by Jay Allan
His voice was caustic, his anger directed as much at the situation on Atlantia as at Elias personally. He had seen his home planet steadily embrace suffocating laws and regulations, moving ever farther away from the free and peace loving world his parents had chosen as their home. Still, though he knew there were many at fault, he felt a searing anger toward his twin. He expected better from his brother, and he believed in his heart, Elias’ beliefs betrayed their father. He could forgive his twin any offense—save being part of the budding totalitarian establishment he despised.
“Your laws,” he continued, “those you revere with such intensity, are made by men, brother, as often as not for evil and dishonest purposes. I am a grower of crops, and I give you money to buy the votes you need to gain your office. In return, you pass the laws I ask for, to make other growers less able to compete with me, to make my customers pay higher prices for my grain, to threaten my rivals with the power of the state if they resist. Then you lie, obfuscate your corruption and vilify those who challenge you. Where is there justice in that? Is that something men should support, fight for…die for? Indeed, what is it but the basest foulness—man at his dishonest best? Your laws masquerade as codified morality, but they are nothing more than power auctioned off to the highest bidder.”
Elias stood firm and returned his brother’s gaze, with no less intensity. “And you, brother? Are you so unspotted, so moral and true? Is there equity behind the might you employ for those who pay you? Do your causes acquire righteousness through the exchange of coin? Does your brutality procure the gleam of justice because those who retain you drown you in wealth? Indeed, do you not work for the same politicians you despise, those who gain control of a world’s resources to hire your trained killers to expand their power?”
He was rigid, his body tense with anger. “It is just and fair that your soldiers are trained and experienced—and have powered armor and advanced weapons—while, as often as not, they face half-trained planetary levies, sweeping them away as a scythe does wheat? That they are able to impose their will on behalf of their paymaster? This is what you call justice? To be a mercenary…a hired killer with no nation, no home?”
Elias’ voice was thick with disdain, and his hands shook as he gave Darius back his own venom in equal measure. “You criticize the laws I enforce, but do you believe in anything? It there no arbiter of human conduct you respect, save brutality and force? Is there no measure of right or wrong except whoever is able to pay your blood price? What are you but a cold-blooded killer, a hired thug, albeit a skilled and expensive one?”
Elias’ face was flushed red. “You speak of laws, as if none were just. But what becomes of the worlds you conquer when your soldiers leave? Is there looting and rapine and plunder in their wake, even if your Black Eagles do not invoke such horrors themselves? Do your paymasters impose their own laws on the conquered? Are the mandates impressed upon the victims of your aggression somehow less corrupt and foul than the laws you accuse me of supporting? What becomes of the precious freedom you worship so profoundly, in the wake of war and conquest? You are a fool, my brother. You have imposed slavery on more millions than the laws of Atlantia, even if, as you say, many of those are corrupt and misguided. And you leave the dead behind you wherever you go, the grisly trail of a man who knows of nothing but butchery.”
Darius stood stone still, anger pulsating throughout his body. If any man had spoken to him thusly, save his own brother, he would have killed him where he stood. But Darius Cain would not assault his brother, however much of a fool he was, whatever he said or did. He wanted to—he felt the urge to choke the life from the man standing opposite him, to silence his forked tongue forever. But Elias was his father’s son, and his mother’s. And that stayed his hand.
“Perhaps I am a butcher, brother, but I am an honest one. And it was not I who created the ways of the universe nor the failings of men. Events will be dictated in some manner, and I proudly chose the road I have taken. If it is at times brutal, it is at least never based on lies and deceit. When my people come, it is because of a dispute, one that could have been resolved by the politicians long before, had they the time and the will to turn aside from their thievery and constant aggregation of personal power. The Black Eagles do not serve would-be despots, nor conquerors seeking empire. We contract only with those who have legitimate disputes, and we resolve those with greater speed and less bloodshed than any other means.”
He stared right into Elias’ eyes. “Can you say the same, brother? Are your laws honest? They restrict speech, movement, trade, worship, relationships. They intrude into the peoples’ bank accounts and their bedrooms with equal aggressiveness. They control what people say, what they eat, how they raise their children. You defend them to people with simplistic examples, claiming that without law there would be anarchy and widespread violence. But does this justify the vast majority of what you enforce? Are Atlantia’s courts and jails full of mass murderers and violent criminals, monsters all men would see prosecuted? I think not. For your political masters use the law to serve their own ends, and they jail their rivals and enemies—and those who resist them, and nary a thought goes toward anything that resembles true justice.”
Elias stared back at Darius, not retreating a centimeter. “Tell yourself that brother, when your killers board their craft and depart a world, leaving behind despair and pestilence. Convince yourself you believe in freedom, when no one has brought servitude to more millions than you have. Say that your soldiers are not brigands and murderers, and forget that you serve no people, no world, no society, save your own overflowing coffers. You are a modern day alchemist, my brother, for you have learned to turn blood to gold. But in the end you have nothing but piles of wealth…and a human race that fears you and curses your name.”
