The room was dead silent. Very few of them had considered the problem from that angle. They had been so concerned with the end result that they had ignored the difficulties of how to achieve it. Clearly, assuming the report from Rutan was credible, if Reza did not want to submit to the deep-core scan, it was extremely unlikely that he could be convinced or coerced into doing so. Jodi Mackenzie had not reported any trouble with him, but she had been treating him well. So far, it seemed that her approach of kindness and respect was paying off.
“What is it that you suggest we do, Admiral Zhukovski?” L’Houillier’s question told the others in the room that Zhukovski’s recommendation would be undersigned by the Supreme Commander. L’Houillier had listened patiently to all the arguments during the day, not because he did not have his own views, but because a committee had to be allowed the latitude to discuss what it might in order to reach a workable consensus. It was the chairman’s job to keep it on track without crushing it with his or her own bias. But there came a time when discussion had to end and a decision had to be made. Zhukovski’s arguments, judging by the expressions on the faces of those around him, had carried the field. They had also convinced the Supreme Commander. There might still be opportunities for some of the others to dissent L’Houillier’s decision to go with Zhukovski’s recommendations, but not in this room, and not today.
No, L’Houillier thought. If anyone wants to take it up later, they will have to do so with the president himself.
Inwardly relieved, but not showing it except for a surreptitious wink in Melissa Savitch’s direction, Zhukovski said, “I propose that we do exactly what Colonel Hickock originally intended, admiral. I believe that Reza Gard should be inducted into Marine training and put into military service, at which he appears to excel already, at earliest possible convenience.”
Tensch was about to interrupt when L’Houillier angrily hammered the gavel against the table. Tensch visibly jumped, startled by the sound. His face reddening with anger, the general bit his tongue as he gave L’Houillier a glare the admiral returned until Tensch, thinking better of it, looked away.
“As I was saying,” Zhukovski went on, allowing himself only a moment to relish Tensch’s humiliation, “this will serve several purposes. It will let Gard do what he apparently wishes, which will make him easier, perhaps, to deal with in near term.
“Second, military training centers are good place to indoctrinate people into Confederation. Long ago, concept was called ‘school of nation,’ and it is no less applicable in this case. He will learn language and customs, how to be more human and less alien.
“Third,” Zhukovski continued, “military service will make it easier for us to watch him without him feeling like he is being watched. There will always be someone – superior, subordinate, whoever – nearby. If he is not who he says, or does something untoward, it is more likely to be noticed than if he is given job selling flowers on street corner or reading poetry on mall.
“Finally, we will learn much more from him if he willingly cooperates, which I feel is based in large degree on what we decide today, how we treat him in future. That way, we get much more information over time. I know that time is factor, because it translates directly into lives lost. I have children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and many members of my family have already given their lives to our cause, and I understand this well. But war has gone on for century already, and I doubt there is knowledge in his head that will let us win in week, if at all.” He nodded to Tensch. “Also, those who would like to do core scan on brain forget one very important thing: we have no Kreelan linguists and thought interpreters to go through what might come out of your chekist machine. We have never successfully interpreted their language, and know nothing of their cultural images. I do not think Gard’s brain will provide convenient translation for data thus extracted.”
L’Houillier nodded, satisfied with the intelligence officer’s reasoning. “Very well, admiral,” he said. “Please meet with the operations officer and work out the details as soon as possible, beginning with the retrieval of Reza Gard and the Marines now on Rutan. That operation has uncompromising priority over all other tasks for the fleet, and the operations orders will carry my signature. Once that has been arranged, I want you to work out a long-term development plan for this young man and have a draft copy to me by twelve-hundred hours the day after tomorrow. After I have reviewed it, we will brief your plan to the president and Special Council as soon as possible.” He made a few quick scribbles on the table’s scratchpad, putting notes in his daily log file for later retrieval in the privacy of his office. Then he looked up and surveyed the committee members. “Ladies and gentlemen, does anyone have anything else to add?” Aside from a few disappointed looks, no one did. They were all anxious to get back to their parent organizations and agencies to hatch their own operations. “Very well then. This meeting is hereby adjourned.”
The gavel pounded the table a final time.
History, Evgeni Zhukovski thought somberly to himself, has just been made. He prayed to God that they had made the right decision.
Nineteen
“This just came in, ma’am.” A young Marine handed Jodi a message.
Jodi took it and gave the man a quick nod. “Thank you, corporal.”
Braddock saw her face light up. “What is it?”
“Task Force-85 is on its way,” she told him, “ETA thirty-six hours.” It was not their home task force, TF-1051, but it would do.
“Hot damn!” Braddock cried. “Man, that’s the quickest reaction I’ve ever seen from fleet.”
Smiling with excitement, she read him part of the message: “As of 2385.146.1958T, prior regimental mission and priorities rescinded, repeat, rescinded. New priority as follows: imperative that safety and well-being of subject Reza Gard be maintained until arrival TF-85. Regiment is to stand down except for security details until relief arrival.”
She turned to Reza, who knelt quietly on the ground nearby, watching her and Braddock’s conversation as if he were a dog listening to its masters talking to one another, intensely interested, but unable to understand.
