by Jay Allan
All they had to do was hunker down and wait. The relieving force had caught the enemy in a difficult position. There wasn’t a doubt in Sebastiani’s mind that the forces coming to their aid were going to defeat the units facing them. But sitting around and watching their saviors fight it out wasn’t how he was wired.
“Alright boys. This isn’t over yet.” He grabbed his rifle and cautiously moved forward. “Let’s move up and help our boys out. What do you all say?”
He was shocked how loudly seven men could cheer.
The Surgeon had been at work all day. Jones was ranging all along the front lines, scouring the enemy position for choice targets. Conditions were perfect…Taylor’s forces were attacking the enemy at every point, driving them back in utter disarray. Nothing made officers more careless than panic and disorder in the ranks…and Jones only needed one slip up to put his target down.
He was back near the old UNFE headquarters complex. There wasn’t much left of the buildings but, even though it was militarily useless, Taylor figured it would be a psychological strongpoint for the UN forces. As usual, Jones thought, he turned out to be right. There were at least 10,000 enemy troops trying to rally in the area, half without weapons, all in complete disorder. A perfect environment for hunting.
Jones was after a very special target, and he figured this was where he’d find him. Taylor’s army didn’t have any real intel on the enemy OB or command structures. But Jones had done some research…mostly with a notched blade and a few carefully selected prisoners. He was pretty sure he was hot on the trail of his prey.
He was crawling very slowly, concentrating hard on staying concealed. Carelessness could be as deadly to him as his target. He pulled himself just behind the crest of a small rise and peered over cautiously.
There it was, just as he expected. The command post was small, maybe half a dozen vehicles parked around a series of portable shelters. The area was clogged with soldiers, mostly wandering around, trying to find their units…or just walking in stunned shock. There were hundreds on the ground too, those who’d succumbed to the heat. Jones knew from his own experience, some of them would recover after a short rest and a few gulps of water…and some would never get up again. Indeed, he could see the burial details moving about, scooping up the bodies of those who had died from heatstroke.
His enhanced eyes peered through the scope of his rifle, panning along the confused mass. It was hard to get a view through to the central area past the crowds. There were a number of officers in his sights, but Jones was after one target, and he was determined to get his man.
“That’s the main command post,” he whispered to himself. “That’s where he’ll be.”
He watched, slowly moving from one figure to the next. He couldn’t just start dropping officers. He’d get one shot, maybe two, then all hell would break loose down there. He needed to spot his target first, and he would stay at it however long it took.
Then, just a few seconds later, his eyes locked on a figure. The uniform was right. He felt his heart beating faster, excitement building along with realization. He focused harder, bringing all the power of his upgraded eyes into play. The insignia looked right too. Suddenly, it all clicked…he was sure. It was him.
He stared intently, waiting for a cluster of soldiers to pass, opening the field of view. There it was…the shot.
He slowly tightened his finger over the trigger. “Say goodnight, Colonel Graves…”
Taylor stared out over the mass of miserable prisoners milling around behind the makeshift fencing. They stretched over a kilometer, huddled together and guarded by a dozen strikeforces. These men had been enforcers on Earth, privileged bullies who persecuted helpless citizens, but now their arrogance was gone. They were utterly beaten…broken and terrified.
“Jake, come on…” Blackie wasn’t quite pleading, but he was trying hard to convince Taylor. “…we’re not murderers. That’s the whole point of this, isn’t it? That we’re better than they are.”
Taylor was trying to show respect for the feelings of his best friend and second-in-command, but he was utterly unmoved. These men might not share the degree of guilt that Gregor Kazan had, but they were part of the same cancer and, as far as Taylor was concerned, they had to be cut out the same way. It was all well and good to aspire to loftier standards of mercy, but first they had to win the war.
Kazan had already been dealt with. Taylor’s men had dragged the whimpering bureaucrat from his hiding place and thrown him on the ground in front of their victorious commander. Some of them had probably expected Taylor to gloat to the pathetic fool, and others expected to see him mete out a horrible, lingering death to the UN leader, but Jake hadn’t obliged them. He simply walked up to Kazan and looked at him for a few seconds, though he didn’t share what he was thinking with anyone. Then he pulled out his pistol and shot the crying prisoner in the forehead without a word. “We are revolutionaries, not sadists,” was all he had to say afterward.
The army had expected Kazan to pay the ultimate price, but no one knew what to expect for the masses of enemy soldiers who had surrendered. More than three quarters of the enemy forces were already dead, slain on the battlefield or done in by the relentless heat. There wasn’t a live enemy soldier anywhere on Erastus outside this prison camp, Taylor was sure of that. Soon there wouldn’t be one anywhere.
“I’m sorry, Blackie. There is no choice.” He was a little annoyed by Black’s hesitancy, and yet he understood in a way too. “Those men out there…they are not like us.” He was looking at Black, but speaking to everyone present. “They were not yanked from home and family and conscripted to fight. They pursued careers as Internal Security troopers. For God’s sake, most of them probably needed some sort of influence to even get the job.”
Taylor took a breath. He was starting to get angry even thinking about the Internal Security forces. “We were all fools once, perhaps, but now we understand how Earth’s government works. And we know exactly what these men are.”
