by Rick Partlow
There was a flash, and a wave of heat and I stumbled and rolled, sure I’d taken a hit. But it was the battlesuit that was falling, its left leg twisted and buckling, the metal at its hip charred and shredded. I watched, mouth hanging open, as Kel stepped out through the cargo dock door, the muzzle of his plasma gun glowing red. I could tell it was Kel even with the face hood on, because Cowboy was right behind him, looming over him by centimeters.
“Is it down?” I yelled at them. “Is the reactor down?”
Cowboy pulled off his hood, the thin smile on his face looking grim but satisfied.
“It’s down,” he said, “and so are the defense lasers.”
“We need you on the other side of the facility,” I told him urgently. “There are two more High Guard back there and…”
“It’s taken care of,” Kel interrupted me, striding down the ramp with the cocky air of someone who never had a doubt they’d succeed.
“What do you mean it’s…?” Then I trailed off and listened. The firing from the other side of the building had died to nothing.
I spun around and saw Sophia and one of the remaining plasma gunners walking up from the fence-line, weapons held at their sides, looks of stunned disbelief on their faces as they stared around at the carnage. And at the two figures walking up to us around the corner from the back of the facility, barely visible in their camouflage combat suits, heavy weapons held easily in their hands. They were unmistakably with Kel and Cowboy’s group, the Glory Boys, two more of the ones we’d met so long ago on that desolate moon.
They pulled off their hoods as they approached, one of them a short, stocky, almost troll-like blond who’d obviously grown up on a high-gravity world, the other one taller and thinner, with brown hair a bit longer and styled fashionably, and looks that would have been at home on the resculpted face of a movie star.
“Took care of that little High Guard problem you had,” the handsome one cracked.
“I was wondering when you two would get here,” Cowboy said in a casual drawl.
“After all the real fighting’s done, of course,” Kel said, stepping up and offering a hand to the brown haired one. The other man laughed and shook it.
“Well,” the blond, brawny one said with a shrug, “I figured we did plenty of fighting last time we were here.” He jerked a thumb upward. “The Fleet’s engaging the pickets right now. The Marines are on their way down.”
“No,” Sophia spoke up, coming to my side and putting a hand on my shoulder. Four sets of eyes turned her way, surprised at the interruption.
“The Marines,” she declared firmly, “have been here the whole time.”
Chapter Twenty
I stepped down the ramp and blinked at the almost obscene brightness of 82 Eridani, feeling the sweat raising on my face already from the ever-present humidity and the afternoon glare beating down on the fusion-form pavement of the spaceport.
“Fucking Inferno,” I muttered, making room for the others coming out of the shuttle, cycling down from the military’s orbital station.
Most of them hauled heavy shoulder bags after them, faces uniform in their discomfort. My hands were empty. I’d taken nothing down to Demeter with me except my gear, and I’d left with not even that. My helmet had been trashed, my armor’s camouflage ripped and burned and ruined, and even my skinsuit had too many holes in it to salvage. The class-A dress uniform I was wearing had been fabricated for me on the Marine troop transport that had brought me back here, along with the row of new ribbons I’d been awarded posthumously.
The Marine Colonel who’d been in command of the landing force at Demeter had promised he was going to put me in for a Silver Star, but I wasn’t holding my breath for that one, and didn’t honestly care. At the time, I’d been unable to concentrate on anything except Sophia.
We’d watched from a hilltop outside town as the Marine landers descend on Amity, screened by a squadron of delta-winged assault shuttles. None of the Tahni aerospacecraft had launched; Renn-Tann had proven to be good to his bargain. I hadn’t been close enough to see the brief but violent battle between our battlesuits and what was left of their High Guard detachment, but I’d been told it was one-sided.
Chang had found us there a couple hours after the landing. I’d half thought he’d been killed in the battle for the fusion reactor, but I should have known that cockroach could live through anything. I had been sitting with Sophia, just holding her and watching the city in silence, and the DSI agent had suddenly been there behind us, as if he’d been standing there the whole time.
