Redemption's Shadow

by Rick Partlow

  They were running in a crease across a tabletop of broken and checkered sandstone and the only way off was straight down, straight into the arms of the onrushing infantry, and that machine-gun would be in range in seconds. Lila had been right. They were going to die anyway and might as well have made a run for it in the truck.

  “We need to split up!” she yelled to Constantine. “We have to scatter so it can’t take us all down at once.”

  It was the counsel of desperation. She knew it as she said it. They’d be sacrificing one or two of their number just to buy the rest a few minutes, an hour more of life, however long it took the infantry to catch up with them. If by some miracle one of them survived, they were still a good fifteen kilometers of open ground from the Run.

  Constantine had stopped in his tracks and she thought at first that he was considering her advice, but when he looked back there was despair in his eyes and he was waving them back.

  “Go!” he said, motioning the way they’d come. “Go back, it’s another mech!”

  Her eyes widened. She’d been so focused on the Hopper, she hadn’t even noticed it. It was no light scout though, it was an assault mech, broad-shouldered and upright, the model they called the Valiant. It was on the run, pounding a pace across the draw between two hills only a kilometer ahead, lined up on an intercept course for them.

  She wanted to run, but the strength seemed to run out of her legs, constricted by a fist of stultifying heat, sucked away by the hopelessness of certain death. Constantine was still yelling at her, but all she could bring herself to do was stare at the oncoming Valiant and wait for the inevitable end.

  Something brighter than the sun flashed at the assault mech’s right arm and a crackling static discharge of plasma arced across the sandstone draw as the laser that was the Valiant’s primary weapon lashed out with scintillating fury. And struck the Hopper directly in the cockpit.

  She jerked as if she’d been slapped, as if she were descending a staircase and expected another step and had instead met solid ground. The Hopper disappeared in a halo of sublimated metal, the burning gas hiding the ugliness of the Jeuta pilot being incinerated by the heat of the laser between one step and the next. The birdlike, metal beast swayed sideways, its balance lost, and crashed to the ground in a grinding, metallic crunch that rolled over the hills.

  “Jesus,” Katy breathed, the word a prayer rather than a curse. “It’s one of ours!”

  The Valiant’s jump-jets roared and it rose thirty meters over the draw, skimming just over the top of the next hill and coming down on the road less than five hundred meters behind them, coming down with a hard thump in a cloud of dust. Its machine-guns were already stuttering, firing down at something in the road—the Jeuta infantry, she realized. They’d followed Katy and the rest of the group up the road and if any of them tried to escape the mech, they’d be heading right for them.

  “Look out,” she called back to the others, stepping up beside Lila just as the first of the Jeuta soldiers came up over the crest of the hill.

  She thought it was a male, though it was often hard to tell with Jeuta unless they were standing right beside each other. He surely seemed big enough to be a male and the thick, hulking armor made him appear even larger, almost concealing how huge and heavy the rifle he carried had to be. Its muzzle told the story, though, at least 20mm, fed from a magazine as thick as a man’s forearm and thirty centimeters long. One hit from a weapon like that would blow a hole through a human big enough to see through.

  The Jeuta helmet had no visor, and the thing’s shark-like eyes stared back at Katy from beneath pronounced brow ridges, its skin thick and rubbery. Then that face disappeared in a mist of red, in chorus with the ear-splitting blast of Lila’s shotgun and the Jeuta soldier pitched backwards, clattering back down the hill with the ringing impact of metal armor and rifle against sandstone.

  Katy pulled the older woman down into a crouch beside her before the next one charged at them, firing blindly as it came. The report of the massive rifle seemed as loud as the ETC cannon on a mech, but the bullets soared over their head on comet-tails of tracer fire. Katy wanted more than anything to bury her head under her hands and find cover from the intimidating weapon, but she and Lila held the only guns among them and were their first, last and only line of defense. She lined up her pistol, keeping the red dot of the sight right where the Jeuta’s face would be when he topped the rise.

