by Rick Partlow
“Secure this one,” Teemu ordered, motioning toward the injured man. “But gently, the Purpose damn you.”
Teemu saw the mech pacing behind him like an impatient child eager to play.
“Centurion,” the pilot called, her voice loud in the earpiece of his helmet. “Do you wish me to pursue the others now?”
“No,” Teemu said, shaking his head though the female couldn’t see it. He bared his teeth in satisfaction, watching his troops bind the surviving human’s arms and legs. “I think we have what we need.”
8
Thank you all so much for coming,” Logan said, nodding as the last of the ambassadors filed out the door of the small conference room. It was larger than his private offices, but still small enough to be cozy with him and four other people. “I hope to hear a reply from your governments soon.”
Two men, two women, the representatives of the other Dominions to Sparta’s capital, they were all, theoretically, the best and the brightest Starkad, Modi, Shang and Mbeki had to offer. To Logan, they seemed like stuffed shirts, their eyes vacant, their words meaningless.
Logan held his genial smile despite the darkness of his thoughts, keeping it painted across his face like false advertising until the last of them was gone and the door shut. Finally, he let himself sag back against the oaken solidity of the conference table, the breath going out of him as if he’d just run ten kilometers over the Academy obstacle course.
His eyes went to the small liquor cabinet in the corner and he’d taken a step toward it, a shot of vodka on his mind, when a knock on the door stopped him short.
“Oh, what the hell now?” he murmured.
He was sure he hadn’t scheduled any other business for the rest of the day. He had left instructions to be notified immediately if there was any word from the Shakak, though. Panic and hope fought deadlier and more passionate battles inside his chest than he’d ever faced against Starkad and he nearly staggered on his way back to the door.
He’d expected Colonel Stone, but instead, Donnell Anders stood in the doorway, hands clasped behind his back in the semi-formal at-ease position that seemed to be his natural stance.
“You look as if you just went a few rounds in the ring at unarmed combat training,” Anders told him, running an appraising glance up and down. “Diplomacy wearing at you already?”
“I don’t know how those morons take a shit without instructions from their governments.” Logan, waved the man inside and then pushing the door shut. It was solid walnut and slammed with a satisfying thump.
Logan broke out the bottle of vodka from the cabinet and picked up two glasses, looking a question at Anders. The older man shook his head. Logan shrugged and set one of the glasses down before filling the other for himself.
“I’m a little surprised to see you here,” he admitted. He downed half the glass in one gulp and savored the burn of its descent. “Last I heard, you were spending all your time with your family. Not that I could blame you.” He hadn’t meant the last sentence to sound so bitter.
Maybe it’s the vodka. Or maybe I just need more. He drank the rest of the glass, just in case.
“Talking to my family has, I think, finally put things into perspective,” Anders said, not noticing Logan’s tone, or perhaps pretending not to notice it.
The conference room had a huge bay window looking out over the interior courtyard three stories below. The flowers in the garden were all in bloom and they fairly glowed in the rays of the late morning. Anders leaned against the one-way glass, staring down at the paved walk running through the topiaries.
“Diplomats can be useful, if you can refrain from beating them about the head,” he said. “I assume you’ve tried to get help from Starkad with the Jeuta incursion. It's closer to them than to us.”
Logan snorted softly in dark amusement. Anders was always the instructor, the teacher, thinking of him as a young officer who needed guidance.
“I may be new at this, but I’m not a complete idiot. And even if I were, Colonel Stone wouldn’t let me get away with it. Ambassador Grunfeld assures me I have the full support of his government in opposing the Jeuta aggression. What form that support will take is up to Aaron Starkad and, at any rate, it’s not going to get there soon.”
The vodka splashed into the glass with drunken sloppiness. When it was half full, he wondered if he should add some tonic water or fruit juice, but emotional inertia filled the glass to the top. It was all he could do to stop pouring before it overflowed.
