by Jay Allan
She reached out and put her hand on his cheek, gently lifting his face until he was looking at her again. “You listen to me, Jarrod, and you listen good.” Her voice was kind and sympathetic, but strong and forceful too. “Weston was bricks and steel. Nothing more. We can build it again; we can build it better than it was.”
He started to turn away again, his expression turning sour. She put her other hand on his face and pulled it back to her. “Cut the shit, Jarrod. Your soldiers would follow you into hell if you led them there, and if you think our people would trade their freedom to save some buildings, then I need to slap some sense back into you.” She stared at him, holding his face in her hands. “Jarrod, those people in the camps aren’t Earthers…they’re Columbians, by God. Do you think sleeping in tents is going to break their spirit?”
He gave her a forced smile but didn’t say anything. He knew she was trying to help him, but he had trouble seeing beyond the blood on his hands and the crushing burden that was his alone. He’d made the enemy pay dearly, but he still didn’t see a path to ultimate victory. Once his forces were finally defeated, would things just be worse for the people? Would the enemy exact revenge for their losses? He imagined the Columbian civilians paying the price for the casualties his actions had inflicted on the invaders.
“Listen to me, Jarrod. You’re my oldest friend, and I would do anything for you. But I am also the president of Columbia.” Her voice became firmer, more authoritative. “I tell you now that, seeing what you have done with the power I gave you, I would not hesitate to do it again. I am proud of you and, as a Columbian, I will follow you wherever you lead. If we do not prevail then we will at least keep our honor. I would welcome death if it comes defending all that we value…and I would prefer it a thousand times to a craven life as a slave.” Her voice was loud and defiant now, all traces of friendliness and familiarity gone. “And so would the rest of our people.”
He stared back at her silently, deeply affected by her words, but still not entirely convinced. She leaned in and kissed him softly on the lips, holding it for just a second. “Now get back to work, General Tyler. All of Columbia is with you.”
She stood up and turned around, slipping out of the tent without another word. He sat still, watching her slide through the tent flap and out of sight. He smiled as he thought of what she had said. She was part of his earliest memories. He’d know her his entire life, his closest friend and his companion in any adventure. There had never been anything romantic between them in those many years, just unconditional friendship. He had been there for her when her short-lived marriage failed, and she’d lived at his bedside when a rare Columbian pathogen almost took him down. There wasn’t a major event in his life she wasn’t part of.
All those years, he thought…the adventures, the hours-long conversations, the joy of just being together. When, he wondered…when did I fall in love with her? He wanted to run out of the tent and tell her, but he knew it wasn’t the time. He didn’t have the strength now to deal with his emotions if she didn’t feel the same way. And if she did, what could he give her now except more misery. He knew very well the odds his forces were up against…and if his army was going to die in the blood-soaked fields of the war zone, there was no way in hell Jarrod Tyler was going to survive to mourn it. No, he was not going to give her more grief. If they both made it through the fighting, if they lived to see peace again…there would be time enough then to tell her.
He took a deep breath, and slammed his fist down on the table. No more despondence, he thought, no more self-doubt. Only one thing mattered now. Victory. He was fighting for duty, for honor…for his home. But mostly, he was fighting for Lucia. And he wouldn’t fail, no matter what it took, what it cost him. He couldn’t disappoint her, and he wouldn’t leave her defenseless against a conquering enemy. The thought of her, alone and afraid…beaten, raped, murdered by the victorious invaders…it was more than he could stand to imagine. He felt the rage inside, the savage energy coursing through him.
He stared back at the tactical map, his eyes poring over every terrain feature. He imagined every line of advance the enemy might take, every scrap of ground where his people could set a trap. There had to be a way…something…and he would find it. He would find a way, somehow, to win this war. He would destroy every invader who dared to sully the ground of his beloved homeworld.
Chapter 11
Sub-Arctic Tundra
2,200 Kilometers North of Arcadia City
Unassigned Territories
Arcadia – Wolf 359 III
Kara Sanders sat on a large boulder deep in thought. She was on the edge of the column, staring off across the semi-frozen plain that stretched out of sight in all directions. They’d marched 25 kilometers since she had roused the army at dawn, and she was determined to make another 25 before dark. But right now she was taking a few minutes to herself while her soldiers rested.
Ed Calvin had come over to make sure she was ok…and Captain Mandrake too. She’d told them both the same thing. She was fine…she just wanted a few minutes alone. They’d respected her wishes, but she knew they were both worried about her. She’d become quiet and withdrawn over the last couple months. She obsessed over the army and its operations, seeing personally to her soldiers’ every need, but otherwise she kept to herself. The Kara who sat around the heater talking far into the night was gone, replaced by the grim creature she’d become.
She spent most of her time thinking about how to keep her disintegrating army together. The march across the planet’s polar region had been nothing short of a nightmare. She lost people every day to the brutal cold, a constant toll that sapped the army’s morale. The whole thing was a horror. They rose early each morning, breaking camp and continuing their unending march. They left those who died where they fell. The ground was frozen solid, making burial almost impossible. And they couldn’t spare fuel to burn the bodies. The dead lay frozen in the snow, marking the path the army had followed.