  She hadn’t had the chance to pull the trigger when the Jeuta seemed to explode, a long burst of machine-gunfire ripping through him sidelong. The Jeuta disappeared back down the trail, skidding along the rock and leaving a stream of red behind him, the top of the Valiant’s torso sticking just above the top of the hill like a giant out of legend. The machine-guns kept firing, one burst after another for another twenty or thirty seconds, and she wondered how much ammo the machine carried for them.

  When the weapons fell silent, it took her a moment to realize it, so battered were her ears from the jackhammer rhythm of the guns. Smoke drifted upward from the barrels protruding from the ball-like turrets at the Valiant’s hip, curling around its shoulders as it came to a stop. The canopy cracked open and a man pulled himself through it, scrabbling up the emergency access ladder to stand on the machine’s shoulder, just about at eye level with them.

  He pulled off his helmet and while the slightly chubby cheeks seemed a bit redder than when she’d last seen him, the dark beard a bit less neatly trimmed, there was no mistaking Colonel David Bohardt for anyone else.

  “Thank Mithra you’re alive, ma’am,” he said, shaking his head, his shoulders sagging with obvious relief. “Last we heard you were heading for the spaceport and you probably know what happened to it.”

  “We thought everyone in town was dead,” she told him, only then remembering to safe her pistol and shove it back into its holster.

  Beside her, Lila still had her shotgun stock against her shoulder and Katy took a moment to push the barrel downward.

  “It was a close thing,” Bohardt told her, “but we managed to get most everyone who wasn’t already down at the port back to the Run.” Pain flashed across his baby face in a twitch through his cheek and a flicker of a wince. “We got about a solid company and that’s it. We did get about half the Rangers and most of the civilians out there, though rations are a bit tight.”

  “How did you know we were here?” Nicolai Constantine asked, coming up beside Katy, offering her a hand and helping her to her feet. The intelligence officer seemed a bit more composed now that death was no longer imminent.

  “We didn’t know it was you,” Bohardt explained, “but we have drone sensors flying around out here to keep an eye out for the Jeuta. They picked up that Hopper and I knew they had to be searching for someone.” He grinned crookedly. “I probably should have sent one of my junior warrants, but honestly, I was nervous about anyone else leading the enemy back to us, so I came myself.” His eyes flickered around them, the smile fading away. “And Mithra’s truth, if we stay out here much longer, they’re going to spot us. You need to get back to that truck and follow me.”

  “I don’t know who the hell you are, mister,” Lila said, chuckling hoarsely, resting the barrel of her shotgun back against her shoulder. “But right now, I’d follow you just about anywhere.”

  4

  You got this,” Terrin assured him, squeezing his brother’s shoulder. “You’ve stared down bigger enemies than this.”

  Logan tossed a grin over his shoulder. Something about his brother struck him as incongruous for a moment, and he realized it was the fact Terrin was dressed in civilian clothes for the first time in months.

  “This is the Council of the Guardianship of Sparta,” he reminded Terrin. “They’re not supposed to be the enemy.”

  “Theoretically,” Terrin allowed, the look on his long face full of skepticism.

  And he had a point. For the last several months, the nobles gathered in the House of the Council this evening had been
quite content to let Rhianna Hale occupy the office of the Guardian rather than risk a civil war to rid themselves of her.

  Maybe I should have forced them to meet me at the palace. But he shook his head slightly, shooting down his own idea. No, this will be a hard enough sell without making them feel like I’m the usurper.

  The Council chamber was a place his father had avoided during his time as Guardian, only appearing once a year to provide the Annual Report as required by the Compact of Argos. Stepping into the center of the circle, he understood why. The Council had a high opinion of itself, as evidenced by the raised ring of seats towering nearly two meters over the floor, the façade constructed of highly polished white marble panels, each one hand carved into a symbol of the district or colony the Councilor represented. The center position belonged to the Chief Councilor, an elected position voted on by all fifty members of the body, and the seat of the Chief Councilor was another half-meter taller than the others, the marble panel inlaid with the Spartan eagle.

