By Dawn's Early Light

by Jason Fuesting

  Eric emerged a few minutes later.

  “Ah, didn’t fall asleep on the shitter. Was getting worried you fell in or something. Pretty sure they don’t have a coast guard around here and I sure as hell wasn’t going to dive in after you.”

  “Very funny,” Eric responded.

  “Let’s take a walk, let you burn off what little adrenaline you might still have floating around.”

  Rounding the cabin, the pair found Terry eyeballing a few nearby trees with Travis and Trevor trailing behind him.

  “Ah, the brave hunter returns,” Trevor said with a smirk. “Hadrian wants us to drop a few trees to improvise a few sleds, feel like lending a shoulder?”

  “Give him a bit,” Byron said. “We’re walking the perimeter. If he’s still up for it, I’ll send him down your way.”

  “Alright,” Trevor acknowledged. The man nodded and turned back to the trees.

  Eric and Byron continued their walk around cabin. At the opposite corner Eric paused and held up a fist. Movement. Rifle up, he crept forward toward the trees. Something brown moved again, some forty meters into the wood line. Remembering Hadrian’s admonishment about identifying his target, Eric slinked for a better angle through the evergreens. Just as he came to a halt, the elk lifted its head, silently regarding him for several seconds before turning its attention back to the underbrush at its feet.

  Eric relaxed and began to drop his aim when something enormous and gray snarled as it streaked out of the brush. The beast nearly bowled over the elk by leaping onto its rump. The click from his safety disengaging was inaudible above the elk’s trumpeting cry of surprise and pain as its attacker pulled the elk to the ground. A hand on his shoulder stayed his shot.

  “Leave be,” Byron whispered. “Your rifle won’t manage to do anything but piss it off.”

  “The fuck is it?” Eric asked, his mouth dry.

  “About a hundred and ninety kilos of hate and discontent, Eric. Let’s get back to the cabin before it decides to find out if we taste better than elk.”

  Trevor and Terry had turned, staring in their direction. Byron pointed to the cabin.

  “What was that racket?” Hadrian asked as the four stepped inside.

  “A reminder of home,” Byron commented as he shut the door behind them.

  “Highland wolverine?” Hadrian asked.

  “Yep.”

  Hadrian grunted. “They’ve never come this far into the valley. They usually stay farther up in the pass. We’ll need to cull them before they threaten the game here.”

  “What’s a highland wolverine? “ Eric asked, eying Hadrian. The creature’s lightning ambush replayed in his head.

  “Hundred and ninety kilos--”

  “Of hate and discontent,” Eric finished Hadrian’s sentence. “I know, Byron said that much.”

  Hadrian grinned. “Oh. Well, one part scavenger, one part predator, eight parts angry with a liberal seasoning of psychosis and anger management issues. Turing’s grandfather wanted to be able to hunt dangerous game, so he imported a few of them back in the day off their reputation alone.”

  Eric frowned and looked out one of the ground floor windows.

  “How long do you figure we’re stuck in here?”

  “Full grown elk?” Byron pondered out loud as he searched the cabinets. “Give him five or ten minutes to eat enough to make him fat and happy. Or, at least, as happy as highland wolverines get. He’ll probably stumble off to enjoy his food coma somewhere else. What’s normally in these cabinets, Hadrian?”

  “Canned food, some bottled water, that kind of thing.”

  “Looks like someone cleared out most of the canned food. Left everything else though,”

  “Figures,” Hadrian said from the table as he inspected his rifle.

  “We found a few trees that will do, Hadrian,” Terry spoke up a few minutes later.

  “Good, how long till you can get the sleds together?”

  “Once we get back out there? Maybe an hour. We going to try to get started back tonight?”

  Hadrian shook his head, “Trek back is going to be rough; we need to get some decent rest in after that hike. How’s your leg holding up, Byron?”

  “Marched further on worse.”

  “How are you holding up, Eric?”

  “Haven’t had the headache since Turing got me hammered. My arm’s still a bit sore, but I’m good I think.”

  “That all?” Hadrian asked. “Don’t play it tough, if you’re hurt, I need to know.”