“They want you in town,” he’d told me.
“Of course they do,” I’d responded with a sigh. I’d looked up in curiosity. “What happened to your friends, the Glory Boys?”
“I’m sure I don’t know who you mean.” His smile had been uncomfortably snake-like. He’d headed back towards town and I hadn’t seen him again.
After that, it had been straight into a shuttle up to orbit for me, with maybe five minutes left for us to say our goodbyes. I wish I could claim that I’d said something profound and poetic, but I’d actually murmured the same promises and assurances as anyone who’d ever had to leave someone they loved. And Sophia had pretended to believe that I could keep those promises, that I wouldn’t wind up lying dead on some unimportant colony, or converted to atoms by a missile strike that I never saw coming while my ship burned for orbit.
I could still feel the warmth of her body and the taste of her lips from that last, lingering kiss before I’d boarded the lander that took me back to the Marine transport waiting in orbit. Then had come the medical exams and the endless questions and the bureaucratic nightmare of trying to prove I was who I said I was and convincing the system that I wasn’t dead. That still wasn’t over, but I’d been told to go ahead and report to my company commander before I began the long and arduous process of trying to get issued new gear, new quarters, new everything.
I caught a bus from the spaceport down into Tartarus, picking out a few new buildings since I’d last seen the place. A few more were still going up, yellow-toned construction ‘bots pouring buildfoam from temporary platforms, and I saw truckload after truckload of cargo and troops heading to the port to ship out. The war hadn’t been standing still while I was gone.
Demeter, I’d found out, hadn’t even been the first colony the military had taken back from the Tahni. That honor had gone to a remote agro-world called Canaan that I had never heard of before, run by some obscure religious sect. But once the first domino toppled, the rest were falling in a row. From the news I’d audited on the flight back, the war had hit a tipping point, even allowing for government propaganda. That might mean another year or two of fighting, but for the first time since I joined up, I was confident we could win. All I had to do was make sure I lived long enough to see it.
The bus let me off at Marine Headquarters, which was just as hectic and busy as the rest of the base. There were at least a half dozen different companies of battlesuits either coming back from training or heading out to it, and the pounding of their feet on the pavement was a constant background drumbeat, sending clouds of dust raising up like a haze. I had to dodge squads and platoons of them every twenty or thirty meters, constantly chased off the pavement and into the wet and muddy grass. By the time I reached Recon Country, my dress boots were soaked and I could hear water squishing inside them.
We can travel faster than light, I thought sourly, mess with people’s genes, grow back limbs, but we can’t issue waterproofed fucking dress boots?
I passed by the sign, which hadn’t changed, and into the horseshoe opening between the parabola of the Recon buildings, my eyes going automatically to the flags. I stopped in mid-stride and looked at them, really looked at them. I thought about Johnny and Sgt. Gomez and Captain Kapoor, and all the guys who’d died in the space of a half-second on Demeter, about Braun and his Janie and Ortiz and Annalise. I thought about the woman I’d executed and the kids I’d helped starve by steal
ing their food from the Tahni, about the civilians I’d seen killed in reprisal for my actions.
None of us had done what we’d done for any of those flags, but they were the avatars of the crystalized beliefs that put people into positions where they had to be willing to sacrifice, to kill, to die, and to make the choices worse than dying. I don’t know that I’d ever realized that more than I did now.
“You lost, Sergeant?”
I looked down from the flags and did a double-take at the Marine coming down the side-walk in front of me. The short-cut brown hair, the freckles, the rounded chin were all familiar even if the rank on her field utilities wasn’t. I snapped to attention and offered my best parade-ground salute.
“Captain Yassa,” I said, not even trying to fight back the smile that forced its way across my face. “Sgt. Munroe reports.”
