“Good job, sir,” Sergeant Turk said, plugging Jonah back into the field phone net. The jury-rigged comms were better than nothing, but just barely.
“Better job if we could do it again,” Jonah said. “Stick with me. I want you to be my eyes and ears.”
“On you.”
The scout he’d sent off earlier to main HQ returned. “Sir. HQ responds: Ammo resupply impossible. Hold the line.”
Jonah clicked off the exterior communications link, isolating himself for a moment in the ’Mech’s cockpit.
“We’re dead,” he observed to the unresponsive silence, and switched the link back on. “All units. Report!”
“First squad, running on empty, sir. Request permission to fall back.”
“Denied. Hold fast.”
“Understand hold fast. First squad out.”
“Second squad. We took it in the shorts, sir. What can you give us?”
“Encouraging words, sergeant.”
“Roger, understand encouragement. Second squad out.”
The report from Third squad was just as bleak, Fourth still hadn’t reappeared, and Jonah could see for himself how badly Fifth squad was faring. Everywhere in his field of view were medics working on the wounded, sergeants checking fighting positions, supplies being doled out, boxes turning up empty, men scrambling among the fallen to find unused energy packs.
“One more assault and we’re going to be overrun,” Sergeant Turk said.
“Then we won’t give them time to regroup,” Jonah replied. The idea had come to him as he watched the Fifth through the cockpit window—not a plan, really, so much as an acknowledgment of the only thing left that could be done. He felt as if he were holding the entire Republic on his line, and he’d be dead or damned if it would break.
Over the field phone net, he said: “All squads, listen up. On my command, on your feet and charge forward. The Ma-Tzu Kai have a supply dump just behind their lines at the foot of this hill. We’re going to go get it. Take man-portable weapons only. Go bare-handed if you have to. Acknowledge.”
“First squad. Aye.”
“Second squad. Aye.”
“Third squad. Aye.”
Silence again from Fourth squad.
“Fifth squad. Aye.”
“On my signal,” Jonah said, “forward at the double. Stand by. Execute.”
Jonah throttled forward, taking the Stinger downhill at a lumbering stride, deliberately holding back the ’Mech’s speed so as not to outpace the soldiers of his company running along with him. Trees and underbrush splintered and crunched around him; then the ground opened up and he knew he had reached the antivehicle minefield. If he didn’t cripple himself with an unlucky step, he was through.
He saw Ma-Tzu Kai troops to the right, left, ahead . . . a wash of red light dazzled in his ’Mech’s ferroglass viewscreen . . . enemy laser? A flamer? He couldn’t be sure with his instrumentation so messed up. But it didn’t matter. Whatever it was had scored a crippling hit on the Stinger’s light armor. Only the safety webbing that kept him strapped into the ’Mech’s command couch kept him from being tossed about the cockpit as the Stinger swayed, toppled and fell.
The impact when the ’Mech hit the ground was bone-jarring, and his body slammed against the safety webbing with bruising force. His head rang and his vision blurred, but he knew that he had to get out of the ’Mech and keep on going.
He couldn’t afford to stay with the ’Mech and wait for field repairs and medical assistance—not now, when all that mattered was keeping the troops moving forward. He had to keep up with them, ’Mech or no ’Mech, and make sure that they didn’t lose the advantage of their charge.
Working frantically, he unstrapped himself from the command seat with clumsy fingers and unhooked the neurohelmet and the cooling vest. Then he pulled open the rear hatch of the cockpit and half-climbed, half-fell to the ground. Sergeant Turk came up out of nowhere to drape a field jacket over Jonah’s sweating shoulders and hand him a Gauss pistol. The indicator on the pistol showed fewer than a dozen shots remaining.
“Here you go, sir.”
“Right,” said Jonah. He raised his voice to a shout—he had to remember now that he didn’t have the ’Mech’s speakers to carry the sound for him. “Forward!”
The militia broke into a downhill run, and Jonah ran forward with them, conscious of Sergeant Turk’s presence a few meters away, keeping pace. I wonder if my family will be told what happened here? he wondered. Then a Ma-Tzu Kai trooper popped up in front of him, and he abandoned thought for reflex in time to snap a shot at the man.
