After War

by Tim C. Taylor

  That will do for now, I told myself, and settled down for a very long journey.

  Looks like you weathered the storm, said Bahati after a while. She sounded awkward as if trying out new words.

  That’s the kind of philosophical drent that Sanaa says, I told her. Or Efia if the moralizing and philosophizing is going to involve pain.

  Bahati laughed. Guilty as charged. I’m filling in for Sanaa while she’s busy.

  Busy? She’s dead! What can she possibly be busy with? Is she doing her hair?

  She needs to apologize, explained Efia. Then she unexplained by adding: actually, she feels the need to apologize, which isn’t the same thing at all.

  I just had time to frown before my body drifted away from me and slumped against Nolog-Ndacu. From a great distance, I heard the Tallerman tell the others to let me sleep, but I knew sleep was not where I was headed. My first wife needed me.

  I smelled the toxic air of Aries-6 through the filter of my combat suit.

  Sanaa’s broken body lay at my feet, the light fading in her eyes.

  My memory had rolled forward beyond the point where I usually woke screaming. I shuddered to think what awaited me.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I never told you I was pregnant.”

  I remembered the shock and surprise I had felt.

  “I worried that you would be so obsessively protective that you would get us all killed,” she explained. “I think I made the right call, Ndeki, but I’m sorry for it all the same.”

  She was pregnant!

  The ACE armored combat and environment suit had medical diagnostics aplenty; I just hadn’t been looking for the right data. I told Conteh to interface with her damaged suit.

  The baby was still alive. I had a daughter. We had a daughter, but her mother was dying. I pleaded with Conteh. Surely there was something I could do. I couldn’t imagine a more horrific act than cutting open my dying wife to extract our child, but I would do it without a moment’s hesitation. And Conteh would know how.

  But Conteh said no. He told me to leave it be.

  Even if I could bring the baby out it would be into a toxic world of caustic, choking death. Maybe if we were in a clean medical facility there would be a chance. Maybe. But not here.

  I floundered for a solution like a landed fish. But there was nothing.

  It is not an easy thing for an Assault Marine to sit idle and wait for events to take their course. We’re just not built that way. But to wait beside my wife and child as they slowly died was enough to drive me insane.

  It took five minutes for the life to leave Sanaa. I removed the gauntlet of my right hand and with my uncovered fingers, I closed her eyes, said a clumsy prayer, and then removed the front segments of her armor so I could place my palm on her belly where I could feel the little life inside her as it ebbed. She was a fighter, my daughter. I never named her, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t proud as hell, and I knew Sanaa would be too. She fought for nearly an hour. As my daughter struggled, my right hand burned in the corrosive smog of Aries-6, but I barely noticed. That was the least of my hurt.

  After that my memory blurred, going dark and silent. It wasn’t that the remembering ceased but that my memory after the moment my daughter left me was of sheer nothingness.

  Bahati had been with me throughout my reminiscence, and eventually she reached inside my void and placed a comforting hand on my shoulder.

  I could feel the truck once more, its wheels pounding along the track, but I kept my eyes closed. The dried tears had welded them closed in any case.

  Is that it? I asked my ghosts. Is that what’s been bugging my mind? Can I shoot people now?

  I don’t know, Efia replied. You’ve taken an important first step, but your mind is still a minefield of places it is not safe to go.

  You need help, said Bahati. You always did.

  Sanaa’s essence joined us. I know she was just a voice inside my head that had its origin in a lump in my spine, but her tears were real.

  And you have had help, Sanaa told me in a cracking voice. Since Bahati died, we’ve all done our best to fulfil our oaths, to keep you safe and alive. Open your eyes now, my love, and see. Look around. You have help in the real world now. You have a new family. A place to belong.

  Does that mean you’re leaving me now? I asked my ghosts.

  Sanaa sent in imaginary electric shock up my ass. Imaginary or not. I yelped as I half-jumped out of my seat.

  You should be so lucky, she said.

  “You all right?” asked a concerned César.

  “Yeah, I just… jolted awake, that’s all.”

  I looked around and realized Sanaa was right. Shahdi, Nolog, the mysterious César, and even Chikune – I did belong with these people who were looking at me with concern in their eyes. Especially the one sitting opposite. Silky was studying me with a peculiar expression I didn’t recognize. She must have had a blast of the upheavals going on in my psyche. Well, I decided, it’s only fair if she is as confused about me as I am over her. Our story was just getting going. Silky the alien with the lumpy head and Ndeki Joshua McCall, the old warrior with a mind like a minefield. We were a riddle that I was in no hurry to solve. There was a more pressing problem to address.

  “Looks like we have a lot of time to kill,” I announced to my friends. “Did I ever tell you about the Second Battle of Khallini?”

  There were a few good-natured groans, but Nolog set me up as my straight man.

  “I was not present,” said the alien. “Therefore your account will be both entertaining and educational. Scandalous, even, since I understand you fought on the side of the Empire. Please proceed.”

  I gave the alien a wink and began to recount my story, to share it with my friends.

  FOLLOW NJ MCCALL IN REVENGE SQUAD

  REVENGE SQUAD Book1: HURT U BACK

  The first Revenge Squad novel, Hurt U Back, is available now, a short novel of how much trouble one former Marine can get up to on his first day (spoiler: it’s a lot). Hurt U Back is available now from Amazon.