He stared around the room, seeing a mix of agreement and doubt. “How many people suffered and died in reeducation camps, dragged there by these thugs? How many were shot down in street riots and demonstrations because they had the temerity to pour into the streets and demand food?”
Taylor stopped. He was willing to try and convince his officers…to a point. But he was in command, and that was just what he intended to do. Command.
“It doesn’t matter what anybody thinks about this anymore.” His voice was like steel. “The decision’s been made.”
Taylor had other motivations too. His forces were short on supplies. There was no way they could sustain another 12,000 men, and even if they had the logistical capacity, there were no soldiers to spare to guard them. Dragging along hostile prisoners was a security risk Taylor wouldn’t have considered, even if he’d had the resources to do it. The only other alternative was to send them back to Earth…and that was out of the question. Taylor was determined that any force the Earth authorities sent after his people would disappear without a trace. There would be no survivors to tell the tale. He wanted the UN authorities to know fear.
He turned toward Daniels. “Captain, the prisoners are hereby sentenced to death, to be carried out immediately. Assemble the forces you require, and see that it is carried out.”
Daniels snapped to attention. “Yes, colonel.” His answer was crisp. Taylor hadn’t designated the duty randomly. He knew that Daniels agreed with him completely. He didn’t make a habit of excusing soldiers from duty they considered upsetting, but he knew the magnitude of what he was ordering, and his people had lost enough of their souls already. Daniels would handle it better than Bear or Blackie or any of the others.
He watched as Daniels saluted and trotted out of the room. Then he took a quick look at the others and turned to leave himself. “Dismissed.”
Chapter 25
From the Journal of Jake Taylor:
Victory. Erastus is ours, the enemy a
rmy utterly destroyed. Yet there is no joy, just a grim satisfaction. Our war is just beginning, and we face an enemy vastly stronger than ourselves. We fight to destroy a tyranny, to free a world that looks at us as traitors. Those we would liberate are under the thrall of our enemies, too beaten down and blind to see the truth.
My soldiers have come far already, and suffered much. Yet I must ask so much more from them. Few, perhaps none, will survive this final war. But if I must ask them for their lives to right this horrific wrong, then that is what I will do. Just as I will willingly give my own.
Hatred is a more complex emotion than I’d imagined. I ordered the execution of 12,000 helpless prisoners yesterday, and I feel no doubts, no remorse for what I have done. There is no question Gregor Kazan was a willing participant in the great evil we fight, fully deserving of the death I gave him. The troops he led to Erastus, the 50,000 who now lay dead on the rocky sands of this inhospitable world – 12,000 of them shot along a stone wall by my command – they are more difficult to judge. Their culpability in the crime is more ambiguous, less straightforward.
Surely, the jackbooted enforcers of a despotic government bear some of the guilt for the system they serve. These men spent their lives terrorizing helpless civilians and dragging people to reeducation facilities. They didn’t create the policies they imposed, but they were part of the machine that stripped freedom from the people. I cannot imagine the thousands these men beat and killed…how many they dragged from their homes in the night, never to be seen again by distraught families.
But was it really necessary to kill them all, to wipe them out to the last man? Certainly we sent a signal to our true enemies. The disruptions and panic on the Secretariat will almost certainly erode their efficiency. Fear will make them dither and argue, giving us more time to prepare, to move forward.
Yes, these soldiers had to die. All of them. I know not all my people agree, but I am in command and, as long as I am, I will do what I believe is right. I will not allow misplaced sympathies, undeserved pity, to stand in the way of our righteous fire.
My officers have doubts…I know that. Probably not Hank Daniels…he is as determined as I am that nothing be allowed to defeat us, nor divert us from our crusade. Blackie and the rest are loyal; I know that as surely as I know anything. They will follow me wherever I go. But they are conflicted, uncertain about the means we must employ. They will do what I command, but they will suffer for it, consumed by doubts, by pointless guilt. I am sorry for this pain added to all they have suffered, but if they insist on torturing themselves, so be it. The crusade transcends us all. Our own suffering, our pain, even our deaths…they are nothing next to the importance of victory. And that victory may well cost us all we have to give…all that is left of us.
I will have to stay close to my troops in this war, lend them support. They will be fine when the battle is raging and they are fighting as soldiers. But when victory is near, and they are chasing down panicked survivors, gunning them down in whatever ditch they crawl to for refuge…that is where they will need my strength.
The struggle is all. We have won nothing yet. War has just begun, and it shall not end until the last of those stained with the guilt of this crime are crushed beneath our boots, never to rise again.
Taylor stood on a small rise, watching the heavy diggers tear into the rocky sand. He was focused, staring intently at the excavation machines, flashing a thought to his aural implants to lower his auditory response. The damned things were loud.
Taylor was just glad he had them. They had to dig 40 meters, and that was a long way to go with shovels, even with cybernetically-enhanced muscles wielding them. It was expensive to transport and reassemble heavy equipment. When Jake got the loyalty of the engineers, he also got their machines. And that included these two plutonium-powered heavy excavators.