“Stop!” a voice roared from the corridor. “Enough. Both of you.” There were footsteps echoing off the hard floor and, an instant later, a tall woman came in, her blond hair, streaked now with gray, flowing behind her. Roderick Vance had been walking beside her, but he paused at the entrance to the room, allowing her to deal with her sons alone.
Darius and Elias both fell silent, turning toward the hallway as their mother strode into the room. They wore neutral expressions, and they looked toward Sarah without saying a world.
“I heard enough of that exchange to feel a sorrow as deep as any I have experienced.” Her voice was sad, but it was energized with her own, not inconsiderable, anger. “To hear my sons speak like this to each other breaks my heart. When I first saw the two of you, newborn and so small and red, screaming so loudly, the both of you, as if you were already competing, I knew I would love you forever, and so I do. But I don’t like either of you much right now, and I am ashamed to my core of you both.”
They both looked as if they were going to respond, but Sarah flashed them each a nasty glare, and they remained silent.
“Your father would be ashamed of you both too. He would have been hurt deeply listening to what I just heard.” Tears welled up in her eyes when she mentioned Erik, but her voice remained steady and strong. “Erik Cain was a great man, and he deserves for his sons to live up to what he was. And neither of you have done that. You are both pale imitations.”
She turned toward Elias. “Your father grew up in squalor you can’t imagine, as did I. And that misery grew from generations of mindless obedience to authority, from people too weak to question the mandates heaped upon them year after year. From a population more concerned with its own petty indulgences than in the difficult task of regulating government. Atlantia is no longer the place Erik and I chose for our home, and I have left it behind, along with much sorrow and regret.”
She paused for an instant, taking a breath, but neither Darius nor Elias dared to speak. “Your father would be ashamed of the way you have become so unquestioning of the laws you enforce and the will you impose on people. Erik Cain was a Marine all his adult life. He worked for the Alliance government in that capacity,
but never once did he yield his free will and bow down unquestioningly before the bureaucrats who would have been his masters. It wasn’t an easy path he trod. Indeed, it came close to costing him his career, his freedom…even his life…more than once. But he was a steadfast man, and through all his years he did what he thought was right.”
She turned and stared at Darius next, and her eyes bored into him like lasers. “And you…your father would be ashamed of you as well. What lesson did you take from his life to justify spending yours as a paid mercenary? Whatever standards you think you apply in taking contracts, in the end, you kill people for money. Your father and I were Marines. We fought for good, to protect people, even when that required us to stand firm against our own government. Never in the history of the Corps could anyone buy a force of Marines…however legitimate their dispute, however large their purse. We fought for the colonies, to give them a chance to forge a better future than the fools on Earth who had preceded them. And we never justified aggression by blithely declaring it inevitable, as if that washed all the blood from our hands.”
She stood between them, staring at one then the other. They stayed where they were, but both of them averted her gaze slightly. “I have spoken long with Roderick, and I believe mankind faces another threat now, one we know little about save for the great danger it represents. You have gone down different paths, and used oversimplified morality to justify what you have done. You have convinced yourselves your father would have approved. Well, he would not…he would have looked at both of you with shame and regret.” She paused for a few seconds. Her words were brutal, and they cut deeply. “But there is always time to change your course. The two of you can work together, cooperate, help to face whatever danger is coming. You can stand against the darkness, fight for the good of the people, try to lead them by example, not by military force or suffocating laws.”
She sighed, and for the first time it was apparent how much pain she was feeling. “You are both my sons, and I will love you until the day I die. Will you set aside your differences and work together, fight together if need be? If you do, it will be a gift to me, and I will not just love my sons, I will be proud of them. And that is something I have not felt in many years.”
Darius slid his foot forward slightly, opening his mouth and closing it again. There was no one in Occupied Space who could impact him with such force, no one save the woman standing in the room facing him. Darius had run from the pain of his father’s death, and since then he’d been drawn ever more deeply into his new life. He’d neglected his mother, abandoned her when she faced her own pain of loss. Indeed, he’d made it worse, depriving her of a son as well as her husband. Only now did he begin to realize how much guilt he had carried—and buried under his pride and arrogance.
“Come in, Roderick,” he said softly. “Tell us what threat you have uncovered.” He glanced uncomfortably toward his brother. Elias hesitated for a few seconds, and then he nodded silently. Darius walked toward the table, taking a seat. Vance sat at one end of the table, and Sarah at the other. Finally, Elias slipped into the chair opposite Darius.
The Cain brothers looked toward Vance, but the Martian just sat quietly, waiting. A few seconds later the sound of footsteps came from the hallway. Darius turned to see Augustus Garret and Catherine Gilson walk into the room.
Garret was the most revered hero in Occupied Space, widely considered to be the greatest naval commander in history. He’d retired after the final downsizing of the fleet, but he’d come back to preside over the activation of the mothballed reserve and the second struggle against the First Imperium. After the terrible enemy was again defeated, he’d supervised the decommissioning of the remnants of the fleet, now vastly smaller after the horrific losses sustained in the war. When he had seen to the last of his duties, he retired again, handing the reins of the tiny active fleet to his subordinates.
