REMO

by Mays, Thomas A.

  Herrera's aim wavered the tiniest bit. "Colonel Salas, sir?"

  He said nothing. Lawrence growled out the answer, his voice nothing but pure wrath. "There is no jumpgate or wormhole -- there never was. The Croakers are constrained by the speed-of-light limit, just like we are. That's what their chieftain told me. The great galactic society we were told existed is nothing of the sort. It's just dozens, upon dozens of isolated, battling colonies . . . just like we are now."

  Her aim fell away. Her voice was soft when she found it again. "The intel was wrong?"

  Seeing her pull the plasrail down, Lawrence drove the Colonel into the forward wall of displays, cracking a screen with Salas' cheek. The pistol pointed up into the back of the wincing man's skull. The Major screamed in his ear, "Tell her! Tell her why we never could get messages from home! Tell her why you kept trying to get the Marines and the colonists together!"

  Salas groaned in pain, but he did start talking. "There never was any intel on a Croaker jumpgate. The whole thing -- the physics, the limitations, the warnings -- they were just something we made up so the mission would go forward. This was always a one-way trip. You were always going to stay here. And we couldn't let you receive any messages, because after the first month when you didn't return, the story was always going to fall apart. There would have been -- there was -- a public outcry for your return. We couldn't allow that."

  Craig leaned into him, speaking low into Salas' ear, though everyone could hear him. "The Barnum Drive wasn't about fooling time and space, it was about fooling all of us."

  The name "Ron" floated through Herrera's mind, but it seemed to find no purchase. Flashes of an Earth she never thought she would miss spun within her head. Her plasrail hung from its strap and she approached close, a touch of madness in her own eyes. "Why would you do this? You can't ever go home either."

  Salas glanced back at her, his one hope of survival now disarmed. He looked all around the room. None of the other officers or enlisted Marines reached for their weapons any more. They just looked at him. He closed his eyes.

  "We did it because the mission was necessary, but we never had the numbers to make it work. The mindset and skills of a soldier are very different from those of a colonist. It's rare to find them all together in any one individual, much less enough to mount an effective pacification. For this colonization to succeed, we needed Marines to go along, to do the dirty work so the colonists would be safe. And while many a Marine will make a suicidal charge if the situation's desperate enough, how many of you would have made this trip knowing that you'd be staying here forever?"

  No one said a thing.

  Salas licked his lips and continued. "After the truth came out back home, they were going to spin it as a noble sacrifice, implant the idea that leaving to fight for and help grow a colony was not so crazy a concept after all. Even if this assault never reached Belle'aube, our going was intended to jumpstart a whole wave of colonization assaults. This expedition won the war before the first battle was ever fought."

  Craig pushed him into the wall again, and stood back, still aiming his pistol. No one challenged him. Herrera moved to stand behind him, holding her plasrail again, but this time in the Major's defense should any of the others try to stop him.

  Lawrence's eyes narrowed. "Turn around, Colonel." Salas did so as blood poured from his cheek. The Major's voice was steady and cold. "You've taken everything from me. My wife has been dead for decades. My children are probably dead, too. Any legacy I ever had has passed away. I've lost my country, the Corps . . . everything. Do you have anything to say to me?"

  Salas stood straight. "I've done what's necessary, and as cruel as that was to you and to every other Marine, I stand by it. If you need to kill me, if my death is what it takes to give you peace, to allow you to move on from what you've lost to the business of surviving here . . . that's a sacrifice I've always been prepared to make."

  Stillness pervaded. Herrera and the others faced Salas, willing partners and witnesses to his punishment. Major Craig Lawrence looked down the barrel at the Marine colonel's face, and locked with a pair of eyes as cold and hard as his own.

  The pistol whined down. Craig lowered it and tossed it at Salas' feet. "Salas, this colony doesn't need your blood upon it, coloring the soil alongside the honorable Marines who died today. You'll go from here and never see another human face again. This command does not need you, and these people do not need you. You made the choice for all of us to give up Earth. Now we make the choice to cast you from this colony as well."

  Craig turned and walked out, Herrera in step right behind him. The others departed the room as well, leaving Salas alone, without a home, without a planet.

  Craig Lawrence walked out of the dropship and into the mist, no destination in mind. Gwen Herrera walked at first behind him, and then beside him, saying nothing, numb. They walked together through unfamiliar terrain, with not a thought spared for the battle so recently waged, for any Croakers that might be about, looking for revenge. They just walked, trying to leave behind what was long past and forever gone.

  After a time, the gloom lifted and dawn struck on their new world. It was still misty and muddy, but the chill it had borne through the long night of battle warmed a bit. Colors began to play across the sky, like a daytime aurora that reached all the way to the ground. A beautiful dawn, just like the planet's name. It was alien still, but one day it might not be.

  Lawrence stopped, and as resigned as he was to walking without a destination in mind, he was equally resigned to stopping there, lost, and never starting again. Herrera looked around them, nodding to herself, and then looked at him. Neither of them said a word.

  She reached into one of the pouches on her battle armor and pulled a small object out. She handed it to him, forcing him to look at something, rather than looking forward and seeing nothing. He took the device and held it up. It was his PDA.

  Lawrence turned it on and saw a letter displayed. The first line began, as always, with "ILYAMY". He shook his head.

  Herrera nudged him with her elbow. "You were wrong, you know. You were wrong about your legacy already having passed away, because you have these. Alone out of any of us, you have these letters. And your family had them too. Your wife had them. Your children had them. They had the terrible truth when you didn't, but they also had your words. They went their whole lives knowing that out there, somewhere, you loved them and you missed them, and if it would have been possible, you would have returned to them."

  He looked up from the PDA and at her, his eyes red with unfallen tears. She nodded back toward it. "It's not what you wanted it to be, but it's something."

  Craig Lawrence nodded and at least attempted a smile. "Thanks, Gwen." He looked back the way they had come, his sense of direction unerring, even though he had given it no thought. "Let's go back. We have a colony to land."

  They turned and walked back to the dropship, together.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Thomas A. Mays (Tom) is an 19-years-and-counting veteran of the US Navy, working as an officer in the surface fleet aboard destroyers and amphibious ships, as well as assisting with research into ballistic missile defense. He has two degrees in physics, but his passion is writing. He tries not to let what he actually knows get in the way of telling a good story. One of those “good stories” is his acclaimed, bestselling novel A Sword Into Darkness , published in January of 2014. Tom usually lives wherever the Navy tells him to (currently North Carolina), making a home with his lovely wife, three beautiful kids, and an insane Hawaiian mutt.

  Tom’s blog, The Improbable Author, can be found at:

  www.improbableauthor.com

 

 

 
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