“It’s a bit early for that, isn’t it?” Anders’ tone was firm, but couched in an honest, gentle concern that made it hard for Logan to feel annoyed at him.
“Is it?” Logan wondered. “Is it still early if you never went to bed in the first place?”
“It won’t help, you know. I thought it would, at first, after your father died, when I was sitting under house arrest, waiting for the hammer to fall. But it just made things muddier, less clear, without ever really dulling the pain.”
“Like everything else important in my life,” Logan replied, taking another swallow from the glass, “I suppose I’ll have to find that out on my own.”
He could sense Anders’ disapproving stare without even turning back toward the man.
“Anyway,” he went on as if the exchange hadn’t taken place, “at least Starkad guaranteed us safe passage through their systems to deal with the situation on our own. Which is more than I got from any of the others. Modi is pissed we aren’t going to do anything about the systems Starkad gobbled up while Hale was in charge. Shang still hasn’t forgiven me for not falling into the trap they set for us when we were on the run and looking for help. And, of course, Mbeki has its nose out of joint about the fact we haven’t shared the data from Terminus with them yet.”
He shrugged, not without a twinge of guilt.
“We did promise them when they agreed to safeguard Revelation from Starkad, and I do intend to keep the promise.” He sniffed. “Just not yet.”
“Not until you feel Sparta has enough of a head start on them,” Anders assumed.
Logan pointed at him with the hand holding the glass of vodka.
“Give the ex-General a prize.” He squinted at the man. “Do you still want it to be ex? I could use a general about now. I need someone I can trust to run the Home Guard.”
Anders laughed, spontaneous and loud, shaking his head.
“Oh, dear God, Logan, isn’t that the definition of tempting fate? Putting someone of whose loyalty you’re not certain in charge of the military force behind the last two revolutions?”
“I’ve never questioned your loyalty, Donnell,” Logan told him. “You’ve always been loyal to Sparta. Maybe not to me, but not to yourself and your own ambitions, either. Always Sparta.”
Anders rubbed his thumb and forefinger across his eyes, as if he could wipe away the reality of the situation.
“And what happens if what I believe is best for Sparta isn’t what you tell me to do?”
“Then maybe I’m wrong.” Logan finished off what was left in the glass and set it down on the table with a recklessly loud thump. Mom, he thought, would have yelled at him to use a coaster. “I’m not perfect. I wasn’t born for this job, despite what my father thought. I honestly hoped I’d never have to take it. I just wanted to be a soldier. A month ago, if this had happened, I’d have been on the Shakak, going to rescue the survivors on Revelation myself. Now, I have to sit here and listen to gasbag politicians and trust someone else to find out if Katy’s even still alive.”
“Well, that’s the secret to being a leader, isn’t it?” Anders said, resting a hand on Logan’s shoulder hesitantly, as if he wasn’t sure how the younger man would react to it. “Figuring out who you can trust.”
Humans, Alvar reflected, were so fragile.
The one they called a Ranger hadn’t lasted more than two hours. An hour to get him to talk and just under that again for him to finally die. He wasn’t sure if it was shock or blood los
s or simply heart failure from the pain that had finally claimed the man, but he’d stopped talking, blissfully stopped the annoying screaming and just…stopped.
What was left of him was a broken pile of rags on the blood-soaked ground, redder still in the dying light of dusk. Alvar toed the corpse in the side, just to be sure, but the human wasn’t breathing and his eyes were wide and unseeing.
A broken toy. Yet the humans speak as if there’s something transcendent within them, something to survive the cessation of chemical processes and electrical signals and go on to some afterlife where they will be rewarded or punished based on their behavior. How ridiculous.
The Purpose seemed much more sensible to him. No nebulous afterlife, no immaterial and unprovable soul, simply a plan for the Jeuta to attain their rightful place in the universe. None of them, individually, was bigger than the Purpose, yet none knew which would play a crucial role. It could be any of them that brought about the Purpose.
