by Mike Smith
“Jon,” Sofia cried out before it was too late. “You were right. Back on Callas Prime when you said that Marcus is my son. But I never lied to you. There was never anybody else, only you. Marcus isn’t just my son, but yours too, as you’re his father. I’m sorry that I never had the courage to tell you that before.”
Jon stopped, shocked by her words, but looking at her he could see the truth in her eyes, along with the shame. “Thank you,” he whispered gratefully. “I am glad that he is safe then, as I cannot think of anything more important than for a father to protect his family—both of you.” Lifting his eyes, he locked his gaze on Paul, who was standing close behind Sofia. “You will look after them for me—both of them—when I am gone?”
“You have my word,” Paul swore.
“Then it makes what I have to do next easier,” he said, turned away from the view-screen for the last time. He could observe from the tactical display the enemy armada was already starting to close in, the jackals sensing blood, but that would work in his favour too. As he keyed in the necessary commands to activate the ship’s self-destruct, he took great pleasure in knowing Malthus would never take this ship—or him.
*****
“By the Great Maker,” Malthus breathed, astonished at the sight before him. “What does it take to kill this man?” Unconsciously echoing a sentiment similar to that voiced by many of Jon’s other multitude of enemies over the years.
“The Invincible has started launching escape pods,” the officer reported. “Looks like they’re abandoning ship.”
“Destroy then.”
“What?” the response came from several different people, all tinged with similar expressions of outrage, disbelief and astonishment.
“It’s likely that Radec is on board one of them. I don’t have the time, or the inclination, to search each and every one of them. So just destroy them all.”
“But what about the rest of the crew?” Miller exclaimed, aghast.
“What do I care?” Malthus shrugged. “I gave you an order Captain and I expect that you carry it out.”
“No,” Miller shook his head. It was bad enough to fire on defenceless shuttles, but this? He had to draw the line somewhere.
“I would remind you Captain,” Malthus hissed into his ear in a poisonous tone of voice. “What happened to Harrison’s family, and what I promise to do when I finally recapture Radec’s. It will be easy enough to arrange for your family to be joining them. Now I expect you to follow my orders, to the letter. Immediately.”
Looking into the steely-grey eyes of Senator Malthus, Miller found no empathy there; he would carry out his threat, as callously as he had just condemned all the crew on that ship to death. “Do it,” he ordered the officer, refusing to meet his gaze. “All ships are to advance on the Invincible and resume firing.”
*****
Sofia turned away from the scene, as the enemy ships started to encircle what remained of the Invincible. Even from this great distance she could see the bright lights as particle beams and pulse cannon fire licked out, repeatedly striking the dying battleship.
Inch by inch, meter by meter, the lumbering hulk slowly started to move away from the station—and the fleeing shuttles. Jon’s desperate final attempt to buy them a little more time she assumed, never feeling so utterly helpless in her life.
“Sofia? It’s your decision. What do you want us to do?”
Looking between Paul and Miranda’s concerned gaze, she once again spared a quick glance at the view-screen before looking away. She didn’t want to watch Jon die, did not want to live the rest of her life with that image seared across her consciousness. Jon was right, however, there was little other choice. As sometimes you just had to do the right thing, even if you wished with all your heart that you did not.
“We protect the shuttles. Signal the fleet to move to intercept them,” she ordered, knowing that she was condemning her husband to death.
A furious expletive from one of the officers had everybody turning to face him. “They’ve started to open fire on the escape pods, the bastards,” he swore.
The rest of them just looked on helplessly, as the 8th Fleet moved away to protect the fleeing shuttles.
*****
Gunny slowly peered around the corner, taking in the entire scene with a single glance, before quickly ducking back under cover. He cursed quietly, so as not to be overheard by the children. Was it too much to ask to have just one small break? Obviously it was, as there were four guards protecting the enemy shuttle on the docking ring.
