by Mark Bordner
THE CHILDREN’S WAR
“This is what the Allies are calling this thing,” Grozet stated, “I am bringing about the intentions of the Creator, to purify creation of these inadequate beings, and the Allies are saying that their children are going to stop me! They believe that the Creator has chosen to send legions of children to destroy me! They say that we are the evil ones! This is a religious war, yes, but I am not the evil one!”
Grozet slapped the paper down and paced the room, pouting. The senior officers looked at one another, each hoping that the other would be foolish enough to speak first.
Over-Marshal Garrow stood near the door, arms folded. He was the only one who could conceivably say anything without reprisal, “My Lord, it is not certain that the entire Allied military is
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comprised of these young adults. It appears to chiefly be in this one particular regiment, where the Mighty First battalion resides. Perhaps it is a symbolic unit, a sort of flag-carrier.”
One of the junior marshals dared to speak, “I know of this battalion. Word has come back from those who were stationed on the Ohio line who encountered them. Despite their youth, these Marines fight with a tenacity that rivals our own! The media coverage has elevated them to the status that they are held now.”
Grozet clenched his teeth, considering this, “Then it is imperative that we put an end to this ray of hope that has inspired such support. I want that battalion to be utterly and completely destroyed. We must crush this ridiculous threat to our morale!”
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Back in Winslow, the reception was in full swing. What had been intended to be a celebration with friends and family had turned into a public gathering that filled downtown. Music thumped and people danced in the streets, it was the first festive
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event since the war had broken out. After a few hours of this, the newlyweds found themselves becoming overwhelmed. The most perplexing part of it was the gaggle of photographers that insisted on recording their every move.
As evening fell, Minerva guided her husband away from the madness, and they found solace by sneaking up a staircase behind the church office, hiding in the bell tower. Finally somewhat alone in the small space beneath the bell, they watched the sea of people undulate below in rhythm with the music.
“Remember that day back in Hubbard?” Mark asked her with a grin. “When you and Amell dropped a mortar on that church tower to stop that sniper?”
Minerva smiled, “It rang all the way to the ground!”
Mark put an arm around his wife and fussed with her dress, “It’s getting dirty up here.”
She touched his cheek, losing herself in those green eyes, “Every time I really look at you, I remember the first time we met at the airport. Your eyes captured me. Now, they’re mine.”
She pulled him close and pressed her lips against his,
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softly, and with a hint of passion that she had always held in check before. It would not have been proper then, but now, she felt as if the barriers were gone. He was her husband now. He responded, pushing into the kiss, but pulled back after a few moments.
“You deserve everything to be as it should be, “Mark whispered throatily. “ To be as beautiful as you are. Let’s not do this here. “
Minerva smiled and hugged him, warmth that was as spiritual as it was physical flooding her being. She felt safe, and knew that this young man would always be there for her.
They happened to glance down at the crowd, and spotted their friends having quite a good time.
“There is something that no one would ever believe,” Minerva stated.
Ford, the big and tough sergeant major who preferred to always sport a half-frown, was standing atop a parked car, dancing the Macarena. Manny and the girls were egging him on along with the on-lookers.
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“We needed this,” Mark said. “Not just us, but all of those people. The fear and the suffering has gone on too long.”
Minerva nodded, “My momma never lost hope. She told me that every day she would pray, and never felt alone. She knew that God was watching.”
Mark thought about that, “I have to admit, I’ve never given religion much thought. I hope that He keeps watching over us, if that’s what you believe. We still have a long way to go against the Storians.”
His wife stroked his cheek, “Let’s not think of that until we have to. This two weeks is for us.”
Mark kissed her forehead, “You’re right.”
She looked up at the night sky and whispered a prayer of thanks, then, “We should try to get back to my mom’s house and pack. We leave for our honeymoon in the morning. Grand Canyon, here we come!”
They shared one more kiss, then moved to make their way
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back downstairs. Home, to consummate their marriage.
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It was sometime after midnight when her parents returned with their friends in-tow. In her room, groggy with sleep, Minerva snuggled against her new husband’s chest. The strong beating of his heart took her back in time to a particular evening spent in one another’s arms in a maintenance shaft of the super-carrier Goliath. She allowed the rhythm to carry her back into slumber with that memory catalogued among the other intimate moments of her young life.
Manny and Ford were wheezing with laughter, leaning on one another for support as they stumbled into the kitchen. Amell and Ecu were both completely frizzed, their fur standing out and ears twitching, giggling like school girls. Music from downtown could still be heard thumping from outside. Andrea, always the mother hen, settled them down and served coffee, trying to sober them up.
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Cleo sat next to Ford and fixed him with a stern gaze. Ford was a bit taken back, but gave the man his attention, one eyebrow lifting in question.