It could be me.
Centurion Teemu stood off to the side with a pair of his soldiers, watching with pride and satisfaction in his stance. The male thought quite highly of himself and expected a jump in his social status for accomplishing their objective. Alvar supposed he’d get one, but it galled him to see a soldier expecting a reward for doing the job they’d been assigned. He’d even let just two humans on foot disable one of his vehicles and kill two of his troops.
“Centurion,” Alvar told him, gesturing toward the body. “Have this disposed of.”
Teemu saluted and turned to bark orders at his men, not, Alvar noticed, deigning to get his own hands dirty. Alvar contained his expression of disgust until the man was gone, but showed it to Turo, his second in command. The big man shared his opinion of Teemu and expressed it eloquently with a stream of spit on the ground in the direction the other centurion had taken.
“So, now we know,” Alvar went on, tapping a finger against the butt of his holstered sidearm. He grabbed the earpiece from the communications unit in the assault vehicle Teemu had driven up in and touched a control to connect to the relay shuttle.
“Get me Praefectus Magnus,” he ordered once they responded.
“You act as if she’s your superior,” Turo said in mild reproof as he waited for the connection. “As if you need to report in to her for every bit of progress we make.”
“She’s not my superior,” Alvar insisted. “But I need her, and she knows it.” He grunted. “It will not always be so.”
“Magnus here.” The female’s voice was grating in his ear. “I certainly hope this is good news, Primus Pilus.”
“And this time it is,” he told her. “We captured one of their Rangers and forced him to talk. We now know Logan Brannigan was off-planet when we attacked, along with his command group.”
“That is informative,” Magnus allowed, “but hardly what I would call good news. We were unable to accomplish our main objective, and the man has no reason to return.”
“Ah, but that’s the beauty of it, Praefectus. He does. He was off-world, but his mate was not. She’s here, still alive and heavy with his child. And now, I know exactly where she is.”
“Surely he wouldn’t be foolish enough to return simply for a mate. Someone of his social status could easily find a replacement.”
“You aren’t thinking like a human,” he reminded her. “Particularly this human. All my intelligence on him says he’s a sentimentalist, given to foolish displays of emotion despite his prowess in battle. And any good plan, Praefectus, has multiple contingencies. This is the beginning of our victory. Recall our ships from the outer system and prepare for maneuvers at my orders.”
He didn’t wait for her to argue with him, simply cut off the transmission with a satisfied sneer. He motioned to Turo.
“Assemble the troops. Mecha in the lead and infantry in support behind. We move out in an hour for the canyon the humans call the Run. It’s time to finish this.”
9
David Bohardt was beginning to question his life decisions.
He’d rarely regretted joining the Clan Modi military and had never once second-guessed leaving it to found Bohardt’s Bastards. Modi had been his home, but once he’d gotten to experience the rest of the Dominions, he’d come to realize how parochial and isolated the place was. Maybe it was the constant embattlement from other Dominions trying to gobble up the extrusions of Modi territory through the natural borders of Starkad and Shang, but the society of the smallest of the Imperial leftovers had grown insular and paranoid. Everything outside their borders was a threat, every stranger an enemy.
It was, perhaps, ironic that he’d been delivered from his insular outlook by a man who was ostensibly an enemy. Bohardt had been a young platoon leader, part of a landing force bent on taking contested territory near the Periphery, just another attempt by the Clan Modi High King, Flannery Rhodes, to expand their borders once more. It was a survival instinct, he supposed, grabbing at new worlds to make up for the ones lost to the bigger fish in the pond.
This particular world had been nothing to write home about, desirable mostly for the oil reserves beneath its oceans and biological diversity usually unseen on Periphery colonies. It had been valuable enough for the locals to hire a mercenary company to defend it, and they’d come damn near to winning. Afterward, when Bohardt had been processing the mercenary prisoners, their commander had offered him a job. It had seemed ballsy enough that Bohardt had actually considered it, and once his contract was up, he’d started his own mercenary company and never looked back.