“Holy shit!” She blurted, eyes widening as she recognized me. She didn’t even attempt to return the salute, just wrapped me in a hug that shocked me; she’d never struck me as a hugger. Then she held me out at arm’s length, looking me up and down like I was an apparition. “Munroe? How the hell are you still alive?” She shook her head in disbelief. “Where the hell have you been?”
“Demeter, ma’am,” I said, and my smile thinned. “It’s a long story…you might want to sit down for this.”
***
“To Captain Kapoor,” Brandy Yassa said, raising her glass of vodka.
“Captain Kapoor,” I responded with a nod, touching my own shot of tequila to the edge of her glass, then I belted it down, feeling a pleasant burning sensation in my throat.
Captain Yassa’s idea of “sitting down” had been the Marine Officers’ Club. I felt about as comfortable here as a mouse at a cat convention, but as her guest, I was technically okay, even if I was getting the stink-eye from a lot of officers with shaved heads and ‘face jacks. We’d settled in an isolated corner of the place, and I’d taken a moment to appreciate how nice it looked, appointed with the best in faux wood and faux leather, and I began to wonder if the NCO Club was half as swanky.
Then I’d told Yassa the story, from beginning to end. Halfway through it, she’d ordered the drinks. We were each on our third shot.
“Absent friends,” I amended, raising my glass again.
She murmured the same, eyes clouding as she took another sip.
“So, they’re really all gone,” she said, examining the bottom of her glass carefully. “They…you were all officially MIA. They wouldn’t tell us where, even, just that it was need-to-know. For the first few months, I held out hope you’d all come back with some outlandish story.”
“I know Johnny died in the ambush,” I said quietly, taking a last sip of the dregs of my drink. “And I know whatever survivors there were died when that Intelligence stealth ship got shot down trying to exfil. I don’t know which group the Cap was with.” I shrugged. “I don’t guess it matters unless he has any relatives they want to send the remains to.”
“He had those videos running in that frame on his desk, but he never talked about them.” She looked up, regarding me for a moment with an amused glance. “So, you led an insurgency on Demeter for a whole year, Munroe. That’s pretty fucking impressive.”
“We’d have all gotten our asses killed eventually,” I told her, tossing my glass down hard enough for it to make a loud thump on the table, “if the DSI and Fleet Intelligence assets hadn’t shown up. I didn’t do anything any of our people couldn’t have done.” I snorted bitterly. “Hell, they’d have been a lot better off if it had been Captain Kapoor that survived.”
“He was the best,” she agreed, “but he was also three times as old as you and had been in the Marines his entire adult life, while you were a twenty-one-year-old Lance Corporal with a grand total of eighteen months’ experience. I’d say you did pretty damn good.”
“I got a lot of people killed,” I said morosely, staring at the table. I felt a sharp sting on the side of my head and looked up, blinking. She’d hit me, and she was scowling at me angrily.
“You don’t think those people would have died anyway?” She demanded. “You think if you hadn’t come along, the Tahni would have forgot that the militia worked alongside the Marines and Fleet Intelligence and wouldn’t have punished them? Stop flagellating yourself, Sergeant. That’s a fucking order.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said meekly, rubbing the side of my head. “It’s just…” I trailed off. “It’s just that, a long time ago, I was hell-bent on going through the Academy and being an officer, being where you are. Now that I’ve done it, I don’t know that I ever want to have that much responsibility again.”
“That’s natural,” she assured me. “Look, Munroe, you need to get your shit together fast, if it’s going to be gotten. We received orders and we’re shipping out in a week.” She put her hand on my forearm and squeezed…hard. She was a strong woman. “I want you as a squad leader. There’s an opening in Third Platoon.”
“A week…” I murmured. “Jesus wept, ma’am, can I even get new gear issued that fast?”
