by Jay Allan
Taylor’s body had been no less shocked by the change of environment than anyone’s. He recovered from the worst of it in a few days, just like everyone else, but some of the effects lingered. His fully-hydrated body felt bloated and sluggish for months until he finally adapted. He felt normal now, accustomed to carrying an extra five kilos of water weight. But the cold still sliced through him like a knife.
He tossed and turned, trying without success to get back to sleep. He was tired, and he knew he needed the rest, but part of him was glad for the restlessness. There was a price to pay for sleep. The nightmares waited for him when he drifted off.
Finally, he gave up, rising with a grunt and wrapping the blanket around him. He walked over to the campaign desk in the corner of the tent, sitting in the small folding chair and poking the workstation’s screen to bring it out of sleep mode.
The glow of the screen cast a ghostly pale light on the walls of the otherwise dark tent. There were rows of figures on the screen, unit strengths mostly. He nodded absent-mindedly as he scanned them. Losses had been light in their first few planetary campaigns, far lower than he’d feared. The human armies his people had faced seemed even less able to counter the abilities of his enhanced warriors than the Machines on Erastus had been. The battles had been routs, debacles. The poor conscripts in the planetary armies never had a chance.
Well, he thought, a caustic grin on his face, you made us into what we are, and now you will reap what you have sown. Of course, those doing most of the dying so far were innocent. It had been the politicians who’d sent his people to Erastus and devised the programs that stripped them of their humanity…made killing machines of them. The men dying under his army’s guns were other victims, coerced or tricked into fighting an unjust and unnecessary war. But there was no other way. Those who would not join his crusade had to be destroyed. The politicians, the puppetmasters behind the great evil, they would also pay. Taylor would make sure of it. But he had to get to them first. And that meant destroying those who fought for them, even if they were poor, brainwashed cogs in the machine.
He imagined the growing fear in the halls of power on Earth, the top politicians and their cronies listening in stunned silence to the dispatches coming in, reports of armies destroyed, worlds lost. Taylor’s mind pictured the endless debates and political infighting. He wondered, how would they react? What would they do to counter him?
He punched a key, bringing up another group of figures. Deserters. That’s what UNGov will call them, he thought. The soldiers of the planetary armies were men just like Taylor and his people. They were conscripted or compelled to enlist, pressganged the way Taylor himself had been. They were victims just like the soldiers from Erastus. Family, friends, home - all had been stripped from them. If most of them had been assigned someplace less hellish than Erastus, that was a meager blessing compared to all they had lost.
Taylor hated killing those men, and he was thankful for those who’d joined his crusade, the meager few he hadn’t had to kill. Every one of the others sliced into him like a knife.
It had been different in the final battle on Erastus. Those men had been UNGov thugs, career enforcers who’d spent their lives bullying a cowed civilian population. For them, there had been no pity in Taylor’s soul, and he hadn’t hesitated an instant before ordering the last 12,000 of them summarily executed. He and his men were fighting a great evil, and there was no room for doubt of half-measures. UNGov was a cancer, and it had to be destroyed completely, every cell of it torn from the body of humanity.
The planetary armies were different, and he did everything possible to spare as many as possible. He broadcast his appeals to them over their own com lines, beseeching them to join his crusade. He told them the truth of the war, how UNGov and not the Tegeri had murdered the early colonists. He appealed to them all, as one of them, as a man who’d lost all everything, just as they had. And they came, some of them. Singly and in small groups, they abandoned their lines and crossed over. In the last campaign, Taylor managed to persuade 30% of the soldiers his army had faced to switch sides and join the crusade. But that left 70% unconvinced - or too closely guarded by their officers and afraid to flee. And Taylor had no choice but to kill that 70%. Nothing could be allowed to stand in the way of his crusade, not hesitation, not pity…nothing.
He sighed as he glanced at the preliminary scouting reports for Juno. It looked like the UN army there was 21,000 strong, the largest force they had yet faced. More innocent victims, more hapless conscripts to massacre. He nodded and stared at the screen, his resolve building as grogginess faded away. Yes, he would kill them, all who didn’t join the crusade. There was no choice, and remorse was only another weakness. And there was no room for weakness. None. Taylor needed strength, and the cold-blooded resolve to see this war through to victory.
He punched at the workstation’s keys, pulling up maps and troop dispositions. The intel was sketchy and incomplete. Taylor had imposed rigid limits on the use of drones and other ordnance, and he’d rejected every request to relax the stringent rules. If they ran out of ammunition and other vital supplies, the crusade would be over. They’d won their battles quickly so far, and they’d more than replaced their logistical expenditures with captured stores. But they had a long way to go, and they couldn’t count on an uninterrupted streak of rapid victories.
Taylor sat quietly, reviewing the newest intel. Thanks to the Neural Information System implanted in his brain, he would remember everything he read. The NIS wasn’t a computer or artificial intelligence, but it did organize and expand his brain’s capacity to store and retrieve information. It was a constructed eidetic memory, one he’d found to be extremely useful in the field.