  The lighting of the place was another part of the dramatic effect. Each Councilor seemed to have their own individual glow, as if a separate favor of Mithra shone down on every one of them, while the center of the circle was lit from all sides at a horizontal level, emphasizing the gaze of the Council upon their supplicant. The floor was polished wood, hand-painted with the same rousant eagle crest surrounded by a crown of stars, designed so that the one in the center of the circle, facing the Chief Councilor, would also be staring down at the eyes of the eagle.

  Logan ignored the pageantry and the theatrics and stared up into the eyes of the Chief Councilor, Janis Tarzarian. She was a tall, statuesque woman and she’d been old for as long as he could remember, had been first elected Chief Councilor before he’d been out of diapers. She hadn’t exactly been an ally of his father, but the two had managed to make their professional relationship work. Looking up into her hazel eyes, set in a face that might have been carved into the granite of some ancient temple, he wondered how Jaimie Brannigan had managed it.

  “This meeting of the Council is called to order!” The call of the sergeant-at-arms coincided with the hollow impact of the butt of his solid-brass staff against the wooden floor, and the background murmur ceased, plunging the whole chamber into silence.

  It might have been his imagination or it might have been a trick of the lighting, but it seemed to him as if the darkness closed in around him, isolating him from the rest of his party back through the narrow gate into the entryway. There was no public viewing area of the Council. Their actions were not for public display and he knew the idea that they offered some populist counterweight to the monarchist rule of the Guardian was a carefully-tended fiction. The Council represented money, the families who controlled the economy of Sparta and wanted a say on how that money was spent. It had been so for centuries and whether Logan ruled for a day or thousand years, he was fairly sure he couldn’t change the arrangement without a significant amount of bloodshed.

  “Who comes before the Council of the Guardianship of Sparta?” the sergeant-at-arms asked. He was an older man, dressed in gold-chased ceremonial armor, his helmet fringed in imperial purple. “Who seeks to address the assembled wisdom of the representatives of the Dominion?”

  “I am Logan Brannigan,” he said, grateful his voice didn’t choose an inopportune time to break, “the rightful Guardian of the Dominion of Sparta, and I seek to address the Council.”

  “I know who you are, Logan,” Janis Tarzarian said, her voice a rumble, deeper than any other woman’s voice he’d ever heard. “I’ve known you since you were a lad barely up to your father’s hip, dressed in a child’s imitation of a mech pilot’s uniform.” He searched for a sign of mockery or insult in the words but found none. Which was not to say it couldn’t have been there, simply that she was too wise and canny to let it show. “You say you are the rightful Guardian of Sparta, but it is we, the Council, who appoint the Guardian.”

  “And did you appoint the last one?” he demanded, not backing off a centimeter. “Did Rhianna Hale present herself before this body and beg on bended knee for your approval?”

  There was a low, troubled mumbling at that, and he thought perhaps he could detect the guilt and embarrassment behind the softly-spoken words.

  “Rhianna Hale was a usurper,” Tarzarian admitted. “She killed your father and seized his throne, but she had the Home Guard at her side and the Council has no armies, no starships, no mecha at our disposal. We did what we could do, and perhaps, given more time, we might have been able to force her out.”

  Even the Chief Councilor didn’t seem convinced by her defense of the power of the Council. Logan suppressed a feral snarl, knowing this was his time.

  “Chief Councilor Tarzarian,” he said, projecting his voice as he’d learned in the Academy, sending it booming across the chamber, “honored Councilors, I come to you with the blood of Rhianna Hale on my hands, and I feel no shame in it. I come to you having made peace with our ancient enemies in the Starkad Supremacy and I feel no shame in it. I have fought for the survival of Sparta, for her supremacy over her enemies and her security against those who would loot and pillage her. I have lost family, lost friends who were as close as family, lost…”

  He felt the sob in his chest but wouldn’t let it break free. He choked it back, jammed it down inside him and stomped on it. If he let it loose now, he would be throwing away everything he and Katy had fought for.

