That’s a very long story, and I’m not the right one to tell it. You’re going to want to speak to my wife. She’s a descendent of Lucian, and her father is the reigning emperor of what we call the New Terran Empire.”
The man on the couch blinked, his eyes wide as he sat up as much as he could. “You brought the heir to the throne on a mission like this? Are you mad?”
That made Talbot laugh. “You’d need to meet her to understand. We don’t tell her to do anything. She does what she wants, and we just try to keep up.
“I’m not going to tell her story for her, but she received Marine Raider augmentation before any of us. She certainly didn’t come by her implants through any normal process, and quite frankly, she’s wildly unsuited to be a Marine Raider just based on her size, but she’s got the spirit. Oh, God, does she have the spirit.”
The man considered him again, this time for almost a minute, without speaking. Then he reached over with his remaining hand and picked up what looked like a handheld radio.
“Bring more of them to me. Particularly the leadership of their group. Some of them can remain in the corridor with their weapons. Again, they are not to be attacked or harmed.”
Without allowing time for anyone to respond, the man turned the radio off.
“You asked who I am. My name is Jake Peters, and I was in tactical command of the guerrilla forces in this area when Terra first came under attack. My rank, though I haven’t needed to use it for a damned long time, was major. As I stated, I was a Marine Raider.
“I don’t suppose that you have a doctor with you. I could really use a shot of pain medication.”
28
Kelsey stared at the man on the couch, stunned. She was completely and utterly gobsmacked. She’d sat cross-legged on the floor, listening as he’d told his story. Hearing what had happened from someone who’d actually been there was surreal.
Reginald Bell, the single man they’d ever found who’d survived all that tim
e, had done so only with the help of a stasis unit, a technology that wasn’t rated for anything like the three centuries that it had kept him alive.
The former Fleet officer had been an ensign—a probationary tactical officer on the battlecruiser Courageous—during the rebellion. A man in his early twenties when he’d gotten his Fleet implants.
The ancient man lived almost two hundred and eighty years outside the stasis unit, which was an incredible achievement. It was undoubtedly also an outlier on the curve but showed what was at least possible with Fleet-grade medical nanites.
Jake Peters had lived through nearly twice that number of years, and though a physical wreck, he obviously still had many years yet to live.
Was he immortal? She sincerely doubted it, but there was an old quote she’d come across in her reading by an author named Arthur C. Clarke: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
This certainly sounded like magic to her.
Jake Peters and his comrades had struggled over the years, but one by one, they’d been killed. To the best of his knowledge, none of the others had been alive twenty-five years after Terra fell.
He’d been gravely injured early in the fight, and though he’d been able to get civilian-grade artificial limbs through people that were associated with the resistance, he wasn’t combat capable anymore. He’d had to retire to directing the fight from the shadows.
At some point over the intervening five hundred years, he’d somehow transitioned from being their leader to their god. He couldn’t quite pin down when it had happened, but nothing he said seemed to change their minds.
Kelsey could see how that was possible. When someone didn’t age, when they stayed the same as you grew old and died, generation after generation, at some point, you were going to decide that they were more than human.
Since the AIs had smashed Terra a hundred years ago, his civilian limbs had failed one by one until he’d been left crippled again. The lack of advanced medicine and the lack of people trained in its use left him trapped once again inside a scarred and pained body.
Jared, who’d been sitting next to her, nodded when the man finished. “That’s a hard story. I’m sorry for all the pain and suffering that you’ve been through. It’s downright amazing that you’re still alive.
“We’ve met one other person who was born before the Fall. He was an ensign in Fleet and ended up in a stasis chamber as an old man. He wasn’t awake for all that time, but at least he’d seen the Empire at its height before the rebellion.”
“I suppose I’m not surprised,” the scarred man said. “When you’ve got as many people as the Empire used to have, a few were going to figure out how to extend their lives that long. What terrifies me is that no one knew how effective the Marine Raider nanites were going to be.
“They were just advertised as a step up from what Fleet used. Well, maybe two steps. Like I said, they’d been in use in the Marine Raider community for a couple of decades when the rebellion started. There hadn’t been time to do a truly long-term study, and people were only beginning to suspect how effective they might be.
“Even so, I’d have to say their guesses were wildly wrong. No one even dreamed that they’d grant someone a lifetime that lasted half a millennium. At this point, I’m terrified that other Raiders were captured during the rebellion, their implants overridden, and they’ve been alive this entire time. I can’t imagine anything that horrible.”
Considering that the AIs had disabled the medical nanites in the shock troops they’d forcibly upgraded, Kelsey suspected that the AIs had gotten their electronic hands on some and knew just how long-lived they might be. Based on that, it was likely that none of those people were still alive now.
The man took a deep breath and looked over at Kelsey. “I understand that you came into your augmentation through a nonstandard path. Your husband wouldn’t give me any of the details. He said it was your story, and if you don’t mind, I think I’d like to hear it.”
