by Mark Barber
“Buy me a drink, soldier boy?”
Tahl looked up to see Rhona, stunningly beautiful in an elegant dress of yellow, stood in front of him.
“Don’t look so surprised,” she smiled. “I can do feminine and respectable if the situation calls for it.”
“What’s the situation?” Tahl asked.
Rhona’s smile faded and she sat down next to him before taking one of his hands in hers.
“I’m here to take you out for the night. Hell, I’d spend my whole leave with you if you’d have me, but for tonight, I just wanna take you somewhere nice. We could go get a meal and talk, then go catch a movie, or find somewhere nice for a slow dance and a walk. A night where we can get away from everything and get to know each other better. We’ll get away from the city, go somewhere quiet out of town where none of the others will be, and we don’t need to be afraid of being seen together.”
“What about your brother?” Tahl asked.
“From what little you told me,” she said, “I knew your folks were never gonna show. I don’t mean to criticize, and your family business is none of mine, but I couldn’t have you come home to nothing. I couldn’t have you be alone. So I told my brother that we’d been delayed in theater by a couple of months and so he shouldn’t come out here.”
The enormity of the sacrifice she had made for him was not lost on Tahl. He looked across at her but felt too humbled to match her soft smile. He opened his mouth to say the three words which would change everything between them, the three words he knew he now felt, but decided she did not need that pressure in her life.
“You look beautiful,” Tahl said, “truly beautiful. You always do anyway, but never as much as you do right now.”
“Then we’re well matched,” she said as she stood again and offered her hand to him. “And thank you, the effort is all for you.”
As Tahl took her hand, linked his arm through hers, and walked away from the platform, the whole world very quickly seemed fine again, perfect even.
Epilogue
44th Strike Formation HQ
Lothar Major
Concord Core
6 weeks later
“Get off the grass!” Strike Leader Jemmel roared, her booming order making the two offenders jump and quickly dash off the shortcut and back to the long, winding path which snaked across from the accommodation area toward the gym.
“Glad to see the new promotion and the miniscule authority which comes with it hasn’t gone to your head,” Rhona remarked dryly as she walked alongside Jemmel. “I think I preferred you when you were dead.”
“I was about to say the same thing about you,” the shorter woman retorted, “but at least I had the common courtesy of getting everybody’s hopes up for far longer by staying dead for more than five minutes.”
The two walked along the impeccably maintained path, cutting through the short grass which enveloped the garrison as the early morning sun shone down from a cloudless sky. Tall trees of greens, yellows, and reds punctuated the gently undulating grounds. The 44th Strike Formation had been based at Lothar Major for two weeks, following a month of leave. Rhona still felt a gnawing guilt for only seeing her brother for a quarter of that; aside from the first week’s decompression therapy sessions and combat drug weening, the rest of it she had spent with Tahl.
“Turn that crap down!” Jemmel bellowed up at an open window in the troopers’ accomodation block as a tirade of offensive language washed out over a percussive beat accompanied by a simple rhythm. “There’re people trying to sleep after night duties!”
“You’ve got a lot of pent up anger,” Rhona remarked dryly. “If you want, I can have a word with the senior and see if we can transfer Lian Sessetti into your squad. So you two can…”
“How did you know about that?” Jemmel yelped. “He told you? That bastard!”
“To be fair, you’d just died and he was very tasteful about it,” Rhona said, “but yeah, I know. That must be really embarrassing for you. How will you cope?”
“Do you have an ‘off’ button? Seriously?”
Rhona’s attention was diverted by an archaic looking road vehicle which crawled slowly into the vehicle park by the company HQ, a steady stream of thin, white smoke wafting up from underneath its yellow bonnet. The vehicle came to a stop and Van Noor opened the door to step down onto one of the huge, black tires before vaulting down to the ground.