  “Tired as hell and my feet are killing me, but I’m pretty sure I’ll survive,” Eric replied.

  “You’ve been changing your socks?” Hadrian asked.

  Eric nodded in reply.

  Hadrian glanced toward Terry and Trevor and asked, “Any complaints from you two?”

  “Just happy to have a chance to stretch my legs,” Terry replied.

  “Yep, nothing like hard labor and a run-in with a wolverine to make you appreciate life.” Trevor said with a smirk.

  Hadrian snorted and said, “Well, I’d say you two could take the rooms upstairs tonight, but you really don’t want the last one, even with the open window. Everything in there’s a loss.”

  “I wouldn’t sleep in there, even in a vac suit,” Eric muttered. Nothing outside had moved other than a few blackbirds. Hadrian’s comment about importing wolverines earlier tugged at him. “I thought the Protectorate only recently started trading with the Confederacy.”

  “Popular history is seldom as true as we want it to be,” Byron commented from the door as Terry and Trevor stepped out.

  Hadrian nodded, “That, and praise be that Caledon has never been part of the Confederacy.”

  “Isn’t the Confederacy a good thing?” Eric asked.

  Hadrian snorted. “Aye, if the only thing you judge on is if the Protectorate’s iron fist pulls the strings. Don’t get me wrong, some Confed systems are decent enough, but it’s a military alliance only. For every system trying to get ahead, there’s two trying to hold them back, and a third trying to undo what little progress the first made.”

  Eric scratched his head, puzzled. “That doesn’t sound like any of the Confed systems we’ve been to.”

  “Oh, which ones have you visited, lad?” Hadrian asked.

  “Orleans, for one,” Eric said.

  Byron coughed. “Son, the Orleanians are one of the biggest parts of the problem. Last Confed system to slip their shackles and, by their politics, you’d think they miss them. They’ve always put style before substance. The people as a whole tend to be brave enough, but their leaders are all cowards and sycophants. If they didn’t surrender before the assault forces landed, the Protectorate would control the planet inside a month, tops. A determined naval blockade would probably get them to fold first.”

  Hadrian shook his head, “Give the frogs a little credit, Byron. They’d still be fighting after a month.”

  “Oh, we gave them plenty of credit, Hadrian. Planetary government collapse in a month. Short of the legionnaires, their military would be ineffective within two weeks after that. Even with the legion bolstering them, organized irregulars would falter around the six month mark, given Protectorate assimilation protocols. Individual actors would last up to a year or so. That was our assessment last year.”

  Byron give the two an innocent grin while they stared at him.

  “Our assessment?” Hadrian finally asked.

  “That might be overstating it a bit. I was brought in to validate the field team’s conclusions.”

  “Guess that makes sense,” Hadrian muttered.

  “Makes sense? Huh?” Eric asked Hadrian.

  “McCulloch said Byron left SF for a bigger assignment. Talking like that, the only thing that makes sense is Central Intelligence.”

  Byron smiled. “We scare the things that go bump in the night. Overwatch calls, back in ten.”

  “Hey, come over here and help me real quick,” Hadrian called over his shoulder as he walked over
to long couch under the stairs. With Eric’s help, they pulled the heavy couch away from the wall. Hadrian leaned against the couch, studying the wall.

  Eric watched the hunter for several seconds, trying to figure out what he was up to. “What are we doing, Hadrian?”

  “Oh, trying to remember how this works,” Hadrian grumped, scratching his chin. He looked up. “Oh, right. Eric, those two lamp fixtures half way up the stairs? They go up.”

  Puzzled, Eric made his way up the stairs. Gripping the decorative brass fixtures, he pushed upward.

  “You fucking with me again? What am I doing, exactly?” Eric asked.

  “Not putting enough muscle into it.”

  “This isn’t as easy as it looks,” Eric said, scowling down at Hadrian. He set his feet and shoved with his legs. The fixtures remained stationary for several seconds before he felt something grind behind them. With a clack, the fixtures jumped upward several centimeters.

