As she stood drying a glass, a flash like lightning struck, and her mind opened, allowing a scene from her life to be played out in front of her.
She was out on patrol. Her janissary battle dress was comfortable despite the cold. Her visor fogged up all the time, but tiny nanobots kept cleaning it to preserve her vision. She looked around and immediately knew the names of the others. There was Tac Hordvik, Moon blood and a born leader. She felt confident in his presence. There were Keisha, Brad, and Julian, teammates and friends as close to her as anyone from back home. Quinn, a bully and an asshole. Still, he was a teammate as well, one she had to trust with her life.
Flash.
Brad was down, cut in half by the explosion. Quinn was injured but alive. She saw Tac Hordvik crawling toward her, his face contorted in pain inside the visor. The enemy had them pinned down. If they didn´t act quickly, they would all be dead in a matter of minutes. She had felt panic rising, but she gritted her teeth, knowing she would decide what happened next.
Flash.
She stood deep in the woods. Julian was off to the side, holding his injured hand. Her weapon was trained on a girl lying injured on the ground. She looked angry and afraid, Sue thought. She didn´t know what to do next, but when the girl pulled out a hidden gun and managed to squeeze off a round, Sue fired instinctively in a three-round burst. The girl shook a few times, eyes wide open, before she fell.
"Shit, that was close," Julian said. "Are you okay?"
Flash.
She was sitting at a cloth-draped table filled with the finest courses. There were sweet smells and rich tastes on her tongue. Her friends sat beside her. Everyone was tired but satisfied. They were full janissaries at last, baptized in combat. Tac Hordvik stared intently at a man sitting opposite from him. Sue realized it was Counselor Novak, one of the most prominent in Covenant leadership. What was he doing at their table?
"Service to the State," the tacticus said. "What does that really mean, Counselor?" Sue thought the tacticus sounded angry. Why?
"I was lucky," Hordvik continued. "I was born to rule. But here´s the thing, Counselor. I think it corrupts us."
It corrupts us, Sue thought idly as she realized she was lying on the floor. She sat up. Her hand hurt, and she looked down at it. A gash deep enough to leave a scar looked back at her. The broken glass laid in pieces around her. Sue slowly got up, confused by the memories. They were nothing like she´d expected. This had been in or near Camp Sharpe although she´d believed she had retained all her memories from that place. She had remembered parts of this, especially the part about the French girl, but not the part about the Counselor Novak. She felt a headache coming on, and left everything as it was. She needed to lie down.
Chapter 8
Mark
Mark lay in bed, half asleep and half wondering why Alexej hadn´t left any messages. He´d expected his inbox to be full now that he´d been out for a few weeks. Perhaps Alexej had learned to respect his privacy, he thought. He almost guffawed. Yeah, right. He drifted off again, enjoying this brief moment between treatments. There would be a lot tougher periods to come. He´d done the rejuvenation before, and it was anything but enjoyable. He might as well take the few moments of respite he could get.
The door opened, and Evan entered. Mark sat up so that the drugs wouldn´t make him doze off again. Evan looks different, he thought. He nodded slightly at the younger man, who sat down next to his bed. Neither of them said anything, and the silence was becoming awkward when Evan finally broke it.
"Everything will change, you know," he said absently. Mark didn´t follow, but he didn´t ask. Evan stared out into nothing with his icy blue eyes. He spoke slowly and meticulously.
"You got it all wrong, Novak. You think the Moon people are free, that we are so powerful, so elated while the English are serfs, slaves to our will. But it´s superficial. Drill deep enough, and you will find it is the opposite."
"I don´t understand," Mark said. His throat hurt and his voice came out hoarsely.
"We live in constant fear. We have all these, things, possessions, privileges, and we grow ever more dependent on them. If we were to lose our privileges, the Moon people wouldn´t survive it. Our way of life is built on privileges, riches, eternal life. What if we lost it all? What would set us apart from the English? For that matter, how would we be any different from the wretched French?"
Mark tried to shake off the drug-induced sluggishness, but he couldn´t. All he could do was listen to his former protégé. He was surprised to see Evan´s absentminded, almost gloomy look change into a wolfish grin.
"This has got to change. I will give my people freedom from fear. I will bring peace. True peace, without enemies threatening our very existence."
"What are you talking about?" Mark croaked. Evan´s grin widened.
"You will see," he said. He paused for a moment before he patted Mark’s hand.
"Don´t worry, we´ll be fine. You should get some rest. You´ve earned it through all these years of service to my people," he said. Mark cocked his head.
"What are you saying? I´ll be out for a while, but treatment doesn´t last forever."
"You´re retired, Mark. You have served well, but the time has come for you to step down and enjoy some well-deserved rest. You should find a hobby," Evan said.
"Retired? What have you done, Evan? Alexej would never…"
"Alexej Lunde is also retired. In fact, I heard he was boarding a shuttle for Nidaros. He´ll spend the remainder of his days there," Evan said. Mark couldn´t speak. Had he played this game for this long only to be outmaneuvered like this? His mind raced, but the drugs slowed him down. Evan had stepped up, but not the way Mark thought he would. Evan walked over to the door and turned back to him.