But she wasn’t thinking about the war this time, at least not directly. Her mind drifted back to Concordia, to her son, Will Jr. She’d left him behind when she fled with the army, in the care of one of her oldest friends. She knew she had to join the fight to save Arcadia, no matter how hopeless it was. But she wasn’t going to expose her child to that danger. Young Will had lost his father to the battlefield, and before this was over he might lose his mother too. But he would be safe…she had made sure of that. She and Gwen had been close since childhood, almost like sisters. If Kara failed to come back from war, Will would have a loving home and a chance to grow up. Whether he did that in freedom or under the rule of an oppressive regime depended largely on how the fight for Arcadia progressed. Things looked bleak now, but Kara held on to a shred of hope. As long as her soldiers were in the field, freedom wasn’t dead.
The army had adopted Kara as its leader and, to a man, they followed her orders as if they were commandments from heaven. She was all that remained of Will Thompson, and he had been the father of the Arcadian forces. He’d raised them and trained them and led them against the federal armies that had come to crush the rebellion. He died leading them…he’d died before the victory was won, before Arcadia became free. He endured all the suffering the revolution could heap on him, but he never had the joy of seeing the triumph, of watching free Arcadians elect their own leaders. He lived on in his soldiers’ hearts, though…and in their devotion to Kara.
But Kara Sanders was more than Will Thompson’s lover and the mother of his son. She was a force in her own right, and the survivors of the Ice March, as it had come to be called, began to see her differently than they had. Pain and suffering – and the loss of hundreds of their number to the brutal conditions she forced on them – had dulled the unconditional affection they felt. But in its place, respect grew, almost awe. Wherever the army had gone, she had been there in the forefront, enduring everything her soldiers had. She marched through thigh-deep snow at their head and huddled with them aroun
d the portable heaters through the frigid nights. She shared their meager rations and walked among them while they rested, making sure everyone was fed and the sick and wounded got what care was available. She was becoming a legend in her own right, cold, hard, invincible…the symbol of Arcadia’s strength and spirit.
She was looking down at her ‘pad. She only had one picture of little Will, and she knew she should delete that one. If she was captured, she didn’t want to lead the enemy to the boy. But she couldn’t bring herself to cut that last small connection to her son. She knew her chance of ever seeing him again was small.
The tundra was considerably warmer than the polar hell the army had just crossed, but it was still damned cold. She knew the temperatures would continue to rise as the army marched south…and the hard, frozen ground would turn into a muddy quagmire. That would be another challenge, one nearly as difficult.
She put her hands on the rock and slid herself off. It was time to get the troops back on the move. They had to keep going. She knew they were being followed, and she was determined to stay ahead of the pursuit. She had a plan, one she hadn’t shared with anyone yet. She knew all her army could achieve was to distract and disorder as many of the enemy as possible…and hope General Holm and the Marines could exploit her diversion. And she knew that distraction had to be a big one to do any good. The army wasn’t just marching aimlessly as she’d allowed them all to think. They were heading to Arcadia City…and when they got there they were going to launch a surprise attack and retake the capital.
It was a gamble of epic proportions. She had no intel, no idea how many enemy troops garrisoned the city. But she was determined to make a difference in the fight for her home world. She knew the Marines were facing most of the enemy’s strength…and much of the rest was pursuing her force. Maybe…just maybe, they’d left the capital weakly protected.
Holm and Teller’s people were all veterans, but they were massively outnumbered. They’d put up a hell of a fight, but in the end their situation was hopeless. Unless Kara’s people could stir things up.
Her army wasn’t strong enough to make a conventional difference, at least not in a straight up fight. But if she was right, if the enemy had left Arcadia weakly garrisoned, maybe they could accomplish something. A surprise attack might just succeed…and create enough disruption to give the Marines a chance to hurt the enemy.
She started walking back to the column. My God, she thought, glancing at her soldiers slowly lining up for the march…they look ragged. Men and women can only give so much, she thought, even patriots. “Not much longer,” she whispered to herself. “Soon it will be over, my soldiers. One way or another.”
“Keep up the fire!” Elias Holm walked all along the trenchline, watching his Marines gunning down the enemy charge. They’d repulsed a dozen attacks in the last two weeks, killing thousands of the enemy. But even successful defenses had a cost, and slowly, surely his force was melting away. The enemy could lose 10 men for every one of his people they killed and still be ahead on the exchange.
Holm had been the Commandant of the Corps since the rebellions, and for years before he’d been the CO of the massive operations that closed the Third Frontier War. Now he was on the front line, commanding a force that would normally rate no more than a brigadier…or even a colonel. But he felt exhilarated to be so close to the action again.
He was scared, certainly. It was widely believed in the Corps that he felt no fear, that he never had. His cult of cold-blooded fearlessness was second, perhaps, to Erik Cain’s, but that was only because Cain was widely believed to be a little crazy too. No one would say that about Elias Holm. He was as rational an individual as could exist in such insane circumstances.