  “…lost my wife and child. I’ve given Sparta all I have, and I ask nothing in return but the chance to keep giving. I understand the concerns some of you had about my father, and his father before him. You worry, as Rhianna Hale did, that Sparta will turn into Starkad, a monarchy ruled by a bloodline. And I worry it will be something even worse, a petty dictatorship where succession is achieved through coup and assassination.”

  He inhaled deeply, letting the breath steady his voice, settle the twisting in his stomach.

  “I am here this day to pledge to you that I intend to ensure the Guardianship does not become an inherited position. I am here to pledge to you that I will be the last Brannigan to sit in the Guardian’s throne. When the time comes that you of the Council feel I should be replaced, it will not be anyone from my bloodline who does it.”

  Another murmur, louder this time. That had impressed them, as he’d intended it to. Time to drop the other shoe.

  “For too long, Sparta has been ruled by the specter of the Empire. We have been ruled by old, powerful families from the days before the Succession Wars for the last four hundred years, appointing Guardians to keep the flame of the Empire lit, waiting for its return. But the Empire is dead, and I do not mourn its passing, not anymore. I’ve been out to the edges, ladies and gentlemen, and I have seen the price the average person is still paying for its excesses.”

  He paced around the circle of light, stepping on the old imperial eagle, treading on its crown of stars. It was bad manners, nearly sacrilegious and he simply didn’t care.

  “I’ve seen the price our people have paid for the folly of settling half-terraformed worlds that can’t remain habitable without constant upkeep, for the assumption the Empire would always be there to fix things and make them right. I’ve seen the price they’ve paid for the political divisions allowed to fester, the divisions that led to the fall and to the splitting up of what remained into the Dominions.”

  His lips peeled away from his teeth in a snarl.

  “And I have seen the price they have paid, that I have paid, that we are paying right now for the ultimate act of hubris, the creation of the Jeuta. Rather than learning from the devastation of the AI wars that led to the fall of the Republic, learning the lesson that humans are not gods, that they are not qualified to create new life and attempt to subjugate it, they simply decided the problem hadn’t been the creation of slaves, it had been in making them too intelligent. So they gave us the Jeuta, genetically engineered slaves, mortal this time, flesh and blood, and assumed thei
r engineering would keep them too stupid to rebel. I think we all know how that turned out.”

  He cocked his head to the side, regarding them, turning in place so that each could meet his eyes.

  “I have learned the lesson they did not. I have learned humility. I have learned my own limitations and the limitations of our society. Sparta is not going to reform the Empire, not with military might, not with lost Imperial technology, not with mercenaries, not at all. So much misery and pain and death have been caused over the last half a millennium by men and women who dreamed of ruling all humanity and were willing to sacrifice the lives of others to make their dreams come true. It is my firm belief, forged in the fires of combat, of death, of war, that the wars between the Dominions in the effort to grow territory and reunite the Empire are a waste of lives and money. The efforts of the Dominion of Sparta should concentrate on securing our territory, our citizen’s lives, from the Jeuta, and eradicating the pirates and bandits and raiders who plague our borders.”

  He raised his hands in front of him, flexing his fingers.

  “I have controlled the power of life and death, honored Councilors. I have sowed destruction with technology lost for a thousand years, doing my duty, following the orders I was given. I have slain the enemy as defined by the goal of reuniting the Empire. And yet I have come to believe that the only thing I have done that has honestly served the cause of Sparta was when I put a bullet through the head of Rhianna Hale before she could involve us in a suicidal war against Starkad.”

  He spread his hands out toward them.

  “If you accept me as Guardian, the undeclared war we’ve fought against Starkad is over. It’s a fait accompli. Yes, they are our rival in business and in politics, but we will continue that rivalry with the same end in mind: to secure civilization against those who would end it. I have a signed agreement committing them to a mutual defense accord guarding all of the Dominions against pirates, bandits and Jeuta raiders. My next step will be to work to get this accord also signed onto by Modi, Shang, and Mbeki.”