Theirs Not to Reason Why 4: Hardship

by Jean Johnson

  “More or less,” Ia agreed. “The analogy breaks down a little at that point, but it’s close enough.”

  “So . . . to overlay an illusion of normalcy on this broad, flat plain,” Mara murmured, working it through, “a Feyori would have to expend a lot of effort. Particularly one detailed enough to fool you. Right, sir?”

  “Right. Most Feyori can only see a few weeks ahead, maybe a few months at most,” she confirmed. “And from what I have seen, the fog patches currently clouding my view only extended a couple weeks outward because the concentration required to paint realistic falsehoods no doubt takes even more effort and energy—although they’re damned good even when blanking out just a few weeks,” Ia admitted wryly. “They weren’t quite touching my mind, but they did cloak whatever I looked at. ‘Ginger’ was too busy interacting with the real world, so whoever the other Feyori is, that’s the one I have to watch out for.”

  “Can this ‘Ginger’ assist the other one?” Mara asked next.

  “Quite possibly,” Ia allowed, rubbing at the frown creasing her forehead. She sighed and shrugged. “The Feyori can do a close-faction gestalt not too dissimilar from our psychic gestalts, boosting and augmenting their abilities beyond what either one could add together . . . but while the whole ends up greater than the sum of its parts, it’s not by that much. Scrying and overwriting the future is an uphill struggle.”

  “I’m amazed you even try, sir,” Mara said dryly.

  “I’m trying to work with the flow of Time,” Ia said, flicking her hands emphatically. “I’m not trying to make any rivers climb any mountains. I’m just building canals and levees to guide the course of events down a valley-sized swath of those vast plains.” She paused to think for a moment, then quickly lifted a hand to smother a yawn. “’Scuse me . . . been up for too many days straight.”

  “Ahh, ‘To sleep, perchance to dream,’” the private quoted. “Although if I’m tired enough, I just snap the sheets up over my head to block out the light, and I drop like a stone.”

  The imagery conjured by Mara’s words made Ia pause and frown. Sunrise gave her a bemused, inquiring look. Ia started to shake it off, then stilled her head. “That just might . . .”

  “That just . . . what, sir?” Mara asked.

  Without waiting to think about it, Ia closed her eyes, flipped her mind onto the timeplains, grabbed hold of temporality, and heaved with a fierce mental shout.

  (TIME!)

  Everything rocked. Dust snapped up from the too-clear fields and streams around her—no, not mere dust, fog. She snapped again, harder, shoving everything into a massive tapestry sheet instead of a vast prairie. Yanking up a strip of her own life-thread, Ia spun and cracked it like a whip for her third attack, visualizing hard the task of removing anyone else from actively scrying the future. The sine wave of her efforts smacked into one, two silvery soap bubbles, flinging the aliens off that sheet with outraged telepathic screeches. A fourth, hard lash of the timestreams . . . met no resistance.

  Dropping back into her body, Ia landed with a nauseating bump, like the way she sometimes woke with a jolt from a dream about falling. From the stunned, pale look on her face and the hard way Mara swallowed, Ia’s little trick had resulted in a mind-quake. Taking advantage of the cleared timeplains, Ia quickly dipped her hands back into the waters, checking to see just how far out her efforts had rippled.

  . . . God! A three-block radius. Only three blocks . . . and brief enough, no one was injured, she realized. Relief washed through her. The move had been rather foolish without checking for that sort of thing first, but she hadn’t dared think about it first. Thinking about it beforehand meant carving a possibility canal in the timeplains, one which the Feyori could have checked in advance and maybe compensated for.

  But given how easily I snapped them loose, how hard and far they were flung off . . . I don’t think they can cling to the timeplains in the face of another, similar attack even if they know it’s coming, Ia thought. Not that I’m going to let myself get cocky and assume I can fling them off at will. Not when it churns my stomach and disrupts everyone around me. And next time . . . I think I’ll confine it very much to just the timeplains, now that I know I can shake them loose.