  “There ya go, lad,” Hadrian said from below. Eric leaned over the railing to see a section of floor slide shift and slide into the wall revealing stone steps that disappeared into darkness below.

  “What the hell?” Eric asked, coming down the stairs.

  “Concealed basement. The cabin was built over a cave,” Hadrian said as he started down into the dark. Eric paused at the edge of the darkness at the bottom of the steps.

  “Hey, I can’t see shit.”

  “Aye, motion sensors would normally activate the lights. Sec, found the switch.”

  Sudden light reflected off the arched ceiling revealing a sizable metal door at the end of the concrete lined hall. Hadrian spun the large wheel on the door and pushed it open. Lights inside the doorway snapped on revealing rows of shelves and pallets containing a multitude of labeled boxes and crates.

  “Why’d this work and the outside stuff didn’t?” Eric asked.

  “Turing’s father said the drones regularly EMPed structures at one point,” Hadrian said, looking over the shelves inside.

  “How would he know?”

  Hadrian shrugged. “No clue, but he was pretty certain of it when I got here. I was a trigger puller, not a tech guy. I can only assume something in the design protected some circuits more than others.”

  Eric eyed the door to the bunker as he walked through. “This door, solid steel?”

  “Might be, but my guess is layered ceramic composite cased in steel. Doesn’t feel heavy enough to be solid steel. Okay, so we’re prioritizing food, but there’s a few things I’m looking to bring back too. Go check the far side, look for ammo cans. Pick up four of the 6.8 and two of the 12.7. Make sure it’s the black label.”

  “Roger that,” Eric nodded and started walking through the rows of shelves. As promised, neat stacks of green metal cases of varying sizes lined the back wall. 6.8mm, check. 12.7mm, check. “Hey, what’s the ‘L’ behind the numbers on some of these mean?”

  “Linked. We don’t want those. Not yet anyway.”

  “Okay,” Eric replied, and started moving cans up near the door. On his last trip to the back wall, he eyed the fat steel cylinders in the corner. Each was connected to a metal box mounted on the wall by a thickly insulated hose. “What’s in these big metal cylinders?”

  “Nothing, they’re empty. They were going to be a backup for something else but never got filled.”

  “Well, what would have been in them?”

  “Cryogenic storage. Where’s the last of those cans?” Hadrian sounded annoyed.

  “These fuckers are heavy,” Eric commented as he dropped the last two cans by the door several seconds later. The frustration he’d been holding in check for months loosened his tongue. “You know, Hadrian, I just don’t get this place.”

  “How so?”

  “For a place with no tech, there sure is a lot of tech around here.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Nah, not just that. It’s everything. None of this shit makes sense. Nothing’s made sense since the Fortune got hit. I, I just don’t know what the fuck to think, Hadrian. I watched everyone I know die and it’s been a non-stop stream of lies and fucked up bullshit from the moment I stepped foot on that fucking Protectorate shuttle. It’s just too fucking much.”

  Hadrian regarded him silently for several moments before he whispered, “Specter Six.”

  “What?”

  “First Special Forces, Operational Detachment Echo, Team Six. My team. I’m the only one left, Eric.”

  “Okay? What’s the got to do with all this bullshit?”

  “The PMV Iscariot had been conducting surveillance on Jenkin’s Station and hampering movement into the Protectorate for two years prior. Our orders were fairly straightforward, really. Board her without notice, eliminate the crew, recover all usable intelligence, scuttle the ship in a fashion that indicated a reactor failure commensurate with the type of merchant vessel she claimed to be.

  “When we set up on her hull, everything seemed to be going to plan. They hadn’t noticed our approach so we set up our go-to-hell charges and prepped for entry. I remember the look on the bridge tech’s face when I slapped the charge on the view plate he’d been staring out.” Hadrian chuckled darkly. “Something to be said about striking terror into the hearts of your enemies, lad. Charge decompressed the bridge. Bridge crew went out with the air; we came in through the hole. Shit went sideways shortly thereafter.”