The trooper fell; his companion sprang to his feet and turned to run. Jonah watched him go, not wanting to waste a shot on a fleeing soldier. He pushed on downhill.
He could hear shooting from his right and left. It sounded scattered and unguided. Then a sudden pain hit his leg and he collapsed. It felt like he’d been kicked. He looked down. Blood was running from his left thigh in a dark red flood.
Sergeant Turk was beside him, tying on a field dressing.
“Help me up,” Jonah said
“You’re hurt, sir.”
“I’m aware of that, Sergeant. Help me up.”
The sergeant grasped Jonah’s wrists and pulled. Jonah came to his feet, swayed, tested his leg. “It’ll do. Forward!”
The sergeant put his shoulder under Jonah’s left arm. “I’ll help you, sir.”
The sergeant had a knife, Jonah noted. No rifle, no grenades. Just that knife, and his knife hand was red up to the elbow.
This is bad, Jonah thought. This is getting very bad.
“We’re going to do this, right?” Sergeant Turk asked. Jonah realized suddenly that for all his prior service, the man was no older than he himself, and possibly younger.
“Right,” Jonah replied. “Let’s go.”
The two of them hobbled forward like contestants in some bizarre three-legged race, stumbling downhill at a clumsy run.
Jonah heard a falling hiss, followed by an explosion from the right. Someone nearby—the sergeant, maybe, he couldn’t tell—shouted out, “Incoming!”
“Never mind that,” Jonah said. He thought he shouted it himself, so everyone could hear him, but he couldn’t be sure. “We’re close now. Keep going!”
The ground underfoot was leveling off. They could run faster now, and not stagger as much. Jonah was surprised he had gotten this far.
“Up ahead!” he shouted. He was certain he shouted, this time. “The ammo dump! Go!”
A voice, he didn’t know who, yelled “Republic! Republic troops breaking through!” Someone else yelled, “They’re running! The bastards are running!” and the air filled with hoarse and breathless cheers.
Then Jonah heard an explosion, closer than any of the others, and knew nothing more.
32
Republic JumpShip
Unity
Prefecture VI
26 October 3110
After a period of gray fogginess during which voices came and went, saying things that he didn’t understand and couldn’t concentrate on long enough to force into meaning, Jonah Levin woke up. The fog hadn’t receded completely, but he had an awareness of himself now that he hadn’t before, enough to tell that he hurt all over, and that there was something he was supposed to remember. That he was supposed to ask, to know.
He wet his lips and tried to find his voice. “. . . the troops . . . off planet?”
“Shh. You need your rest.”
“No.” He couldn’t rest, not in the middle of a battle. If he’d fallen—he was lying down, so he must have fallen—then he had to get up. He struggled to rise, and collapsed again under the weight of sudden pain. “Sergeant! Sergeant Turk!”
“It’s all over now. You need to lie still so you can heal.”
He wanted to lie down. He was tired, so very tired, and he hurt all over. But he couldn’t rest. Not yet. “Sergeant, we have to—”
The grayness rolled him under again like a
giant wave, and he knew nothing.
Much later, he opened his eyes. His mind was awake and clear, and he knew at once that he was lucid for the first time in a long while. The inside of his head felt empty and unused, like a room with its furniture missing. He still hurt all over, and was aware of needles and tubes binding him, holding him down. He couldn’t have moved even if he’d been strong enough.
He wasn’t on Prospect Hill any longer, but in a windowless, high-ceilinged room. Somewhere outside his range of vision, quiet machinery hummed and beeped.
“Good to see you awake again, Captain.”
That was Sergeant Turk’s voice, off to his right. With considerable effort, Jonah turned his head in that direction on the pillow. Turk sat in a wheelchair by the bed with one leg out and up, encased in orange casting plastic. His right arm ended in a bandaged stump just above where the elbow had been. He was pale and thin, but smiling broadly despite his injuries.
“It’s good to see you, too, Sergeant.” Jonah’s voice came out faint and thready, but he pushed on anyway. It was important that he know. “The company . . . we pushed Ma-Tzu Kai back? Held the line?”