He typed a few digits on the keypad, and the columns of numbers on the screen were replaced by a diagram, a series of dots connected by a spiderweb of thin lines. The Tegeri had shared all their knowledge of the Portal network, and it was far more extensive than UNGov knew. There were Portals everywhere, on Earth, on other worlds, far more than the UN forces knew about.
One of the dots was flashing blue. Juno. There were ten lines reaching out from the small blue circle – all Portal routes connecting the planet with other worlds. Taylor focused on one of them, leading to Oceania. That was the route the UNGov forces had taken. Earth to Arleon to Oceania to Juno. Taylor’s people could advance that way toward Earth, but that wasn’t his plan. Arleon was completely pacified, the Tegeri and Machines driven off the world entirely, and it was still occupied by its victorious planetary army. Oceania was 70% occupied by UN forces, the war there starting to wind down as the enemy forces pulled back from a defensive line they had held for a decade. There was still fighting to be done, and years of final search and destroy missions would follow before the Machines were completely expelled, but UN Force Oceania was definitely ascendant. It was a difficult invasion route to move that way toward Earth, one cutting through two of the strongest-held worlds under UN control. And if he advanced overtly and directly toward Earth, he knew his people would face every bit of force UNGov could throw in their way, anything they could pour through the Portals to reinforce the planetary armies.
No, Taylor wasn’t going to lead his people down that bloody road. There was another route, one the UN forces knew nothing about. The Tegeri had been on Juno for centuries, and they’d mapped out all of its Portals. One of them led to a planet unknown to the Earth authorities, a world the Tegeri called Lorus. And that world led to another, and another – until finally the route ended at an undiscovered portal on Earth itself, one hidden in a cave in the northern wastes of Siberia. A remote, unguarded backdoor to the home world.
It was exactly what Taylor wanted, a way to get back to Earth without charging into the teeth of UNGov’s heaviest defenses. Some of his officers had wanted to march right through the Erastus-Earth portal, but he knew that was folly. No 10,000 men ever made could openly storm the combined defenses of Earth’s sole government.
Taylor had
known from the start he had to find a way to get to Earth without running right into UNGov’s massed defenses – and the undiscovered portal offered just that opportunity. His ten thousand modified Supersoldiers could never defeat the combined might of Earth’s oppressive government. Taylor knew that, though he exuded nothing but confidence in public. The army had 9,000 additional troops on its rosters, unmodified soldiers from Erastus supplement by men who’d deserted the UN ranks to join the crusade. They were normal soldiers, if mostly veterans, and far too few to alter the overall calculus.
The war to free Earth would be fought by millions, not thousands. His men would have to disperse, form the nuclei of a hundred centers of resistance, raise up the population to fight for their freedom. Taylor couldn’t even imagine the final cost of the war. Governments never yield power willingly. They will consume their citizens, massacre them in unimaginable numbers, poison the world, even destroy themselves with bitter infighting, but they never give up their power voluntarily.
The crusade would have to obliterate UNGov root and branch, defeat all their soldiers and security forces, hunt down and execute every member of their leadership. There could be no half measures, no mercy; the rot had to be cut out, down to the bone. Millions would die, Taylor knew. Cities would burn, disease and pestilence would ravage the world. Man had meekly surrendered to those who would rule over them as their masters. Taylor was resolved that crime would be washed away, in blood if necessary. He had no illusions of the cost mankind would have to pay to regain its lost freedom. The price of liberty was a lesson mankind would have to learn again.
He sat at the small campaign desk, staring at the fabric walls of the tent. How, he wondered, did I end up here? Taylor had been born in the New Hampshire countryside, far from the centers of power. His family had been poor; virtually everyone outside the government was. But they were fortunate in ways too. They were farmers, and that accorded them some meager privileges. The production of the farms was always in great demand, and UNGov coddled the farmers, at least compared to the way it treated other citizens.
Earth’s teeming masses were adequately fed, more or less, but they subsisted on chemically manufactured foods and algae derivatives. Most of the world’s farmland was blighted and polluted, incapable of yielding more than a fraction of the output of decades past. But those in positions of power and privilege wanted real food - fresh fruit and vegetables and meat, not the manufactured gruel the population consumed. So, as long as the food kept flowing to the restricted markets, the government mostly left the farmers alone.
They weren’t wealthy, despite the demand for their production. UNGov buried them under fees and taxes to recoup most of their income. But they did have access to real food, and that was a fringe benefit the millions living in the cities could only dream about. Taylor still remembered his mother’s apple pie fondly, and he realized what an unattainable luxury that was to most of the people of the world.
Taylor sighed, and his expression morphed into one of sadness, melancholy. The thoughts of home were gloomy ones to him, images of what he’d lost, what he could never have again. It was a place to which he knew he couldn’t ever return, not really. Taylor had allowed himself to be conscripted and sent to Gehenna to save his family’s farm. That had been his sacrifice, to leave all he knew and go to fight in hell to save his loved ones from ruin. But that Jake Taylor was gone, turned into a cold-blooded killer, half machine and soul-scarred from 15 years of war. His family and friends wouldn’t even recognize him; he would be a stranger, one they would fear.