  I guess Time really is just one more form of energy . . . and as a half-breed Feyori, it’s an energy I can manipulate as well as touch.

  As for why it had only covered three mere blocks instead of many kilometers, she could only guess. For one, the mind-quake had been under her firm control, not triggered involuntarily. For another, she had kept it short. And for a third reason . . . she realized there was no crysium on this world other than what she herself wore under her clothes. Nothing was there to be absorbed into the local diet, and nothing radiating excess, psychically sensitive KI into the aether to amplify and piggyback her efforts.

  Sucking in a shuddering breath, Mara Sunrise blinked and shook off the aftereffects. “Shakk,” she cursed under her breath. “I just . . . I think I just saw the future. I don’t . . . I’ve never . . . Sir, did you do something, just now?”

  It wouldn’t do her any good to deny it. “I think I’ve figured out how to get the Feyori off my back. At least temporarily. And it took actual effort from me,” she admitted. Touching her stomach—or rather, touching the cloth covering the crystalline plates covering her stomach—Ia muttered, “I’m feeling nauseated like a trip through OTL, so I know I spent at least some kinetic inergy.”

  “How long will it last? Getting them off your back, I mean?” Sunrise clarified.

  “I’m not sure. I’ll need to check the timestreams while they’re still clear.” Closing her eyes, Ia focused her thoughts inward once more. She had almost forgotten why she needed to check the timestreams: to find out what had actually happened to her Company. But the first thing she needed to do was search for the life-paths of the two Feyori.

  Spotting the waters of their lives, she stayed firmly on the bank. Without touching the rippling surface, Ia watched the images flickering inside each alien’s life. She had an impression of some sort of facility with huge, blocky, metal objects, maybe an industrial manufactory. They seemed to be reeling, and didn’t seem inclined to reach for the timestreams again for at least an hour, maybe longer.

  Satisfied they would stay put for the moment, she turned her attention to A Company. Ia couldn’t see much of Meyun Harper’s life, just snatches here and there, but she could see the others. What she saw raised her brows. Her former Academy roommate, a man renowned for his brilliance when it came to mechanical problems . . . had taken the men and women under his command into combat?

  He’s actually carrying out combat maneuvers right now? Well, that would explain why I couldn’t reach them. Infiltration, sapper activities, and covert skirmishing do require long-range comm silence . . . Oh-ho! That’s the excuse he used? She double-checked the recent past, admiring the argument Commander Harper gave to Captain Roghetti. “If Captain Ia can ‘take a walk’ and stomp all over the Salik forces pursuing us all by herself, why can’t we do the same as a whole Company in her wake?”

  Except Roghetti’s crew stopped to reclaim their camp, and split off a couple Platoons to mop up the stragglers among the 1117th. So at least the perimeter’s secure once again. My crew overran the area far enough to give Roghetti’s Company a good buffer, came back just long enough to pick up fresh supplies, get a good night’s rest, and are now “taking a walk” themselves. She grinned for a few moments, watching them fight from a dozen riverbank viewpoints consolidated into a single, water-rippled image for convenience . . . then lost the urge to smile.

  The recent past. My five missing crew members. Right . . .

  Bracing herself, she headed upstream, traveling across streams shrunk down to rivulets for easy crossing. She moved back just a few days, to the moment when everything went to hell.

  The first one she encountered ended in a dried-up stre
ambed. She knew the woman. Helenne Franke . . . Private First Grade, 3rd Platoon C Alpha, served in the Navy five years, and very good at managing life support. Saved our lives at least twice in the last two years by keeping the fish alive in the fore-sector tanks. Liked playing Mozart when she was on duty, swore the plants grew better by it. Death by . . . oh God . . .

  She forced herself to look at the last few minutes and hours of Private Franke’s life. Eaten by the Salik, post-battle. Caught off guard in her sleep, she didn’t make it out of the tents before one of them collapsed, trapping her just long enough for the Salik to catch up to her. Grim, Ia forced herself to move on, to look for the other four.