"It´s a good thing for a former Head Servant to live out his life in the peace of Luna. I suggest you think long and hard about how you want to spend your retirement," he said.
Dave
Dave had set a brisk pace, and he was beginning to get winded after walking for half an hour. He looked at the map on his infopad. Not far to go. Just over the next hill. He kept climbing.
Something in the back of his mind told him this was big. It was definitely no meteorite. It hadn´t shown up on any of the usual detectors, which meant it had no radar visibility, gave off no heat or radiation, and no signals whatsoever. Given it´s recent entry through the atmosphere, it should have at least have been visible on the heat-seeking sensors.
Dave finally reached the summit and looked down at what should have been a crater. Instead, it was plain grasslands with a large shape, matte grey, standing in the middle. The air misted around it, but there were no signs of scorched ground. Dave immediately knew it was a shuttle of some kind.
He found some shrubs to hide behind and stayed low, wondering what to do next.
A thin strip of light appeared on the side of the shuttle and slowly widened.
As soon as the hatch was fully open, two helmeted figures stepped out.
Renee
The first explosion surprised them just as they were about to finish another leap deep within the forests that once belonged to the French. Now, as part of the Covenant, these woods were riddled with traps and detectors that would react to motion, heat, electronic signals, and even certain chemicals. Captain Lee´s rangers had picked off every hidden detector along their path, but they must have missed one.
Two of the rangers were sprawled on the ground while the remaining rangers fired at some invisible enemy.
"Baseline, on me! On me!" Captain Lee shouted. The two remaining rangers, Rita and John, took up positions on either side of the captain, firing bursts into the brushes. An explosive round landed close by, and Lee screamed curses as it went off. A trickle of blood ran down his cheek as he turned toward Renee. She saw he was determined to protect her, just like he was supposed to. The mission always came first.
"Get behind us. Stay low," he commanded.
They leapfrogged their way ba
ck, looking for a way to break contact with the enemy, but Renee saw the captain was looking more and more desperate. She fired off a burst before Lee spoke to her again.
"There´s no way we´ll be able to get out of here. Not all of us," he said, panting. "Marsden, when I say so, break off to the right. We might be able to keep them occupied long enough for you to get away."
Renee was about to protest when Rita took a round in the neck. John leapt and pressed his hand to the wound. Blood was pouring out, and Rita gave him a slight shake of her head. She gritted her teeth, pushed herself up, and ran forward, firing her weapon wildly. Seconds later, she was hit again and again. She dropped to her knees while pulling out a grenade. She pressed the fuse button before she tried to throw it at the enemy. In her weakened state, she only managed to throw it a couple of meters.
The explosion was so close that it shook Renee´s bones, but when she looked up, she saw Rita still alive. Then all hell broke loose when Janissaries poured in from the flanks.
"Go, before it´s too late! Now!" Captain Lee screamed at her. She didn´t hesitate. She fired a burst at one of the Janissaries and then ran into the brush. She ran for a just a minute or two before she noticed a sudden quiet. She had escaped by a few seconds, and Captain Lee and his rangers had sacrificed themselves for her. She took a deep breath.
Their sacrifice had to mean something, or she couldn´t bear it. She didn´t waste another second. She knew the Janissaries were probably on her trail, and unless she could put some distance between them now, she´d be caught in minutes.
She ran as fast as she could.
Chapter 9
Tina
Tina stood outside the shuttle, Ramon just a few steps off to her left. They had landed in a depression in the terrain she hoped would help conceal the shuttle from anyone stumbling upon it. The cloaking should already have done its job, hiding it from instruments set to detect incoming aircraft and rockets. She realized there was a cold war going on and that even the slightest misstep could make it go hot. She didn’t want that on her conscience.
The motion detector in the shuttle´s system had discovered movement nearby, and a soft repeating ping alerted her. She spoke a quiet command, and her helmet´s visor displayed where the movement came from. She made a calming gesture toward Ramon. They were not intruders, and they had to make sure they weren´t viewed as hostile. She hesitated for a moment before flipping a switch by her neck. There was a click followed by a hiss, and she took off her helmet. She took a deep breath of fresh, mountain air. She turned toward the source of the movement.
"You can show yourself now," she said loudly. "We are unarmed and pose no danger." A few seconds passed, and Tina was about to repeat her message when leaves rustled, and a figure rose from the brushes in front of her. It was a young man, a boy, she might say. Considering her age, everyone was young, she thought with a smile. This one was much younger, though. No more than twenty.
"I saw you coming," the boy said. "I thought it was a meteor or something, but nothing showed on the instruments. It was like you weren´t even there. It made me think."
"And what do you think, son?" Tina asked. This was a clever one. She didn´t know how much these people knew of the past.
The boy cocked his head while he studied the shuttle.
"Your ship looks so different. You´re from Aurora, right?"
Ramon guffawed from behind her, and she was surprised as well. Definitely a clever one.
"Damn straight," she said.
Tina extended a hand, as did Ramon. They all introduced themselves, and then the boy, Dave, began asking all kinds of questions. How was Aurora? How did they manage to return so fast, given that the journey out had taken more than a century and a half? Tina motioned for him to stop.