He was half machine now, the perfect warrior, but no longer quite as human as he once had been. He imagined seeing his family again, wondered how they would react to how changed he was, both inside and out. What would his mother think, looking into his eyes? Would she be repulsed at the metallic constructions implanted where his natural gray ones had been? Could he endure his mother staring at him, trying without success to hide her revulsion at what she saw?
Taylor knew he was a monster; his enemies had made him into that. It was more than the implants, more than the robotic eyes and ears. He knew he had become something dark inside too, an inhuman force, intent on destroying his adversaries no matter what the cost.
He was no fool, nor did he allow himself any fantasies about what lay ahead. Jake Taylor would do anything at all to destroy UNGov. He would kill without mercy, and he would see his loyal followers, victims all, just like him, wiped out to a man. But he would not be diverted from his purpose. He was obsessed, driven, determined at all costs to rid mankind of what he saw as an unholy evil.
Deep in thought, he lost track of time and didn’t notice the shaft of hazy morning light pushing through the partially open tent flap. The sounds of the camp stirring to life were commonplace and routine, and he ignored it all by habit. But he swung around when he heard Colonel Black poke his head through the tent, his hardened battle reflexes reacting on their own in response to the new presence.
“It’s just me, Jake.” There was a combination of amusement and tension in Black’s voice. Taylor had been so tightly wound since the last battles on Erastus, Black half expected to get his head blown off one morning. He pushed through the flaps and into the tent.
“Hey, Blackie.” Taylor’s tension faded, and he sank back into the chair. “It’s almost time to address the enem…local forces.” Taylor had to keep reminding himself that these planetary armies were conscripts just like him. Just like the rest of his men. UNGov usually had some pretext to offer a recruit the chance to “volunteer,” but that was just a veneer to hide the fact that they were drafting soldiers and sending them away, never to return. It was typical government style, he thought, and they made it seem like they were doing the recruit a favor by allowing him to enlist. But it was bullshit, just one more damned lie perpetrated by a totalitarian regime intent on controlling every aspect of human society.
“What about some breakfast, first? You’ve got to eat, Jake.” Black was Taylor’s oldest companion, and the two were closer than brothers. Or had been. Taylor had become larger than life since the last battles on Erastus, his mind and spirit dedicated to destroying UNGov and ending the pointless and wasteful war against the Tegeri. Black’s loyalty was without question; he would follow Jake anywhere, to the ends of the universe if need be. But he could feel his friend slipping away, along with the rest of the man Taylor had been.
“Oh…yeah, I guess.” Taylor looked up at Black. “Can you just send an orderly in with one of those nutrition bars?” A short pause. “And some water.” There was still an odd tone in Taylor’s voice when he spoke of water. No one who had fought on Erastus for 14 years would ever get completely used to being able to drink his fill.
“Sure, Jake. I’ll take care of it right away.” There was a touch of sadness in his voice, though Taylor didn’t notice. His attention had already turned back to the workstation. Black knew Taylor was only doing what he had to do, and he supported him completely. But he missed his friend too, the brother Taylor had been to him through the years of hell on Erastus. He knew he’d never have made it through without that companionship, and he mourned the loss. He realized there wasn’t much left of Jake Taylor, the man. He’d been consumed by the leader, the crusader.
“Blackie?”
Black turned to face Taylor. “Yeah, Jake?”
“Can you get that comlink set up for an hour from now?” He glanced at the small chronometer on the workstation. “Say, 0700?” Juno’s day was almost a copy of Earth’s, just fifteen minutes shorter.
“Of course, Jake. It’s done.” Black turned again and slipped through the door of the tent, leaving Taylor to his work, his endless work.
Chapter 4
From the Tegeri Chronicles:
Know all who read this Tome, the tale of those who came before us, wise and powerful, and of the great evil that came for them. For our history is long, and our Chronicles tell of the Ancients, those we once called gods, benevolent and fatherly, who m
astered the secrets of the universe millennia ago. They tell also of the Darkness, the Destroyers, who came and swept away the Ancients, vanquishing all in their path, ignoring only our ancestors, primitive and beneath their notice.
The Ancients built the Portals, and for uncounted millennia they danced among the heavens, the great black gulfs between the stars no barriers to their wisdom and knowledge. They shepherded our race, leading us slowly toward civilization, forward to the day we might join them, and explore the universe at their sides.
Alas, such was not to be. The Ancients were gone to their doom before our race matured, and the heavens grew silent. But they left us the Portals…and all they had taught us.
Somewhere, it is said, the Ancients also left us all of their knowledge, hidden, a key to the secrets of the universe. We have searched for it for centuries, and we must never cease in our efforts. For it is also said that one day the Darkness will return…and we must be ready.
The Great Cavern of the Tegeri was massive, a single chamber lying deep beneath the Sacred Mountain. It had been the birthplace of Tegeri civilization, the gathering spot of the first of the young race to come together and build a society. It was the holiest of locations on Homeworld, and the Great Council still held its meetings there, as it had, uninterrupted, for long millennia.