“Well, my friend,” she said happily, “it seems as though somebody thinks you’re awfully important.”
“Yeah, enough to send a whole frigging task force!” Braddock announced.
Reza cocked his head at her words, his expression intense but unreadable, and she found herself pierced by his gaze. The hearts you could break with those green eyes of yours, she thought to herself, then smiled. She knew that hers would not be among them.
* * *
“Nothing’s ever easy, is it?” Braddock sighed.
Jodi looked through the trees to the village walls and the several thousand heads peering over it. They had thought that the news of the task force’s approach would make everyone happy. While the Marines had been elated, the Rutanians had taken a somewhat different approach to the news. A hastily called council meeting that had excluded Jodi and the Marines had ended with demands that Reza be brought into the village for what Hernandez had called an “inquisition.”
Had her orders not been so out of the ordinary and Hernandez’s request not so blunt – it was very obviously a demand – Jodi might have considered taking Reza into the village herself so Hernandez and the others might meet the instrument of their salvation that morning.
But, in light of the strange circumstances and fearing for Reza’s safety – and that of the villagers – Jodi had managed to follow orders for once and refused. Much to her surprise, Hernandez had stalked away, silent with what could only be rage.
Not long afterward she heard Father Hernandez on the steps of the church. He was shouting something about “the Antichrist,” and she ordered Braddock to have his Marines keep the townspeople back behind the wall while she took Reza to a secluded stand of trees where they could be fairly comfortable, yet inconspicuous. They were out of sight of the townspeople, but Jodi could still see out to keep an eye on
things.
After seeing to the positioning of his Marines, Braddock had joined her, careful to let Reza see that he had no weapons. Reza accepted his presence without any comment other than his unblinking stare.
“I hope these people don’t decide to do anything rash,” Braddock murmured, looking back toward the city gates. Through his field glasses, he could see that the number of gesticulating hands and angry, frightened faces had multiplied considerably since his last observation. “Tomlinson,” he said into his comm link, “what’s the situation over there?”
Lance Corporal Raleigh Tomlinson’s voice crackled back through the receiver in his ear. “I don’t like it, gunny. These people are starting to look a little ugly, if you know what I mean. I’m not a Christian, but I know that some of the stuff they’re saying isn’t real nice. They’re starting to get pretty hot under the collar, and I heard some saying stuff about crossing over the wall, mention of heretics, and so on. Looks like the old priest is making it into a religious hocus-pocus thing, talking about ‘signs’ and the Antichrist and such. He and some of the others on their council have been shouting garbage like that at me for the last couple hours.” He paused. “I don’t know, gunny, looks like refusing to let them talk to whoever you’ve got there might have been a bad idea. It kind of reminds me of when we were on Dehra Dun a couple years ago.”
Braddock frowned. “Okay. Keep me posted, and for God’s sake don’t feel bashful about singing out.”
“Roger. Tomlinson out.”
“What about Dehra Dun?” Jodi asked, having heard the conversation through her own comm link. “What happened there?”
The gunnery sergeant looked at Reza, then at the gates, before he turned to face her. “Two years ago, when the regiment was due for some R-and-R, the task force dropped us off on Dehra Dun before moving off to a rendezvous to take on the regiment scheduled to replace us in the line. Dehra Dun wasn’t described in the info bulletins as a garden spot, but it didn’t look too bad.” He shook his head slowly. “Man, were we in for a surprise.
“About a week after we arrived, me, Tomlinson, and a few others from my old squad were wandering around the capital when we saw an inter-city bus cream some poor kid that just ran out in the road. We were gonna try and see if we could help, but we couldn’t get near the accident. It seemed like people all of a sudden just appeared out of nowhere and surrounded that bus like a human wall. They didn’t do or say much of anything at first, like they were only rubbernecks or something. Then somebody shouted something and it set them off. First it was only murmurs and grumbling, but in a few minutes they were all shouting and angry as hell, buzzing around that bus like a bunch of hornets. It wasn’t long after that when they started in, attacking those poor bastards in the bus. Even then, the driver might have been able to get away, but he waited too long. He never should have stopped.” The memory gave him the shivers. “The crowd ripped open that bus like an army of red ants tearing into a caterpillar. They dragged all those people off, maybe a couple dozen, and beat every last one of them to death. They took the driver, who was probably already dead, and trussed him between a couple of skimmers. They took off in different directions, and that was the last of him.” He smiled grimly. “Then they turned on us.”
Jodi silently wondered if he had ever told this story to anyone before. She had only known the man for several weeks, but she felt she knew him well. In the daily battles they had fought, she had never seen him show fear; he had been an idyllic leader to his Marines, fierce and courageous, and a welcome support for her. It was difficult to imagine him being any other way. But, listening to his tale, she caught a glimpse of something else, of a time when Gunnery Sergeant Tony Braddock had indeed been afraid.