"Listen, Dave. You´ll have all your answers, but first of all, I just want to make sure you understand the situation," she said. Dave nodded somberly.
"Okay, so let´s keep our presence here a secret between us for now. We need to figure out what to do before we tell anyone."
Sue
Sue was lying in bed trying to get some sleep. A few days had gone by since she had her episode in the kitchen, and Beth wouldn´t stop talking about it. Even Jason looked worried. Sue didn´t mind. She knew they meant well, and this gave her time to consider what she had learned. The first few memories didn’t concern her because she knew she´d been in combat, and she could imagine at least some of the goriness, some of the ugly sides of it. But the last one, Tac Hordvik speaking to Counselor Novak, was what had stirred her interest. From everything she could remember, both the memories retained and those that had come back, she thought of Tac Hordvik as a tough soldier and a leader, so the bitterness she had sensed in the last flash surprised her. Where did that come from? What did it mean? And why did she feel she ought to know?
She felt the tingle in her toes seconds before it jolted her entire body. Lights flashed before her eyes, and she found herself inside a strange place with Tac Hordvik standing before her, pressing a gun to the head of First Janissary Ivanov. What is going on? A porthole to her right drew her attention, and as soon as she noticed the silvery light and the black sky, she remembered. She was on Luna. Why? No English ever went to Luna. She noticed the blue injector in her hand and tossed it to a Meridian who stood off to the side.
"Do you really think you will get away with this?" the man asked.
Flash.
She was on board a shuttle with First Janissary Ivanov lying next to her, unconscious. The situation was absurd, yet she felt elated for some reason. Looking at Evan—Evan now, not Tac Hordvik anymore—she felt butterflies in her stomach. This was getting weirder.
"I mean to change things on Earth," he said. She smiled.
"You would have the English behind you if you did, I´m certain of it," she replied. In that moment, his smile seemed to change into something else. Something sinister.
"You really don´t get it, do you?" he said. Sue felt herself falling down from a cloud of dreams and hopes, realizing what she should have known all along. Evan Hordvik was a man of the Moon people born to rule and conquer while she was a servant, a lesser being, a tool for the master race to be used as they saw fit.
"We need to rid ourselves of all threats to the Moon people. That´s what everyone is so wrong about, Susan. We need to grow harder, not softer."
Flash.
She was back in her room, lying on the floor and shivering. What had happened? Where had she been? A tear trickled down her cheek, and she wondered if that was a trace of the sadness she had felt in the last memory, or if it was anger at what had to be a betrayal. Of course, the mere notion of being betrayed by one of the Moon people was absurd. They were a station above the English and able to do whatever they wanted. It wasn´t betrayal, it was merely people doing what they were used to, what they had been taught.
And then she realized something. Somewhere deep within the memories hidden from her conscious mind lay the secret of why she had felt betrayed, why she was so angry, why she had lost her memory in the first place. She desperately wanted it back. But what if quitting the meds was as dangerous as the doctors had told her?
She didn´t care. She needed to know the truth, no matter what.
Renee
Renee dropped to her knees by a creek, gasping for breath. She had been running for days, barely sleeping for an hour here and there, and she felt exhausted. She didn´t know if she was being followed, but she had wanted to put as much distance between herself and the Janissaries as she could. But not even the stimulants could keep her body up anymore. She couldn´t run another step.
She looked a mess. Her clothes were tattered, her feet were covered in blisters, and she had cut her hand. The bleeding had stopped, but the skin around the cut was red and swollen. She´d have to get it cleaned properly, perhaps even open it up again to avoid festering. She cried, not for the first time. Captain Lee had been an extraordinary man and an excellent soldier. His rangers had been the
best of the best.
Now she was alone. She still had a mission, and because of the rangers, she had managed to slip into enemy territory. She still had a good chance of getting the job done. She would have to take care of herself. The enemy would figure out that she had escaped the ambush, if they hadn´t already. She had to assume that there was a hunt going on, that people were searching for her right now.
She wondered if the girl was worth it. If she was, she might be key to finally giving the Moon people some of what they deserved. Or at the very least, she might contribute to avoiding all-out war. Renee tried not to think about it too much. There was no way to know.
Renee had her own purpose now. If she didn´t complete her mission, the sacrifice of Lee and his rangers would be for nothing. So she would survive, and she would complete the mission not for some girl she had met once or for strategic value she wasn´t too sure of anyway, but for Lee and his rangers, John, Rita, Charlo, Daniela.
Almost a week had passed since the fatal ambush, and she hadn´t seen any enemies. She had gone deeper into Covenant territory while staying within these woods she knew so well. She followed the creek east before she crossed a large clearing and continued south for the rest of the day. By nightfall, she was able to see lights in the distance. She checked her position on the miniature infopad strapped to her wrist. She was just north of a small town called Fort Winter that lay south of the old border and would probably not be too friendly toward the French. The English here would have suffered in the raids back when there was a border, and even though every raiding party had been careful not to target the English, they would certainly have experienced collateral damage and casualties. No, she couldn´t count on finding any friends in Fort Winter.
Legacy Page 6