Certain that all the shuttles had long since departed with the crew, knowing that there were no spare, Gunny had decided to approach the docking ring, hoping to steal one of theirs. Normally Gunny would have no issue taking on all four of them, as he considered four-vs-one as perfectly reasonable odds, but this was no ordinary situation, not with three kids standing a few feet behind him, watching his back. No way was he going to start a firefight with them there, as all it would take would be one stray shot—
The click of a pistol being cocked and pressed against his temple seemed extraordinarily loud in the deserted station.
“Drop the weapon, marine,” a gruff voice emanated out from behind him.
Gunny immediately froze, his eyes desperately seeking out the children, terrified of what he might find, expecting the worse. He was shocked to find them standing where he’d left them, all perfectly fine, all grinning like little idiots. Seriously, none of them were ever going to make good marines. They were meant to be guarding his six.
His eyes flickered along the barrel of the gun resting against his temple, from the hand and arm holding it, up to the owner—wearing the uniform of station Head of Security. Gunny’s heart started to resume beating, having stopped for several seconds back there. “You bastard,” he croaked.
“You got him real good that time, Uncle David.” The children all giggled at Gunny’s pained expression.
“I cannot believe that you did that,” Gunny groaned. “I think my heart missed a beat back there.”
“That was just you thinking of Jane Castle,” David replied with a smirk. “Talking of which, I met her on the way from the C&C, she said that you were looking for the children—I guess that you found them.”
“The shuttles?” Gunny asked hopefully.
“Gone.”
“So what the hell are you still doing here?”
“With the Commander, Paul and Miranda gone, I’m in charge,” David reminded him. “That makes me Captain, and a good Captain is always last to abandon ship.”
“It’s a goddamn space station, not a ship.”
“Same principle applies,” David said cheerfully. “So how many of them are covering the shuttle?”
“Four,” Gunny cursed.
“Fair enough, you take the two on the right, I’ll take the two on the left.”
“Is that your right, or my right?” he asked suspiciously.
“Does it really matter?”
“No, not really. On three?”
David nodded cheerfully. “Three,” he called out, stepping around the corner, lowering his rifle. Gunny cursed, doing likewise, a fraction of a second later.
Both men paused at the scene facing them.
As it never occurred to either of them that the ships might actually still be occupied, and the four that Gunny had observed earlier were simply the vanguard of the disembarking brigade.
Frozen, they stared at the corridor, which was now full of soldiers. While neither of them started a precise count of how many, they simply started at many, then progressed to very many, finally simply settling on lots.
Likewise the lots of soldiers stood staring at the two lonely men, standing in the middle of the corridor, weapons lowered in preparation to fire.
“I’ll take the girls, you grab the boy, okay?” Gunny uttered under his breath.
“Sure, on three?” David replied.
Gunny didn’t even wait for one, but dropped his pistol, turned and bolting
in the direction of the children. He barely broke stride, as he grasped Elizabeth and Harrison’s daughter under his arms and bolted down the corridor as if all the demons of hell were snapping at his heels. David was only a few lengths behind him, carrying Marcus in his arms.
“Medical,” David called out ahead of him to Gunny. “It’s the closest, most easily defensible position.”
Gunny cut a hard right at the next intersection, followed by an immediate left, until they arrived at Medical. Fortunately the doors still permitted entry, as Medical was one of the few areas of the station that had its own emergency back-up power supply, for just such situations.
“Get the door, lock it and find something to barricade it with,” Gunny called out as soon as they were all inside and had dropped the children to the floor. “I’ll try and find something that we can use to defend ourselves with.”
Yanking open draw after draw, spilling the contents of lockers onto the floor, after a few minutes the most lethal weapon he so far had discovered was a couple of needles for a syringe. Fortunately David seemed to be having better luck, as he had pushed over several cabinets and pressed them up against the door. However, the rhythmic banging against the door was not a promising sign.