  Two died at roughly the same time. Private Second Class Cald Feldman, C Gamma of the 2nd Platoon . . . dammit, a fantastic cross-discipline engineer even if he had that horrible temper problem. Like Sunrise, he had once been a sergeant. A Buck Sergeant. In his case, he had been reprimanded and demoted for nearly killing the drunken murderer of his fiancée, even though the man had sobered up enough to surrender himself to the Space Force’s military peacekeepers afterward. At least he died fighting, right alongside . . . oh, shakk.

  Private First Class Philadelphia Benjamin. A Epsilon, 2nd. Dammit! I liked her. She . . . dammit! Dammit dammit dammit . . .

  Closing her eyes, Ia didn’t quite block out the timestreams, but she did give herself a moment to grieve. Her family has already gone through too much . . . Ia counted the stout, wrong-limbed bodies falling around the pair in the waters of the past, holed up at the camp armory. She and Feldman died back-to-back, taking out a good . . . wow, a good twenty-five mechsuited Salik, that’s impressive for having no armor other than a couple of ceristeel breastplates.

  She checked the other streams nearby, then the alternate version, if things had worked out differently. What she found gave her a grim, unhappy satisfaction. It took the Salik a fair bit to bring ’em down. Not in vain, either; it looks like they focused enough of the enemy’s attentions to delay the main pursuit after us. If they hadn’t holed up and held off, it looks like the rearward three trucks would’ve been attacked, possibly even destroyed by incoming projectiles. I was on one of those trucks. I owe them my life . . .

  Shakking slag. Rearguard Stars are not a good thing when you have to hand ’em out to their family members along with the Black Heart. Two more deaths to lay at the metaphorical feet of those damned Feyori and their stupid Meddler politics! Why can’t they just believe that I want to help their damned Game continue? Yes, I don’t like it how they think of matter-based beings as nothing more than bugs to be toyed with or squished, but even they have a right to still exist five hundred years from now!

  She couldn’t do anything about any of that right now, though. Her ears were picking up a conversation, slow and distorted thanks to the racing of her mind. Pulling back from the timeplains just enough to grasp what was being said, she found a woman in Army Greens asking her and Sunrise if any “weird visions” had happened to the two of them as well. Giving her a curt nod, Ia flipped her mind back into the sun-drenched grass and went looking for the last two missing soldiers.

  Private Second Class Cynthia Gadalah, D Beta, 1st Platoon, and Private First Class Juan del Salvo, E Alpha 1st Platoon . . . and . . . oh thank God; they’re both still alive, she discovered, seeing both streams still flowing strong, side by side, well into the future. Entwined, even. Frowning, she moved closer, peering down into their life-waters.

  Oh. Oh my . . . Startled and amused, Ia politely left them to their activities in the farmhouse’s shower, and backtracked their history from the homestead where the pair had taken refuge. She didn’t blame them for taking advantage of their current moment of peace and rest. In fact, she found it amusing. Gadalah and del Salvo had been showering—separately—when the evacuation call came. Hearing it a bit late, they snatched up a few bits of clothing and ran, both dripping wet and naked, for the tree line.

  Ia watched as, in the past, the pair joined up with Private Pumipi of the Army: he remembered the trick they’d tried to play on that first, aborted sabotage mission, back when Mattox had been handed his first set of Ia’s battle plans. All three quickly coated themselves in mud, festooned their bodies with bits of flora, and crept their way in a tight line through the woods while the Salik searched for survivors.

  Shaped more or less like yet another allipede, the trio had evaded discovery and pursuit by moving slowly but steadily along every bit of cover they could find until they were well beyond detection range. Right now, in the present, Pumipi was downstairs in the same home, in the laundry room of their colonist-host, sorting through old clothes for the other two to wear when they finally got done showering. He was the only one with an arm unit, and had checked in with Roghetti not an hour or so before. Roghetti hadn’t been able to pass along the news of the other two surviving for the same reason Ia hadn’t been able to reach her Company: covert combat operations in enemy territory required comm silence for the duration of the mission.