Then things had begun to get wonky. He’d joined up with Wholesale Slaughter, which had seemed a good idea at the time. They were well-funded, well-equipped, and, most importantly, well-led. They were a ticket out of the vicious cycle of welching clients and impossible odds that were the life of a small-time mercenary unit. It had seemed like a great business decision, until he’d found out they weren’t actually in business.
That had been a tough sell to the troops. Most of his people were mercenaries because they didn’t want to be in someone else’s army, didn’t want to be tied down to one or another of the Dominions and their policies. Even when they’d found out Wholesale Slaughter was a cover for an intelligence operation for the Guardianship of Sparta, it hadn’t been so bad. They were still guns-for-hire, just working on a long-term contract.
The coup had changed all that. They’d been asked to throw their loyalty and their weight behind Logan, a commander they’d all come to respect, not just as a military commander but as a political leader. And they’d done it, but not without some doubts and complaints.
Did this mean they were all in the Spartan military? Hell, most of them weren’t from Sparta and had no special allegiance to the Guardianship. Were they going to have to swear loyalty to Sparta now?
The questions had been asked but not answered. Then they’d all been too busy fighting and getting ready to fight and no one had time to question anymore. Sitting under the cover of an overhang next to a line of mecha concealed by camouflage netting, sweating his ass off in the mid-morning glare, shoulder to shoulder with the woman he loved, he had the time.
It wasn’t that he blamed Logan for any of this, or thought he wasn’t worth supporting, but it wasn’t just himself he had to think about. Half of the original Bohardt’s Bastards mercenary company was dead, killed at the spaceport by the fusion blast, and the other half was stuck here in the Run, waiting for the Jeuta to get around to trying to kill them.
And he’d led them here.
“Whatcha thinkin’ about, darlin’?” Josephine Salvaggio asked him, the heat dragging her words into a lazy drawl.
He glanced around them, checking to see if any of the Rangers or mech pilots were nearby, but they were alone. He could tell her the truth, unburden himself. She’d probably tell him something reassuring and comforting, like how bad shit could happen no matter which path he’d chosen, and neither one of them would have felt any better.
“Just tha
t I’m glad we’re together,” he told her instead.
She smiled and squeezed his arm.
Good choice.
“David, are you busy?”
He’d heard the footsteps approaching from behind the small mountain of supply crates but he hadn’t known whose they were. In the daylight, everyone stuck to the cover of the overhangs, both to stay out of the heat of the primary star and to avoid any possible overhead surveillance. They’d been able to take out the Jeuta drones, primitive things slapped together from spare parts, but they couldn’t do anything about shuttle overflights.
It was Katy. She seemed particularly miserable this morning and he wondered if she’d been throwing up again. He knew there were other pregnant women among the civilians, knew there were families with small children, but somehow, he felt worse for her than for any of them. She’d been so close to leading a normal life, being away from all this. It didn’t seem fair.
“Oh, yeah,” he replied, waving a hand demonstratively. “I’m just up to my eyeballs in work here. ‘Fraid you’ll have to catch me later, ma’am.”
She smiled at that, which was good. He hadn’t seen her smile much, lately. She looked worn down, but then, they all did after so long out in the wilderness with only limited changes of clothes and no showers. You could only do so much with a sponge bath, and water supplies were limited.
“I was just wondering how the new people were settling in,” Katy said, leaning up against the rock, probably as much for the relative coolness of it as for support. “The ones Chloe and that Ranger corporal brought in.”
“I think they’re doing okay,” Bohardt said. “Chloe’s kind of taken charge of settling them in, but she went off with one of her friends to scout out the end of the Run closest to the city, to get an idea of where the Jeuta are.” He shrugged. “She’s supposed to be back soon, so I could send her to talk to you.”