“David, I cannot find anything. Any idea if the Doc keeps a pistol or something in his office for emergencies?”
“Check in medical locker three. I remember the Doc mentioning something about keeping some weapons back there,” David called out, pressing his back against the temporary barricade to reinforce it.
Knocking beds, chairs and tables out of his way, Gunny finally reached the storage locker indicated by David. A pistol, even a knife would be better than nothing. Swinging open the storage locker, Gunny’s jaw fell open in astonishment, unable to believe what his eyes were showing him. For surely the Doctor must have been a marine at some point earlier in his career, before taking up medicine.
The storage locker contained row upon row of pristine assault rifles, all perfectly aligned, with spare ammunition clips resting on a shelf just above them.
Grabbing an armful of assault rifles, Gunny hurried back to David, dumping a pile of them at his feet. David looked incredulously first at Gunny, then the three children staring at them from behind a gurney with wide frightened eyes.
“There are only two of us, Gunny, and I think I speak for their parents when I say that they’re a little bit young to be holding one.”
“Just grab one and start shooting at stuff,” Gunny groaned, ignoring David’s, as usual, terrible sense of humour. “When that one runs out, just switch to another. I’ll go and get more.”
“There are more of them?” David replied in astonishment.
*****
Jon slammed his fists into the console in frustration. Of all the systems on the Invincible the one that was meant to work, no matter what, refused to do so.
The shaking around him only became worse, and he reached out towards the console to steady himself. For the enemy armada had opened fire, with a vengeance, only minutes before. The only reassuring thing was that there was very little left for them to break, as pretty much everything on board had already been damaged beyond repair.
Another violent impact had him once again reaching for the edge of the console, but this time he missed, and was thrown violently against it. The edge of the console cut into his side, exactly where Captain Benson had shot him some hours earlier.
With a scream of complete agony everything went black, and he mercifully slipped into unconsciousness.
He didn’t know how much later it was when he finally regained consciousness. A part of him was surprised that he ever did. The enemy assault seemed to have ceased, as everything was quiet and still. Having long since given up trying to activate the ship’s self-destruct, he pressed the dark cloak to his wound to stem the bleeding, which mercifully seemed to have stopped along with the pain, and stumbled to his seat to consider his next move.
He had not gotten far with his deliberations, when he suddenly felt a presence behind him. Realising the only reason that the assault would have stopped would be to permit a boarding party, Jon’s hand flashed to his waist. The sword in his grasp an instant later, he whirled around, raising the blade—
He landed firmly on his backside. Gazing up in astonishment at a face he had never expected to see again. At least not in this lifetime. She looked exactly like he last remembered. Standing tall, impeccable in her pristine white Imperial Navy uniform, her sword resting untouched at her side, the Lieutenant rank insignia clearly visible on the lapel of her uniform next to the crossed sword emblem, denoting she belonged to the elite Praetorian Guard.
“Elsie?” Jon uttered in disbelief. “What are you doing here? How can you be here? I saw—I watched you die.” For she had once been his second-in-command of the 58th squadron, the Praetorian Guard, but she had died, along with the rest of them, in their flight from the Epsilon Indi System and Harkov.
“Hello Jon, it’s good to see you again,” she replied, the small smile that was forever present whenever she found something amusing gracing her lips.
“But you’re—”
“Dead?” she replied. “Yes. I know.”
“Then does that mean I’m—”
“Dead?” she replied, her lips now upturned into a full-blown smile. “No, but let’s just say that you’ve got your foot halfway through the door. So this gives us a little time together. To talk.”
“Then I am sorry,” Jon replied remorsefully. “I never forgot you, or the sacrifice that you made for Sofia and I. My only wish was that it could have been me leading the squadron that day. It was my place, my responsibility. I should have died that day, not you.”
“You have so much guilt Jon, you carry it around with you, like a millstone around your neck. It is eating away inside of you, like a cancer, you need to learn to let go. That is one of the reasons I am here—what we need to talk about.”