He looked back at the crowd that was beginning to gather at the city gates. “I had already gotten my people moving back down the street, away from the trouble, but it wasn’t soon enough.” He made a nervous laugh that caught in his throat. “You can’t imagine what it feels like to be running like hell, with the ground shaking under your feet and your ears filled with the screaming of a few thousand pissed-off indigs chasing after you. Lord of All,” he said quietly, “I’ve never been so scared by anything, before or since.”
“Why were they after you guys?” Jodi asked. “You didn’t do anything.”
Braddock shrugged. “Who knows? I guess it was because we were there, and we were different. Just like the people on that bus. They happened to be Muslims on their way through a Hindu town to somewhere else. But, from what we read later about the place, it just as easily could have been a bunch of Hindus in a Muslim town. Wouldn’t have mattered a bit.
“Anyway, we managed to get away with a few cuts and bruises from bottles and rocks, running fast enough to leave most of the rioters behind to look for someone else to beat up on. A few minutes later, a bunch of Territorial Army guys were heading back down the street to bust some heads and get those people under control, but it was too late for the people on that bus, and almost too late for us.” He shook his head. “The news reported that eighty people died and over three hundred were injured in the rioting that day. That’s what you get when religious fervor mixes with fear and hate. A bloody frigging mess.”
There were over four thousand adults in the village of Rutan, Jodi thought. What if Father Hernandez’s zealous pacifism was fired into righteous anger and fear? Jodi, while not an ardent student of history, had read enough to know that some of humanity’s bloodiest wars had been fought in the name of one god or another. And the Rutanians outnumbered her Marines by about two hundred to one.
“Jesus,” she whispered.
* * *
For one of the few times in his life, Father Hernandez was truly enraged. He was angry that he and his people were being held like prisoners within their own walls by the people who allegedly had been sent to protect them from the Enemy, from the powers unleashed by Satan upon the Universe. How ironic, he thought: the miracle for which he had prayed, and which he at first thought had been answered this very morning, appeared to be only an agent of the Evil One, a demon under whose enchantment the Marines beyond the gates had fallen. When he had seen Jodi’s face that morning, he knew that she had seen a sign, but he had been so sure that it had been from God that he had never even considered the possibility of Satan’s deceitful treachery. That morning he was certain that his call to God for help had been answered, and that an angel had been sent to save and protect them from the demonic hordes that had descended unbidden from the skies.
But it had not been so. As the last of the Marines followed the young Navy lieutenant down Waybridge Street toward the city gates, Father Hernandez had finally allowed himself the privilege of gazing firsthand upon the miracle God had delivered. At first, he was sure that his eyes were deceiving him, but then it became clear: an angel had arrived, no doubt, but it was not from above. As the thing made some unholy communion with its fellow demons, Hernandez understood that the angel before his eyes was the Angel of Death. He became sure of it as the beast suddenly turned upon its own kind in a ritual of slaughter designed to seduce the Marines in a demonstration of power, of a kind they could easily understand and accept.
Now, as he stood at the gates, he knew that Satan had won the hearts of these strangers with his clever tricks. The unbelievers stood now facing the thousands of Hernandez’s flock, uniformed victims of a plague that needed no rats to spread. He felt pity for them, especially Mackenzie and Braddock, whom he had come to like and admire a great deal. But they apparently had never had the strength of faith possessed by Hernandez and his people, and so they were unprepared for Satan’s insidious assault. God’s miracle would indeed come, but it would be wrought by the hands of His faithful servants. It was a thought that repelled Hernandez and his fellows because they so abhorred violence. But it also thrilled them that God was giving them this opportunity to strike back at Satan, using their own hands as the divine instruments of the Evil One’s undoing.
Still, H
ernandez was a stubborn man, even in carrying out God’s just vengeance. He had spent most of the years of his life saving souls, and he would not be content with himself until every avenue into the hearts of the weak had been tested. Not every man and woman on Rutan had died in the last half century with the Savior in their hearts, but none of them had died without hearing Hernandez’s voice at least once in their lives, begging them to open their hearts to Him and be saved. He had encountered Satan’s mark many times over the years, and only on a few occasions had he been forced to concede defeat or resort to the staff and rod. He knew his enemy was tenacious, and he was determined to be no less so.
“Corporal!” he called to the nearest Marine on the other side of the wall. “You must allow us to see the thing, that we may know if it is Satan’s messenger!” Hernandez was as conscious as Corporal Tomlinson of the townspeople’s increasingly agitated state, but he viewed it from a different perspective. What Tomlinson saw as religious fervor about to explode into undirected violence, Hernandez viewed as the gradual massing of God’s power within his people. It was the means to slay the embodiment of Evil that had arisen, as champion of its own kind in a contest to be fought not for blood, but for the souls of Hernandez’s people. “Please, corporal, you must let me speak with Lieutenant Mackenzie!”
He saw the Marine speak into his communications device, but knew that this meant nothing. He was merely sending information to be used by the Evil One cowering among the trees. Around Hernandez, men with crude weapons – hoes, scythes, axes – quietly began to move from the rear of the crowd toward the wall, to act as the vanguard of God’s army.
Dread and excitement competing for dominance in his heart, Hernandez waited.
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