“We held the line, Captain. They were confused by our rush, and the Republic troops took advantage and smashed through. Ma-Tzu Kai broke when we hit the ammo dump. By the time they pulled themselves back together, everyone was on their way out. We all got off-planet in a hurry. And now we’re back in The Republic.”
Jonah experienced a tremendous relief, like a lightness running all through him. He felt thin and insubstantial, as if he were scarcely present in his body at all. His eyes watered, so he closed them and waited for the feeling to pass.
“Captain?”
He opened his eyes again with an effort. “It’s all right, Sergeant. I’m just . . . tired, is all. What hit us, there at the end?”
“Rocks, Captain. Lots and lots of rocks.”
“Rocks?”
“Ma-Tzu Kai long-range laser strike blew up a boulder close to where we were standing. We kind of got in the way of all the pieces.”
Jonah pondered that for a moment. Pummeled by a ton of rocks. That meshed pretty well with the way he felt. “Ouch,” he said.
“No kidding, Captain.”
“Where are we now?”
“Prefecture VI. Not far from Kyrkbacken, actually. You were out of it for quite a while.”
“So I gathered.” His throat and mouth were dry; he swallowed, trying to ease it. “And the rest of the company? What were our losses?”
“Sixty-two dead, 220 wounded.”
Staggering. Eighteen people came out of that battle unhurt. Eighteen. Echo Company no longer existed as a fighting force. It might eventually be brought back up to strength with new recruits, but that would mean re-creating the unit from scratch. With those casualty figures, not even enough able troopers remained to make up a training cadre.
And what of the rest of the militias? Their losses can’t have been that severe, Jonah thought—they weren’t standing between Ma-Tzu Kai and their goal, like we were. But the losses still had to be heavy. How many more hundreds lay on Kurragin, forever out of the reach of their mourning families?
But still, it was a miracle. More than two hundred of them still lived. Outmanned, outgunned, and ordered into a suicide charge, and most were still alive. He felt the pain of each death, but marveled that it hadn’t been more.
He closed his eyes again, feeling moisture well up in them, and letting it flow. “What a troop,” he said. “What a bloody good troop.”
“Roger that.”
“Bunch of rookies. Probably didn’t even know they should all be dead.”
Footsteps sounded in the hall outside. A medic came in, all brisk efficiency. “Time to change your dressings, Sergeant Turk.”
He wheeled Turk away, leaving Jonah alone and empty, staring at the sterile white light above. He wasn’t alone for long before he heard more footsteps, two sets this time.
The footsteps turned out to belong to a woman he didn’t recognize, in the uniform of a Knight of the Sphere, and a civilian man in a well-cut suit. The civilian had a vaguely familiar face, Jonah thought . . . had he seen it before on the tri-vid news? He didn’t know, and trying to remember was too much work.
The Knight was smiling. “Captain Levin! It’s good to see you awake at last.”
At last? Jonah wondered silently. How long was I—
The civilian spoke before he could say anything. “The Republic owes you a very great debt, Captain.”
Even when healthy, Jonah would have been pressed to come up with a good response to that remark. In his current condition, there was no chance.
“If you hadn’t held the hill,” the Knight said, “House Ma-Tzu Kai would have controlled the whole valley. They would have smashed into us as soon as they could. It would have been a rout.”
“It—it was . . .” He ran out of words, uncertain what he was supposed to say to a statement like that. “Orders,” he said finally. “We had orders.”
The Knight said nothing, but she nodded, and he saw from her face that she understood. “I am Lady Maya Avellar,” she said. “And this is Senator Geoffrey Mallowes from Skye. He is here to convey The Republic’s thanks in person.”
“Indeed,” said Mallowes. “We had some quite vigorous debate, you might like to know, on the question of exactly how the Senate should honor your valiant defense of Prospect Hill.”
“ ‘My defense’ . . . my company, you mean. I wasn’t the only one up there.” Jonah pushed the words through cracked lips.