  The first morning of my posting to Port Zahir didn’t start well. Revenge Squad Incorporated’s outpost was deserted, the police took me in for some applied brutality, and a religious cult tried to recruit me. Even so, Fate decided to take things easy on me for my first day, because it wasn’t until the afternoon that people start trying to kill me.

  My name is NJ McCall, and this is the story of how Revenge Squad’s least-qualified new recruit stumbled across merciless revolutionaries while being assaulted from every quarter by the craziness that is everyday life in Port Zahir. It’s about what happens when you meet a bona fide war hero, your alien wife develops an obsession with human body parts, and you sip coffee with a Catholic bishop who knows every mercenary in town.

  But most of all, it’s about how much fun you can have on a warm, sandy beach when you’re tied to a post below the high water line, and the tide’s coming in.

  REVENGE SQUAD Book2: SECOND STRIKE

  It was supposed to be just another job: trash the cargo of a shipping line that had been messing with a Revenge Squad client. Honestly, I hadn’t meant to blow the ship sky high. And when it transpired that the ship was owned by the most powerful man in Port Zahir, and that he blamed us for the damage he’d suffered, it was Revenge Squad’s turn to face revenge.

  My name is NJ McCall, and this is the story of how I helped to tear Port Zahir apart, and then tried to stitch it back together… with mixed results. It’s about dark obsessions, corruption in high places, killer droids with attitude, and a city coming apart along racial lines. Along the way, I sing for my life, develop an inappropriate attraction to several civil officials, am recruited by a Legion spy, and get close and personal to a perverted statue.

  But most of all, it’s about finding a new family amongst the most unexpected people I could imagine: aliens.

  BONUS NOVELETTE: DAMAGE UNLIMITED

  Set in the Naddox Archipelago, some 800 miles from
his Revenge Squad base at Port Zahir (and where the gun laws are considerably laxer!), a forestry client activates their revenge clause when an unknown assailant slaughters every living thing at a remote logging site. The forest around here is an extremely dangerous place to be, but so too is NJ McCall. Some battles, though, can’t be won by GX-Cannon and railguns alone…

  This story is a novelette (about an hour to read) and is set between ‘Hurt U Back’ and ‘Second Strike’, but works as an introductory self-contained story.

  At the time of writing, this novelette is available exclusively for signed up Legionaries. Receive the Legion Bulletin (featuring NJ’s column, Ndeki’s Notes), enroll in swag competitions, and download a free starter library, including Damage Unlimited. Enlist today.

  Join the Legion!

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  (Fall ‘17 exclusives: Sleeping Legion prequel novella: ‘The Demons of Kor-Lir’, Revenge Squad novelette: ‘Damage Unlimited’, Human Legion short story: ‘Hill 435’)

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  HumanLegion.com

  Table of Contents

  — CHAPTER 1 —

  — CHAPTER 2 —

  — CHAPTER 3 —

  — CHAPTER 4 —

  — CHAPTER 5 —

  — CHAPTER 6 —

  — CHAPTER 7 —

  — CHAPTER 8 —

  — CHAPTER 9 —

  — CHAPTER 10 —

  — CHAPTER 11 —

  — CHAPTER 12 —

  — CHAPTER 13 —

  — CHAPTER 14 —

  — CHAPTER 15 —

  — CHAPTER 16 —

  — CHAPTER 17 —

  — CHAPTER 18 —

  — CHAPTER 19 —

  — CHAPTER 20 —

  — CHAPTER 21 —

  — CHAPTER 22 —

  — CHAPTER 23 —

  — CHAPTER 24 —

  — CHAPTER 25 —

  — CHAPTER 26 —

  — CHAPTER 27 —

  — CHAPTER 28 —

  — CHAPTER 29 —

  — CHAPTER 30 —

  — CHAPTER 31 —

  — CHAPTER 32 —

  — CHAPTER 33 —

  — CHAPTER 34 —

  — CHAPTER 35 —

  — CHAPTER 36 —

  — CHAPTER 37 —

  — CHAPTER 38 —

  — CHAPTER 39 —

  — CHAPTER 40 —

  — CHAPTER 41 —

  — CHAPTER 42 —

  — CHAPTER 43 —

  — CHAPTER 44 —

  — CHAPTER 45 —

  — CHAPTER 46 —

  — CHAPTER 47 —

  — CHAPTER 48 —

  — CHAPTER 49 —

  — CHAPTER 50 —

  — CHAPTER 51 —

  — CHAPTER 52 —

  — CHAPTER 53 —

  — CHAPTER 54 —

  — CHAPTER 55 —

  — CHAPTER 56 —

  — CHAPTER 57 —

  — CHAPTER 58 —

  — CHAPTER 59 —

  — CHAPTER 60 —

  — CHAPTER 61 —

  — CHAPTER 62 —

  — CHAPTER 63 —

  — CHAPTER 64 —

  — CHAPTER 65 —

  — CHAPTER 66 —

  — CHAPTER 67 —

  — CHAPTER 68 —

  — CHAPTER 69 —

  — CHAPTER 70 —

  — CHAPTER 71 —

  FOLLOW NJ McCALL IN REVENGE SQUAD