“Leave that to me,” she said, waving a hand dismissively. “Gunny Prochaska is tight with Battalion Supply. You have two jobs right now, Munroe: get to know your squad, and get your head right. I’m going to schedule you an appointment with the Brigade Psychological Counselor tomorrow ASAP and get an evaluation. If he says you’re good to go, and you say you’re good to go, then you’re with us.”
“And what if he says I’m not good?” I wondered. “What if I’m fucked in the head?”
“You’re not,” Yassa told me. “If you were, you would have cracked up while you were on Demeter. You’re just feeling the same thing every leader feels when the decisions you make get your people killed.” She hissed out a breath, eyes focusing on something far away. “I have, unfortunately, been there myself in the last year. You’re deathly afraid that it’s going to happen again. But the longer you avoid facing it, the more likely you’ll let the fear take control of you. You won’t be able to order anyone into harm’s way.”
She cocked her head and eyed me sidelong. “Every Marine has to be ready to lead. You know that. Do you still want to be a Marine, Munroe?”
“The war isn’t over,” I answered without really answering, not meeting her eyes. “I want to finish it out.” I nodded slowly. “All right, ma’am, I’ll see the shrink.”
There was not much he could tell me about myself worse than I’d already thought.
***
Dr. Antoine Marks was almost exactly how I pictured a psychological counselor. He was a skinny, ratty little man with dark, beady eyes, and he looked lost in his poorly-fitted Fleet utilities, as if he’d just been issued whatever was on the shelf.
“Welcome, Sgt. Munroe,” he said, waving me into his office. “Please have a seat.”
I looked back at the reception clerk, an unpleasant and unwelcoming Lance Corporal, and wondered if I’d been that annoying when I’d been a Lance. Then Dr. Marks shut the door behind me and ushered me to a chair.
The office was very homey and comfortable, with a pair of cushy, earth-tone chairs and a nice selection of plants potted here and there, and a soothing holographic image of a mountain lake on the wall. It was all a ruse, I knew. There were likely all sorts of detectors and sensors and analyzers built into the room, likely feeding their data into an AI somewhere on another floor of the medical facility and interpreting it all via a readout in a lens implant in Marks’ eye. But we both made believe that we were fooled by the illusion because that’s what you do.
“Have you been able to get settled in, Sergeant?” Marks asked me, taking a seat in the chair across from me, a small coffee table between us.
“Not really,” I admitted. “I have a room, for the moment, and someone fab’ed me a set of uniforms.” I waved at my field utilities demonstratively. “But I haven’t had my skinsuit or armor fitted, I haven’t been issued a weapon, and I can barely remember the names of all my squad-members.”
<
br /> “Have you been able to contact your family?” His expression didn’t shift, but I could sense a transition from friendly small-talk to the actual analysis.
I tried not to miss a beat. Gramps and I had prepared the backstory for this, and I’d had almost two years to get it right.
“I don’t get on that well with my mother,” I told him. “We haven’t talked since before I enlisted. And my biological father hasn’t been in the picture since I was a toddler.”
It was all true as well as being part of my cover story, which made it much easier to say and not get caught by voice stress analyzers for lying.
“You don’t think your mother would like to know you’re alive anyway?” He asked me, cocking an eyebrow significantly. “After all, she’s your flesh and blood, even if you’ve had disagreements.”
“My mother is a criminal,” I told him, letting the bitterness I honestly felt leak through. “I’d rather not talk about it.”
“Very well,” he conceded, glancing downward in the way I’d seen people do when they consulted an implant lens that was feeding them data. “Let’s talk about your experiences on Demeter, then. Tell me, do you feel any guilt for being the sole survivor of your platoon?”
“Not anymore. I think I did at first,” I admitted. “But eventually, the guilt for the things I did with the Resistance made that seem petty by comparison.”
“That seems a bit self-indulgent, Sgt. Munroe,” he chided me. “After all, it’s a war, and everyone fighting it has to do unpleasant things. Surely you knew that before you signed up.”
I stared at him with disdain I actually felt rather than feigned.