“Sarah, it is such a pleasure to see you again. It has been too long.” Garret had attended the memorial service held for Erik Cain, but it had been thirteen years since he’d seen her. He had disappeared, faded from the public eye, returning to his family home of Terra Nova for a time. He put his arms around her, and gave her a long and warm hug before taking a seat next to her. “Darius, Elias.” Garret nodded, turning his head toward each of the Cain boys in turn.
“It is good to see you, Admiral.” Darius looked down the table and nodded. His eyes settled on Gilson. “And you as well, General.”
“Yes, Admiral Garret. It has been too long.” Elias glanced down the table with a motion almost identical to his brother’s. “It is a pleasant surprise to see you, General Gilson.”
“So, Minster Vance, you have gone to considerable trouble to assemble this counsel.” Darius’ tone was professional, polite. “It is my guess that many of us have come here with concerns, and I suggest we share these. Perhaps now you will begin, and tell us what caused you to call this meeting.”
Vance shifted in his chair. “Very well, Darius.” Vance took a deep breath and stared out across the table. “I want to thank you all again for coming. Some of you have been here before, when we faced the First Imperium and the Shadow Legions together. We successfully met those earlier threats, though not, as we all know, without cost.” He glanced at Elias and then Darius. “Others are here for the first time.”
He sat upright in his chair. “I must tell you that I have called you here as a private citizen and not on behalf of the Martian Confederation. I will not mislead you. What I have learned has come through unofficial channels, and I cannot guarantee the council will support any actions we discuss here.” He looked around the room, gauging reactions. “However, I am prepared to utilize my own personal resources…” He paused uncomfortably. “…and do whatever is necessary to ensure that if there truly is a grave new threat we are prepared to meet it.” Another pause. “It is my hope that when all of you hear what I am about to tell you—and share your own information with us—you will agree to join me in doing whatever must be done.”
Vance glanced at Garret. “Some of us have stood at this crossroads before, been compelled to choose the course of action that was right, even at great risk. Without men and women willing to take such steps, it is my fervent belief none of us would be here. Mankind would be gone, extinct, with nothing but slowly decaying ruins to mark that we’d ever been here.”
He stood silently for a few seconds, allowing his words to settle over his guests. “I do not know if this new threat is as dire as those which came before, but I fear it may be. And we will again need men and women to stand in the breach, to set aside personal concerns and face the darkness on behalf of the entire race.” He looked around the table at each of them. “The people in this room are cut from that cloth. Sarah, Cate, Augustus…you have been there before, faced other crises. Darius, Elias…your father was a great man, always the first to answer the call. He fought the fight for humanity for decades…and he gave his life to it.”
Vance took a deep breath. “As some of you know, the Confederation has operated a humanitarian relief program for a number of years, making drops of food, medicine, and tools to survivor settlements on Earth. It is through this operation that I first noticed something of concern, and I decided to investigate matters more closely. What I uncovered is horrifying. Someone has been running a slavery ring on Earth, rounding up survivors and shipping them off-world…for purposes still unknown.”
The room was silent. Whatever they’d expected to hear, that was certainly not it. Vance continued, “A short time ago, one of the settlements we had been monitoring sent out a distress signal. I sent one of my most trusted agents to investigate. He found the village burned, its people gone. He was able to track the raiders…and he discovered the terrible truth.”
Vance reached down and pressed a small button on the table. “My agent also made contact with three villagers who escaped from the raid.”
Everyone turned toward the entrance. There were footsteps coming from the hallway.
A tall man in his mid-fifties walked into the room. His brown hair was neatly trimmed, and he was wearing a suit of Martian design.
Vance waited until the new arrival was halfway to the table. “Allow me to introduce one of my guests from Earth. This is Axe.”
A wave of greetings and nods worked its way around the table. Axe stopped a few meters away and said, “It is a pleasure to meet all of you.”
“Please, Axe, take a seat.” Vance gestured to the chair next to him. “And then tell us about Jericho…and the events of the last several weeks.”
* * * * *
“Are you insane, brother?” There was a ragged edge to Darius’ voice, anger and disgust combined into one caustic tone. “If I had attacked Glaciem and wanted you to know, I’d have left a message far clearer than scraps of unidentified equipment. And if I didn’t want you to know, you wouldn’t. My people are not that sloppy.”
Elias Cain glared across the room. “Then who could it have been? Who else with such resources would attack Atlantia’s interests? Who, except a mercenary angry at his homeworld for branding him the criminal he is?”
“Elias, listen carefully, because I am only going to say this once.” Darius’ voice had changed. It was cold now, unemotional. To most people, it sounded more reasonable than the previous angry growl, but those who knew him well understood that the coldness of this tone was far more dangerous than the fiery anger of the prior one. “If I cared about Atlantia enough to be angry at what they did to me, I wouldn’t take it out on a few innocent miners. I would land directly on the planet and drag those lying, power-hungry politicians from their arrogant perches. I would wait until every communications network on the planet had their cameras in place, and then I would force them to their knees and execute them myself, one at a time. And then I would leave, for my grievances lie against Atlantia’s government and not its people, save for their negligence in allowing such men and women to lead them.”