The Senator continued as if Jonah hadn’t spoken. “There was considerable discussion as to what decoration might be appropriate—there was even some controversy over whether a member of a planetary militia, even one on loan to The Republic for a specific campaign, would be eligible for any of The Republic’s awards—but in the end the Council of Paladins trumped us.” Jonah heard a strange note in Mallowe’s voice that, had his mind been sharper, he might have been able to recognize. “They have recognition for you that is likely beyond anything the Senate can offer.”
He turned to Lady Avellar, his expression seeming to sour. She spoke. “The Paladins of the Sphere are pleased to offer you thanks for your heroic actions, and to inform you of your appointment as a Knight of the Sphere.”
Jonah’s face hurt, his throat hurt and his lips hurt, but despite all that he almost laughed. Reward? Becoming a Knight, with the heightened profile and notoriety that came with it, seemed as much curse as reward.
“My company,” he said, stifling a laugh in a way that looked like he was choking a sob. “Reward my company first.”
Senator Mallowes looked taken aback. Apparently he thought his announcement would be met with deeper gratitude.
Lady Avellar’s smile, though, remained steady. “In recognition of your service you are being made a Knight of the Sphere, but you will remain attached to Kyrkbacken for a time. Should you know of any soldiers or companies within your jurisdiction who deserve special recognition, you will have several resources at your disposal with which to reward them.”
Jonah relaxed a little, letting his head sink into the pile of pillows behind him. Whether she knew it or not, Avellar had said exactly the right thing. Had she tried to appeal to his pride, or convince him the promotion was something he deserved, the conversation would have headed in a very different direction. But by telling him this promotion gave him the means to help people who deserved it, she gave him only one option.
“Thank you. You can be sure I’ll hold you to that promise.”
Avellar bobbed her head. “We’re here because of your dedication to keeping a promise. We hope you’ll recognize that quality in many of your fellow Knights.”
Mallowes, still seeming off-balance, tried to reassert himself in the conversation. “You have a bright future in The Republic, young man. Your actions have already taught us to expect the best of you.”
Jonah bowed his head in acknowledgment
of the Senator’s words, but he thought to himself: if you truly knew anything about me, you’d know that such words have very little effect.
Jonah bore many scars from that battle, some of which still ached when the weather changed. But many members of Echo Company suffered far more.
The upper ranks of the Kyrkbacken Militia were filled with veterans of Echo Company. Some had retired from the military, a few to teaching positions in military academies, a few away from the military altogether. Jonah kept careful track of each and every survivor, never letting a single one fall through society’s cracks, helping where he could.
That was why he was willing to become a Knight, and later a Paladin. He hated politics and the trappings of office, but, as he saw it, those things weren’t the core of his job. Across the Sphere, there were millions of lines—in battle and in peace—that needed to be held. And he knew how to hold them.
33
Office of Senator Geoffrey Mallowes, Geneva
Terra, Prefecture X
13 December 3134
Mallowes’ face hadn’t changed much in the past quarter century. The crags were a little deeper, his earlobes hung slightly lower and his hand occasionally shook when he held it out too long. But the hair was still thick and white, the eyes cold steel, the jaw firmly set in place.
“Paladin Levin,” Mallowes said warmly, clasping Jonah’s hand in both of his. “I’m always honored when your path intersects mine.”
And he still had the same formal way of speech, Jonah thought to himself.
“Good to see you too, Senator,” Jonah said. “Though the circumstances could be better.”
Mallowes dropped his smile. “Very true. You sit in the center of an uneasy Republic, and recent events have done nothing to bring it peace. Please, sit.”
Mallowes’ office was clearly distinguishable from the others Jonah had visited recently. It should be—Mallowes had had decades to customize it to his liking. Its décor was a miniature history of politics, with framed replicas of the Declaration of Independence from the ancient United States of America, the Ares Conventions, and the Constitution of The Republic of the Sphere. Surrounding them was a miniature hall of fame of great diplomats featuring nearly twenty portraits, most of them personally inscribed to Mallowes. Jonah noticed with some amusement that Mallowes had pictures of Victor Steiner-Davion and his sister Katherine on the same wall, though placed far from each other.
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