He knew there were more Portals here, buried near the recently exposed one the Tegeri had used to withdraw from the planet. T’arza had told him, and the alien had been true to his word on everything else. Taylor doubted most things, but not those the enigmatic Tegeri had shared with him.
UN Central never knew about the other Portals on Erastus. They probably assumed there were some, Jake thought, but they had no idea where they were. The Tegeri had buried them, practically rearranging the entire landscape to keep them hidden.
Now they had shared their location with Taylor, and he was going to use them to lead his forces off Erastus. Marching through the Portal to Earth would be a fool’s game. His troops didn’t have the strength to take on all of UN Central Earthside. Taylor would have loved nothing more than to end the war in one great battle, but he knew that was impossible. Their quest would be a long one, down roads he was sure he couldn’t imagine now.
Blackie had argued for standing firm on Erastus, digging in and defending against every attack the UN forces launched. But that strategy would fail as well. Taylor’s troops had decisively defeated a much larger enemy force, but when UN Central truly marshaled its resources, as it would certainly do now, they would dwarf the just-defeated army. The Erastus forces would draw their price in blood, but if they stood firm, sooner or later they would be overwhelmed and destroyed.
No, Taylor knew the only hope was to march on to other Portal worlds. Erastus was far too hostile an environment to support the army for the long term without resupply from Earth, but many of the other worlds were lush and green, unspoiled paradises that would provide food and water and other essentials. There were troops on many of those worlds too, not Supersoldiers, perhaps, but lifers like Taylor and his men. They didn’t know the truth on those worlds, not yet, and they hadn’t lived in the burning crucible Taylor and his men had, but perhaps they could be recruited to the cause, swelling the forces of the crusade. Taylor saw no other option, but whatever the pros and cons, the decision had been made. They were moving forward,
The Army of Erastus. That’s what they were calling themselves. Taylor was amused by the irony. Erastus was where they were all sent to fight…to die. A hell world the first expeditionary forces had dubbed Gehenna. A place where they had suffered, where their friends and brothers had died. Its name was spoken most often as a curse. But it was different now. It had become a source of pride as well, of élan. These men had survived the worst place men had ever been sent to fight. They endured betrayal and unimaginable hardship, and they had come together to form the most effective army in human history.
They faced a long march and many battles ahead. They would be vastly outnumbered by the forces they would face, but they were ready. There was guilt and uncertainty among them, but all agreed they’d been betrayed, as mankind itself had been. They were united in their determination to punish those responsible, though some were more prepared for the grim choices ahead than others.
Taylor stood on a small rise outside the old Firebase Delta, watching the large sun set. He was struck by the deep hues of red and pink in the sky, stretched out in long, gauzy ribbons. He’d seen it thousands of times, but this was the first time he really noticed the beauty of it. He’d been on Erastus for fourteen years, and he’d never expected to leave. Now that the army was preparing to depart, he was noticing all sorts of things he never had. He’d hated Erastus since he first stumbled through the Portal, but now he realized, it had become home to him in ways he could never have foreseen.
He didn’t know if any of the other guys had similar thoughts. He was too embarrassed to admit his own wistfulness to talk about it. Besides, they were just passing feelings, he thought, nothing more. Overall he was anxious to begin the next chapter in the crusade…and his mind raced with curiosity about what another world would be like. A new world. Something Jake had long ago ceased to imagine.
The army was elated by the magnitude of its victory. The men had been celebrating for days. They knew the grim realities of what lay before them, but they believed in what they were doing…and they had a new confidence in themselves.
Taylor knew many of them had b
egun to idolize him as well. The legend of Jake Taylor was growing, taking on a life of its own. Taylor the man was uncomfortable with it, feeling it was wrong. But General Taylor, the revolutionary leader knew how useful it could be. In the end, he indulged it, even encouraged it. The cause before all else.
He heard the footsteps behind him. People didn’t sneak up on soldiers with the mods. His electronically-enhanced ears tracked them all the way from the base…four sets of footsteps.
He turned slowly from the fading sunset to face his four closest friends. The all had thoughtful looks on their faces, just as Taylor did. “Come to enjoy one last Erastus sunset, gentlemen?” Jake had become a grim and serious creature, but he managed a smile for these four brothers.
They all returned the smile, but it was Black who spoke first. “I can’t say I’m going to miss this place, Jake, but it still feels strange to be leaving.” The others offered a ragged series of nods.
“Yes, it certainly does.” Taylor let his smile morph into a pensive expression. “Well, boys, whatever happens next, we accomplished something here.”
They nodded again, but Jake continued before any of them spoke. “And I don’t mean the battle, though that was as brilliantly executed as anything I’ve ever seen.” He paused. “I mean the way we united the forces on Erastus…without firing a shot. The troops who came through the Portal were our enemies; we knew that going in. But it could have gone differently with the other Erastus forces.” He hesitated again and then continued. “And killing them would have only added to our crimes.” He was quiet again for a few seconds, looking thoughtfully out over the rocky desert. “If we are to prevail in this war we will have to make new allies, convince others to come over to our side. Destroying those who fight us…that is the easiest part of what we must do. Finding friends is always more difficult than finding enemies.”