“You are the boss of these kids, yes?” Cleo asked.
Ford nodded, “Yes, Sir. I feel like they’re my own kids. I’d do anything for them.”
Cleo nodded, “Good. You are a good man, I can see it in your eyes, but you are making a big mistake. Big mistake.”
The sergeant major looked at him studiously, “What is it?”
Minerva’s father gestured toward Manny and the girls sitting at the other end of the table, clearly inebriated, “This is not right. They are too young to be drinking. I know they sacrifice a lot, face danger every day, but there are better ways to relieve stress. You care for them like a father, then you act like one.”
Ford felt his alcohol-induced buzzing lift, and it seemed as if gears clicked into place inside his head. This old man was right. He needed to balance being a friend with being a leader, and remember that these troopers were still essentially teen-agers. They were someone’s children, and he was responsible for them.
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Ford placed a hand on Cleo’s shoulder, “You’re right, Mister Carreno. I’ll do better.”
Cleo smiled warmly, “I know you will. Now, I ask you for a favor.”
“Name it.”
“You promise me to keep my little girl safe,” Cleo said in a low voice so that his wife could not hear. “Her mama will die if Minerva doesn’t make it home when this war is over.”
A lump filled Ford’s throat. He asked himself how he could possibly promise something like that. Every day in the field might be their last. The pleading desperation in her father’s eyes tugged at his soul, though, and he wondered how he could deny this man’s hope.
“I’ll do everything I can,” he told him. “That’s all I can promise you.”
Cleo nodded, “I understand. Thank you, Ford.”
Andrea interrupted them with the delivery of the coffee, and Ford pondered their conversation for a long time. There was no doubt in
his mind that at some point, the Allies would defeat
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Grozet, but he wondered how high the price would ultimately be.
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July 16th
With their new celebrity status, Ford was able to exchange the cargo van for a more comfortable passenger model from the Army depot. After a hurried breakfast, they were on their road trip, zipping west across I-40. One of the few advantages of the war, if one could call them so, was that interstate traffic was dramatically reduced. They passed mostly only the occasional freight trucker, and most of those were military models. Ford had to discipline himself to not over-do it on the speeding.
Manny rode shotgun, while Ecu and Amell occupied the next row, snapping photos with their cameras and chattering to one another about the scenery. Minerva and Mark were arm-in-arm on one side of the rear seat, with her parents next to them. Ford had found decent reception from a classic rock station and cranked
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up the tunes, bolting his head with the rhythm while Manny faked an air guitar. No one from the regiment would have believed the display of free-spirit from the rough-and-tumble group of friends without seeing it for themselves.
The terrain coming out of Navajo County changed in stages as they traveled further west. From the dry, reddish desert floor that resembled Mars, they climbed in altitude. The landscape became hilly with a forest of juniper, then progressed to mountain foothills thick with white pine, birch, oak, and quaking aspen. Passing Flagstaff, they caught a glimpse of the university town, back dropped by a long-dormant volcano and its ring of peaked mountains. By the second hour of their trip, they had arrived in another old railroad town by the name of Williams, and stopped for a break.
Despite its size and remote location, the little burg was still managing to sustain itself. It chiefly depended on tourism for its revenue, and had admittedly suffered during the outbreak of the war, but things were picking up for it once again--- as soldiers began to earn their rotation for rest. Williams was a part of the
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gateway to the Grand Canyon, and the new military tourist market had begun to restore its livelihood.
This was especially so among the Attayans, who were eager to take advantage of their presence on Earth to explore its sights within the Free Zone. There was a heavy presence of them in town at any given time. This had been as much a marvel for the Williams residents who lived there, as it had been the Attayan’s first time meeting the alien Humanoid race. Even though the Trade Alliance had been in place for a century, inter-world travel was still prohibitively expensive for most from either planet, and face-to-face meetings were extremely rare as a result.
Thankfully, there was no sign of any media present in town. Ford’s group had grown tired of the fussing and exaggerated attention. It was very relaxing to simply be themselves and figuratively let their hair down.
After recharging the van’s fuel generator, they found a steakhouse that had real steaks, supplied by the U.S. and European Surface Navies, and feasted. The restaurant was packed with diners, most of them military, and the majority of that number
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Attayan. It was nice to simply blend in to the crowd, and for the first time to actually be able to pay their bill--- an astounding one at better than two hundred credits, but well worth the price.
Now with the radio frequency picking up an up-beat country music station, they continued the last leg of their journey northward toward the canyon, blissfully unaware of the reconnaissance drone following them from the air, its unique design keeping it invisible to the unaided eye.