Holm found it amusing, and he wondered what his Marines would think if they could know how scared he was in battle. Still, it was a useful fiction. Indeed, he wondered if that wasn’t why the rank and file created such legends around their leaders. Did it help them find their own courage, to march boldly into situations that would make a sane man turn and flee? Whatever the true motivation, Holm saw no reason to strip his Marines of their mythologies and stories. Every man had his own way to bolster his courage.
“Pour it in to them, Marines.” Holm kept walking down the line. He was leaning forward, keeping his head down below the berm his people were defending. He couldn’t think of anything worse for morale now than the CO getting his head blown off…and Holm preferred to hang on to it if he could.
“They’re moving to the flank, General.” It was Sam Thomas. The old Marine and his pack of retirees had returned to form, and they were savaging the enemy forces on their section of front. Thirty years of farming, fishing, sitting on the porch…it didn’t seem that it did anything to take the Marine out of the Marines. They were hardcore veterans, and it showed.
Holm looked at his tactical display. He saw the move immediately. The enemy had been assaulting his position frontally, expecting to overwhelm his outnumbered forces. But his people showed the attackers just what Marines could do. Finally, the enemy was moving around the flank. Holm sighed. It was what they should have done weeks ago…and it was going to be a lot harder to deal with.
He flipped the com to Teller’s channel. “James, I need you to pull your people out of the line and move to the right flank.” He was staring at the display as he spoke. “Fast.”
“Yes, General.”
Holm flipped back to Thomas’ channel. “Sam, I’m sending Teller’s people to the flank. I need you to thin out your lines and cover his frontage.
“That’s going to leave us pretty stretched out, sir.” Holm was uncomfortable every time Thomas called him ‘sir.’ He had tried to get his second in command to address him informally, but the old Marine simply wouldn’t do it. The last time the two had seen action together, Holm was a junior captain, and Thomas was a full colonel, a hero of the Corps on the cusp of promotion to general rank. That was on Persis, at the end of the Second Frontier War. Thomas abruptly and unexpectedly retired soon after, ending his celebrated career much earlier than anyone expected. Holm knew why the veteran colonel had called it quits, but that was a story for another time.
“I know, but we don’t have a choice.” Holm was trying to sound positive, but it was fake, and Thomas heard right through it. They both knew the enemy could keep extending the length of the front line. Eventually, the Marines would be too stretched out to mount a credible defense. The enemy would slice through the weakened lines at will…and that would be the end of it. “Just do your best, Sam.”
“There it is. Arcadia.” Kara didn’t add the ‘city’ like she often did for the benefit of offworlders. Her people were all Arcadians, and they knew when someone meant the capital city instead of the planet itself. “To the south the Marines are fighting to destroy the invader.” She really had no idea where the Marines were…or even if they were still in the field. But she needed her people to believe right now.
“Now is the time. We are here to take back Arcadia! The enemy is away, facing the Marines, and the capital sits naked, barely defended.” Another baseless guess. She really had no idea how many enemy soldiers were in the city, but she doubted it was ‘barely defended.’ She was gambling that most of the invaders’ strength was to the south, massed against Holm and his army. It was a reasonable guess, but a guess nevertheless. But no one else needed to know that. “It is there, waiting for us to take it back, to liberate its people…and to show the enemy that Arcadians will never yield!”
The cheers began along the front of the formation, but it quickly worked its way back. In a few seconds, thousands of Arcadians…farmers, mechanics, engineers…were shouting her name. “Kara…Kara…Kara…” They surged forward, breaking as if there was an invisible barrier around her, until they formed a vast circle with her at its center. “Kara…Kara…Kara...”
She stood silently before them, her arms raised high above her head. She let them chant and scream for a few minutes then she lowered her arms
. “To your posts, my brave Arcadians. We attack immediately…and we shall not stop until Arcadia is ours again, and every enemy soldier who soils her streets and houses is dead!” She threw her arms up again. “Prepare to attack!”
The noise was deafening. They kept shouting, even as their officers pushed and pulled them into attack formation. She moved to the front of the army, her fingers clasped around the worn grips of her assault rifle. Captain Mandrake led his 50 Marines to the front of the formation, his fully-armored men and women shaking out in a long skirmish line. The Marines were the professionals, veterans of the First Imperium war, and men and women who had seen some of the most desperate battles mankind ever fought. But they, too, were moved by Kara’s words, and they stepped forward grimly, silently…the sharp tip of Arcadia’s spear.
Kara knew the defenders in Arcadia could see her army. They knew the attack was coming. There was only one question. Were there enough of them to defeat her? She would have an answer soon, very soon.
“Arcadians and Marines…attack!”
Holm stood behind his wavering line of Marines. The enemy had breached the defenses in 3 places. Holm had scraped up the last of his forces to plug the holes. When the next attack broke through, his reserve would consist of one man…him.
His people had been holding the line for weeks, but for the last 3 days, the enemy had been throwing themselves at his troops incessantly. He didn’t know what had changed - perhaps a general over there had lost his patience – but the urgency level had ramped up considerably.