Before she could say anything, Jared rose to his feet, making her look at him askance. He nodded to the man and turned to her.
“Before she starts, I should make a complete introduction. Major Peters, allow me to present my sister, Crown Princess Kelsey Bandar, heir to the Imperial Throne of the New Terran Empire. She’s also Colonel Bandar of the Marine Raiders. Since she was the first and the most skilled of those upgraded, she gets to be in charge of them.”
He turned to Julia. “This is her younger twin, Julia. She’s also been upgraded, though her training is far from complete.”
“Highnesses,” the man said, inclining his head. “Forgive me for saying so, but it’s a far step from having the equipment to being a Marine Raider.”
“I did have training, Major,” Kelsey said, rising to her feet. “It was a bizarre form of training, and one that I don’t really expect you to believe offhand, but I’ll lay it out for you anyway. Did my husband tell you which ship I came here in?”
Peters shook his head. “That never came up.”
Kelsey nodded. “Until very recently, I was in command of the Marine Raider strike ship Persephone. We recovered her after the Fall. Her crew was dead, of course, but her commanding officer had taken the unusual step of leaving a message for those that came after him.
“You knew him, and I know that for a fact. His name was Ned Quincy, and even though I didn’t know your last name, I knew you the moment I laid eyes on you because I’ve seen a memory of the two of you together.
“You weren’t wearing rank tabs, so I didn’t know your rank either. You were on some planet together, unloading and transferring gear between pinnaces. Ned called you Jake.”
The man on the couch blinked. And then he blinked again before sitting up a little straighter. “How the hell could that even be possible?”
Kelsey tapped the side of her head. “He made a bunch of memory recordings of him doing all kinds of things. I’m not sure if he ever told anyone about it, but he had one of his tech people put some type of library program into his implants to coordinate the use of all those memory engrams of him doing various things.
“Ned said that he started doing it at the beginning of the rebellion to document everything that he and his people went through, so it’s possible he told you about it.”
“He did,” Jake said slowly. “You talk about him as if he were still alive.”
“Ned Quincy’s body died, but his personality survived. When I pulled all those memory engrams into my own implants, a more advanced computer system worked on the library program he’d used to enhance its capabilities, and that somehow created a small-scale artificial intelligence that had his memories and personality.
“No one really understands how that’s possible, and we have no way of replicating it without potentially making two Ned Quincys, which would be wrong. He’s no longer inside my implants, but he lived there for over a year. He taught me everything I know about the Marine Raiders. Everything that he’d recorded, anyway.
“If he didn’t know something, he studied it and made me learn it, too. All of that was integrated into my training, and he put me through what he called hell week as he tested me on everything. I doubt I got more than an hour of sleep a day, but I passed.
“So while I don’t have the experience someone like you has, I am a Marine Raider. My husband has done the same thing, as has the person in command of Persephone, Major Angela Ellis. One by one, we’re bringing the Marine Raider organization back to life.
“My sister isn’t there yet, and I won’t go into how she got her implants, but she’s making progress.”
If Kelsey had had her druthers, she’d have left Julia out of this, but people had seen her doppelgänger in Raider armor. She still wore her armor, minus her helmet. Better safe than sorry.
Carl, Chloe, and Julia were out in the hall, still fully armored up and armed. If something went wrong, they’d come busting in, weapons blazing.
Jake’s expression r
emained blank. “That’s an interesting story. I don’t suppose you have any way of proving it.”
She smiled slightly. “You know that Ned was a master of the Art, don’t you?”
“He was one of the best,” the man readily admitted. “He almost took the Raider competition one year. I’ve never personally met anyone better at that kind of thing.”
“Then maybe I can demonstrate a little of what he taught me. You should be able to see his influence in my style. Will your guards object if I retrieve my swords?”
The white-uniformed guards—some kind of nod to either a priesthood, the old Imperial Guard, or perhaps both—had insisted that everyone in the room be disarmed before they entered the presence of their god.
Jake made a gesture, and an unhappy man in white went outside to retrieve her swords.
Once he’d returned with them, Kelsey strapped them on and stepped into a clear area a bit distant from the couch. They’d turned the lighting up so that everyone could clearly see one another, and there was no need to make the guards think she was about to slice and dice their god.
She went through a number of the fighting katas that she’d learned, using all of her Marine Raider augmentation and skill. Then she put some of her own work into it and proceeded to show how she could be a ferocious attacker or defender.
Once she’d finished and sheathed the swords, Jake nodded slowly. “It’s hard to argue with the evidence of my own eye. I’ll grant you that only someone very skilled in the Art and comfortable with their implants and augmentation could do that. I can also see something that reminds me of Ned.
“That said, I still find what you’re telling me hard to believe. I knew Ned and commanded another strike ship back then. We were contemporaries. I can’t imagine how you could even know that, but I’m willing to at least consider the possibility. Where is he now?”