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GNN headquarters
Los Angeles, California
Sitting together in the editing booth, a man and a woman watched one of the many monitors mounted on the bank before them. This one in particular was a birds-eye view of a white passenger van on its way to the Grand Canyon. The drone had been following it since it departed Winslow, and it had faithfully
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captured everything--- was still doing so. It possessed zoom-in and sound pick-up capabilities that rivaled those of military design, and was paying for its exhorbant cost in a big way.
The executive producer, a grossly over-weight man who never seemed to stop perspiring even in an air conditioned room, watched the feed with glossy eyes while he habitually wetted his lips with his tongue. He was extremely pleased with the feed that his crews had transmitted from the wedding and its all-night reception, even capturing the intimate conversation between the newlyweds when they thought they were alone in the bell tower of the church. This was pure, heart-felt chick-flick material that was sky-rocketing their ratings among the housewife segment. Money was pouring in hand and foot.
Sitting next to him was an African-American woman in her mid-thirties, pretty even without make-up, who had recently taken the prime-time anchor desk to replace the late Jessica Moss. Moss had been killed on Pala, covering the Storian invasion of its capital city. This new anchorwoman had been reviewing the more recent tapes with her boss and felt a wash of mixed emotions
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tugging at her. She knew that following this group of kids from the Marine battalion had turned into a galactic sensation, and this new thread of romance was catapulting their ratings, but she couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt in the manner that they were doing so.
The producer, whom everyone only had ever known as Tom Thomas, noticed her discomfort, and managed to tear his gaze away from the screen long enough to look at her.
“What’s eating at you?”
The anchorwoman, Lisa McClain, shifted in her seat, uncomfortable under his scrutiny. She searched for her words carefully, knowing that he was as much a fan of this melodrama as his viewers were.
“I just wonder if we’re crossing the line between good field reporting and invasion of privacy,” she told him as gently as she was able.
Despite her attempt to avoid upsetting him, Thomas still became emotional, “This is the best stuff we’ve put on the air in decades!” He exclaimed. “Our viewership has risen ten-fold,
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no, a hundred-fold! And, it’s still growing by the day. That wedding episode ranked top on every network across the galaxy, and we were the ones who provided the feed. You and I are millionaires, Lisa, and it’s just going to keep getting better!”
Lisa nodded, forcing a smile, “I know, Tom, it’s just that, well…”
“What, what?” He goaded with impatience.
She motioned to a still-photo of the bride and groom at the altar, kissing, “These kids, Tom. They’re children doing the unthinkable, being thrown into battle and dying by the droves. Then, this one thread of happiness happens to rise from the cinders, and we’re harvesting it as if it’s a cash crop. These young lovers managed to find one another in all of this madness, and what we’re doing just seems, I don’t know, indecent. I feel as if we’re peeping through their bedroom window!”
Thomas grinned, shaking his head, and patted her knee condescendingly, “It is indecent, and it’s also what every viewer in the Trade System is screaming for! We’re getting richer by the hour!”
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“Rich,” she said with growing frustration. “Will those two kids ever see a credit of it? Will any of them?”
The producer shrugged, “Maybe. If they survive the war, I imagine their celebrity status will catch up with them. The movie industry is already casting for a motion picture.”
“If they survive the war,” Lisa sneered, now fully enraged. “That’s all they are to you, isn’t it? A tool to fill your bank account!”
Thomas’ smile faded, “Don’t forget that your bank account is growing, too.”
“You know where you
can stick that money,” she glowered, sitting on the edge of her seat.
He looked at her for a long time, seeming to weigh her words, “So, are you quitting?”
Lisa shook her head, looking at the newlyweds, “No. I’m the only one who really cares about them, it seems. If I leave, you’ll just find some greedy twit who’ll have no qualms in serving them out like a gourmet meal.”
Thomas relaxed a little, then, “Just remember that I’m your
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boss. I don’t like it when you talk to me in that tone.”
She inwardly cringed at his pouty, childish statement, wanting nothing more than to kick him in the groin. Lisa had to get up and leave the room, get some air, have a good cry in a quiet corner. Her heart went out to those kids, and she felt totally helpless in being unable to protect them from this exploitation.
In storming down the hallway, she was brought to an abrupt halt before a poster that someone had tacked to the wall. It was one of the promotional billboard-type displays.
HERE COMES THE MIGHTY FIRST!
A row of tanks was flanked by the armored infantry, marching over the horizon. The now familiar faces of A-Company were featured across the top, just under the lettering.
Lisa reached out and touched them, as a parent would touch the photo of their child, and she wept.
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The Grand Canyon, Arizona
After waiting through the long vehicle queue at the park entrance, Ford followed the flow of traffic to the lower rim and patrolled the parking lots until he was able to find an open slot. They made their way to the lookout point and stood in awe of the view. The layered rock dropped in a staggering pattern to the canyon floor, such a breath-taking sight that it was difficult to grasp the concept that a river had carved such an eternal, monumental path through the Earth.