  So the question about those two is . . . do I have to swap team pairings between those two, in case they’ve decided to bond romantically? . . . No, I don’t have the time to decide right now. That was a question for another time. Specifically, for when she had the freedom and luxury of picking new crew members to replace the three she had lost. There was another task awaiting her, first. The unpleasant one of tracking down the missing members of Roghetti’s Company. He would want to know what happened to the rest of them, too.

  Before she began, Ia pulled back enough to check on her surroundings. Private Sunrise was now sitting quietly across from her. Utterly unlike Helstead, who would have been wiggling or tapping or fiddling with her little hairpin knives, Mara Sunrise just sat there patiently, watching her CO, her borrowed workpad set aside for the moment.

  “. . . Back in your own head, sir?” she asked, noting it the moment Ia focused her gaze on the other woman.

  “For a few moments. Privates del Salvo and Gadalah are alive. Privates Benjamin, Feldman, and Franke . . . are not. I don’t know when the Feyori are coming back to muck up the timeplains again, so I’m going to take a few more moments to find out what happened to Roghetti’s missing crew,” Ia added.

  Sunrise shook her head slightly. “I don’t envy you that task, Captain. I have, however, been thinking about Feyori energy requirements. If they want to be able to blanket the timestreams so much that you cannot see reality . . . then they’ll need to be parked in or next to a large pool of energy. Probably more than one type since they surely need different types like we need different types of food.”

  Ia nodded. “That’s more or less correct. And I see where you’re going with that. Cross-reference all major sources of energy: hydrogenerator plants, smelting foundries, maglev trains, chemical plants, wind farms, solar farms . . . Coordinate with civilian resources to find any anomalous dips in power outputs, thermal measurements—even ask around to see if a bunch of hydrogenerators have been purchased recently, or gone missing. Keep up Protocol Mary Had a Little Lamb while you’re doing it.”

  “Of course, sir. I’m still thinking about crackers in my uppermost thoughts,” Mara agreed, pulling the portable workstation back into position in front of her. She flashed a quick smile. “Though I may have to move on to contemplating various cheeses if this takes much longer.”

  Ia returned the smile ruefully. The quip was funny, but Sunrise was also right about the task on her own plate. No one would ever envy a Commanding Officer who had to compile a dead-or-missing report. The only good thing in this whole situation was how clear her head now felt, her thoughts free to trail mental fingers and toes in the waters of past and future for the first time since the rout at Roghetti’s camp. And to snap the sheet-like surface of Time every now and again, to keep it influence-free.

  • • •

  The “bursts of strange visions” were the talk of the restaurant, when Private Sunrise final
ly insisted—politely but very firmly—that her CO go across the street and get some real food. The waiters and waitresses were greeting their customers with the typical aplomb of career servers, but they spent a few extra minutes chatting at each table about who had seen what and where they had been.

  Ia merely shrugged and ordered a pot of caf’ and two of the largest brunch specials on the menu for her caloric needs. After a quick glance at her commanding officer, Mara carried most of that conversation with the waiter serving their table, mentioning she’d seen herself crossing the street outside, going somewhere, but didn’t know where. Both women got an earful of local gossip about business calls preseen, conversations preremembered, and at least one averted traffic accident since the person had chosen to stop by for a slice of pie and a change of travel plans.

  All in all, Ia thought, barely listening to their waiter chatting about the mind-quake, at least it’s a much more pleasant experience for these people than the Fire Girl Prophecies everyone back home got. But I suppose that’s because the crysium in everyone’s diet is augmenting the visions back home.

  Her arm unit beeped, using the two-tone signal that said it was audio only. Fishing in her pocket, Ia pulled out her headset, hooking it over her ear. The waiter noticed her taking the call and smiled and excused himself, giving the two women a bit of privacy.

  “Ship’s Captain Ia, go,” she murmured.

  “Oh Captain, my Captain,” a very welcome, male voice murmured in her ear. Commander Harper sounded like he could have used a good ten hours of sleep from the roughness in his tone, but it couldn’t disguise the satisfaction coloring his mood. “I understand you tried to get ahold of me a little while ago?”