“I don’t understand,” he replied, wide-eyed.
“You see, I am not the only one that you are carrying around with you. There are many others. While I’m only strong enough to talk to you here, now, there are others that can reach out to you, even while you are conscious.”
“The shadows that I see?” Jon guessed. “Sometimes I think I can even make out a shape, a person, but then they’re gone.”
“They’re the strongest ones,” Elsie nodded sadly. “But most of them are so crazed with pain and anger, they’re not able to communicate much more beyond that. So they’ve sort of nominated me as their spokesperson, to talk to you on their behalf. As we’ve known each other for a long time, as I served under you for many years.” She paused, eyes sparkling mischievously. “Well maybe not in that sense as, if I had, Sofia would have killed me long before Harkov ever got the chance,” she laughed.
“Sofia?” Jon replied confused.
“Yes you dolt. Didn’t you ever wonder why she and I always fought tooth and nail? She was in love with you for a long time, and saw me as a rival. I, meanwhile, always thought her a foolish, spoiled little brat, totally undeserving of your affections.” Elsie cocked her head to one side. “But perhaps I was wrong.”
“You what?” Jon gaped at her.
“Men,” Else sighed aloud. “You’re all totally oblivious to what is going on around you.” She looked around, as if she could see something that he could not. “Anyway, I’m getting side-tracked. The reason I have been nominated to talk to you is that the others are worried that you might have lost faith.”
“Lost faith?” Jon exploded in frustration. “I’ve done everything that I could. I found Malthus just like I promised them. I fought him with everything that I had, but it was not enough,” he sighed. “There is only so much that one person can do.”
“You see, that is exactly the type of defeatist attitude that concerns them. I never thought I would live to see the day the mighty Praetorian Commander, Jonathan Radec admitted defeat.” Else was quiet for a moment, before
adding. “Come to think of it, I never did live to see it.”
Jon couldn’t help but crack a smile at her joke. “What would you have me do?” he sighed exasperatedly. “Throw rocks at them?”
“If that is what it will take. Then yes,” Elsie encouraged him.
“It’s hopeless,” Jon shook his head despondently. “The Invincible is badly damaged, the rest of the crew have already abandoned ship. It’s just me, and I cannot do this alone.”
“No Jon, it’s never been just you. That is what I‘ve been trying to tell you. For lost souls naturally gravitate to you. Drawn by your pain and guilt, but also your compassion and understanding. Others are like pinpricks of light in the dark, but not you. You’re a blazing beacon of light shining out into the darkness; souls are instinctively drawn to you like a moth to a flame. Once there they bathe in your kindness, swim endlessly in your love, and float in your righteousness. After that how can they leave, how can they ever face that darkness again? Over time they’ve gathered and multiplied, they’re now like drops of water in an ocean or grains of sand on a beach, and you carry the weight and responsibility for each and every one of them.”
At his confused expression Elsie motioned with her hands, “Look around, Jon, and understand just how not alone you really are…”
With that Jon looked up, realising that the two of them were no longer alone, but instead at the centre of a circle of people. The crowd stretched out as far as his eyes could see, all standing still, staring at him. Jon could pick out people from his past. His fellow Praetorians in their white uniforms. The crew of the Sunfire in their black-and-red. Jonas, Jackson, Harrison and Romanov. Even farther out he could recognise some of the crew of the ships of the Confederation 4th Fleet and, even farther out, others dressed in civilian clothing, stretching as far as the eye could see. A veritable sea of people, ten, twenty, thirty, fifty rows deep, thousands of them.
“Now perhaps you begin to understand,” Elsie explained tenderly. “For you are not alone, but instead stand at the head of an army—that is waiting for you to command.”
*****
Jon grabbed his head with both hands, willing the pain and nausea away. He must have hit his head against the console as he fell, as he could feel a massive lump forming there, to add to his already impressive collection.