“I don’t know what time you’re running to, Senior, but ‘round here we start work at oh-eight-hundred,” Rhona called out, tapping two fingers on the back of her wrist in the universal gesture of warning somebody about being late – the origins of the gesture were long forgotten.
“Piss off, Kat!” Van Noor shouted back. “One of the big end bearings has gone and it’ll take me a bloody age to repair.”
“Where the hell did you find this, Senior?” Jemmel asked, quickening her pace to head over to the powerful looking yellow vehicle. “I’ve only seen these things in museums.”
“They’re an oddity for eccentrics or guys with really small genitals who feel the need to overcompensate,” Van Noor explained as he dragged his kit bag up onto one shoulder. “I used to build these for about twenty years. Now you ladies know what I did before I joined up.”
“Did Kat ever tell you what she did before the military?” Jemmel smiled slyly. “She used to get paid money to take her clothes off and have weird aliens fondle her boobs with their slimy tentacles. She doesn’t like to talk about it, though.”
“Alright, Jem, don’t be a bitch about it,” Van Noor sighed, “besides, Kat’s got a bit of ribbon on her shirt there which says she’s actually significantly, and I’ll use that word again – significantly – braver than you. Top of the morning to you both, anyway, carry on.”
Van Noor walked off to the HQ, whilstling cheerily to himself.
“Well, that’s not fair,” Jemmel planted her fists on her hips. “You got the medal for a battle in which I died! I gave my bloody life and I got nothing!”
“And I would gladly sacrifice your life again and again if it meant collecting more of these little accessories,” Rhona smiled. “And if you think that bringing up my body in conversation is the way to embarrass me, clearly you don’t know me at all. It’s actually one of my favorite topics of conversation – even more so now that I get to decorate it with medals you don’t have.”
Jemmel span around to growl another angry retort but snapped quickly to attention as Tahl walked toward them on the path.
“Good morning, sir!” Jemmel brought her hand sharply up into a smart salute.
“Hey, Boss!” Rhona saluted, throwing a suggestive wink in for good measure.
“Good morning Jem, Kat,” Tahl returned the salute with a smile before carrying on toward the Garrison HQ building.
Jemmel watched him go until he was out of earshot and then turned back to Rhona.
“What the hell was that?”
“Say what now?”
“That wink! I saw that wink!” Jemmel looked away and half closed her eyes as if carrying out a series of complex mental calculations, before her eyes widened. “No!”
“What?” Rhona demanded.
“You’re nailing the boss! You’ve let slip three things about your new boyfriend – incredibly good looking, lives locally, will destroy anybody in the universe in a bar fight. You’re nailing the boss!”
Rhona rapidly composed herself and considered one of many pre-prepared lines of defense before selecting a plan of action.
“Jem,” she smirked dismissively, “do you have any idea, any idea, how ridiculous that sounds?”
Jemmel paused.
“Yeah, you’re right,” she agreed, “that guy’s a class act. He’d never risk catching anything off you.”
Rhona breathed a sigh of relief and mentally chastised herself for her lack of tact as the two reached the company HQ building.
***
The reactive window field struggled to cope with the feroci
ty of the midday sun as it shone down into Tahl’s office at company HQ. He leaned back in his chair and stared at the holographic projections which hovered over his desk, giving him statistics, readouts, and a dozen different graphical representations of the monthly and biannual training returns of the men and women under his command. The morning brief at the garrison HQ had been filled with the same issues, gripes, and arguments – too many superfluous training requirements to stay on top of, distraction from core roles, taking up too much of the day with inane and pointless drivel which detracted from the entire aim of resting and recuperating a badly mauled unit, fresh from the frontline. Tahl agreed with it all. However, the counter argument was always the same – C3 demanded that those training exercises and evolutions were carried out, and the IMTel didn’t make mistakes, so therefore the training was important.