  “We were told to expect a token marine force, maybe a dozen grunts in all, half of them in their racks, and maybe four dozen spacers to run the boat, most of them intel weenies or techs. We weren’t really worried about the spacers; they can’t fight worth a damn. The marines though, those guys can fight. All in all, we expected around a half dozen marines to be breathing down our necks in short order. Two full squads jumped us. Me and Sergeant Cameron were the only two who made it back to the bridge in one piece. Cameron was dragging MacPherson, our medic, behind the consoles when I triggered the go-to-hell charges. Nothing happened. Last thing I saw was a pair of marines coming in the hole we blew earlier. We were trapped like rats.” Hadrian’s gaze snapped up from the floor and locked with Eric’s. His voice trembled when he spoke again, “The whole team was at my wedding, Eric. MacPherson was my best man. Cameron, Dun, and Wallace were groomsmen. I convinced Val to let Holly be a bridesmaid.”

  Eric reassured himself the crate behind him hadn’t moved. Nerveless, he dropped onto the crate as the soldier’s stoicism melted away like fog parting in the wind. Hadrian trembled and clenched his jaw as tears welled. Eric wasn’t sure if grief or anger lay behind the sudden mood shift.

  “You talk about losing everyone you know? And lies? That’s the only thing the rat bastards have to offer. They put Mac down like a fucking dog instead of treating his wounds. Those assholes had me for eight months. Do you know what it’s like, spending eight months in hell? Do you know what it’s like, seeing pictures taken from your front yard, from inside your house, and being told they had people watching your family, being told that if you didn’t cooperate, the next pictures would be your family’s bodies? You think you know hurt? Fuck you. You don’t know shit. Suck it the fuck up and soldier on.”

  “That’s enough, Sergeant Major,” Byron barked as he entered the bunker.

  The growling rebuke coiled in Byron’s tone struck a chord in Eric that jerked him to his feet. Memories of Chief Wilkin’s bitter disappointment at every failure, no matter how small and inconsequential, flooded over Eric as he bored holes in the wall across from him with his eyes. Hadrian reacted identically.

  Byron paused in front of Hadrian. He stared the man in the eye for several seconds before placing a conciliatory hand on Hadrian’s shoulder.

  “Now’s not the time or place. Go help your men get those trees down, Hadrian.”

  Eric listened to the anger in Hadrian’s footsteps as they faded off. Byron slowly swiveled and came to stand in front of him.

  Byron’s features softened as he spoke, “At ease. Think of this as one of many les
sons you need to take to heart, Eric. No matter how hard you think you’ve had it, someone else has probably had it worse. Far worse.”

  Eric glanced at the doorway, a dozen emotions fighting for his attention.

  “I didn’t know, Byron,” Eric said quietly.

  “That’s the point of the lesson. Look. While we’re all stuck here, we’re on the same team. Most of the Teams, you know where everyone else has been, so shit like that doesn’t happen often. There’s no reason you should have known about his unit, no reason you should know about how many friends, how many family the Protectorate has taken from him or me. Do you have it rough? Yeah, a lot worse than most civilians will ever see. If they knew, a lot of civilians would envy the fact you’ve been able to keep your shit together and keep moving forward.”

  “Why? I mean, we were on the Shrike for maybe a two or three months and I didn’t have to deal with anything like Hadrian did. Hell, Leah had it worse than me, too. Why would anyone envy me?”

  Byron nodded solemnly. “Because they don’t know any better, Eric. Because they haven’t learned what we’ve had to learn the hard way, what you need to make sure you take to heart.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Life is going spend every moment trying to kill you. You can either roll over and die, or you fight through every ambush and push on. Shut up, accept responsibility for your faults, learn from everything you can, and don’t let life win.”

  “So shut up, watch, and learn,” Eric said to himself softly.

  Byron nodded.

  “Do you think I should go apologize?” Eric asked.

  Byron’s eyes flicked toward the door. “Leave it be.”

  Something in the old man’s gaze nagged at him, a distant sadness.

  Puzzled, Eric asked, “What?”

  “Nothing you need to know, Eric. Just something that needs done, but can’t be done now. Remember this, Eric, for when you find yourself in Hadrian’s shoes. One day someone will need this lesson and you’ll be the only one there to give it.”