Tahl looked across the various titles of the training modules which his troopers needed to undertake and seriously questioned just how much C3 understood in terms of the requirements for training for war. Disaster relief awareness training, health and safety considerations in setting up an office workstation, correct seating posture for office work, organizational physchology in the workplace, reporting and investigation processes for safety related occurences in the workplace… the list was nearly endless. All, well, some of these were important in the right context and as a periodic reminder, but the sheer length of each training evolution and the regularity with which every soldier needed to undertake them was absolutely crippling.
Tahl stood and walked over to the window. He deactivated the field and allowed sunlight and fresh air to pour into his office. He smiled. Life was good. He would be cramming in several hours of overtime every night this week just to try to solve the burden of training requirements, but life was still good because nobody was trying to kill him, he was not responsible for life or death decisions on a minute by minute basis, and he was going home to his own house every night, with three days off work for every five he attended. Turning back to his desk, he noticed a flashing red light on his communicator, signifying that he had missed some attempts to contact him.
“Three missed calls; two military shard, one personal shard.”
Tahl opened a channel to the office refreshment cabinet and ordered a cool drink of something horrifically childish and sugery which he knew he would pay for later when having to exercise it out of his system. A panel slid open in the wall and presented him with the fizzing, black liquid as he activated his missed calls.
“Military shard, today, 1124, Brytlen Van Noor, Senior Strike Leader, 44th Strike Formation. – Hello mate, it’s me. I’ll cut to the chase – I need a big favor. I’m duty senior for two nights next week and… Becca has agreed to go out on a date. I can’t afford to mess her around, I really need to do this. Could you take one of my duties for me? It just means staying on the base for the night and shouting at any of the youngsters who turn up drunk in the early hours. I promise I’ll pay you back, I know you know how important this is. So much so that I’ve already told the primary that you agreed to do the duty for me and he’s confirmed it in the roster. Sorry for being such a cheeky bastard, but I know you find that endearing. Cheers, bye!”
Tahl could not help but laugh. He was genuinely ecstatic that Van Noor had his children back and that it was not beyond the realms of possibility that his marriage might also be saved. A night staying on the base would give him a chance to catch up on the growing pile of staff work clogging his information suite.
“Military shard, today, 1131, Katya Rhona, Strike Leader, 44th Strike Formation. – Good moring sir, sorry for bothering you. I’m afraid I’ve had some bad news regarding the night training exercise planned for this week. The ranges have been double booked so I can’t get my squad in. Rall’s lot are still planning to achieve their night firing currencies tonight, but regrettably I’ve had to reschedule for next week. I’m really disappointed that we won’t be able to take advantage of this valuable training opportunity, but it won’t set us back in the long run. Apologies again, if it’s a problem, then I’ll report to you this afternoon as soon as we’ve finished our biannual training on food hygience awareness.”
“Civilian shard, today, 1133, Katya. – Hey babe, it’s me! Great news! That dumb waste of time exercise this evening has been double booked, so I’ve done the heroic thing and backed down so some other moron can spend the whole night sleeping in a ditch. So that means I can invite myself around and stay over at your place! I’ll choose the wine, you fire up the hot tub, and I’ll be over for about eight.”
Tahl choked with laughter at the last message and spat out a mouthful of the vilely addictive sugar drink. He sat on the open windowsill and looked out across the canopy of trees which surrounded the southern approach to the garrison. Life was definitely good. A few minutes of pleasant daydreaming passed by as he contemplated a second drink, when his communicator beeped into life.
“Strike Captain Tahl,” he greeted.
“Hello, old chap, we meet again,” Owenne’s voice came through the shard.
“Hello! How’re things wherever you are?”
“Interesting,” Owenne replied after a pause, “some interesting developments. Which is why I’m contacting you. Look, don’t get overexcited and start packing your bags or anything, but there’s an even to fairly good chance that I’ll need your help. Soon. Possibly within the next month or two. Armed and ready for a bit of a fight. I know you’re due a proper break, but this is important. You see, it’s about that folder you found…”
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Table of Contents
Cover Page & Biblio Page
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Epilogue
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