Tears of Kerberos

by Michael G. Thomas

  Teresa smiled to herself, finding the whole situation rather amusing. That was until she examined the rest of the clothing, it was less than perfect.

  * * *

  The light started to fade and Spartan was finally able to see through a few gaps in the dust covered visor. He could make out shapes moving about and could only guess they were people. But which ones he had no idea.

  “Spartan?” somebody shouted.

  He strained to hear as he tried to make out the sounds. The grinding and hammering of machinery came from all around him. Then he felt dizzy, before a jarring impact made him realise he had just fallen down. He shook his head and prepared to hit the button to trigger the internal charges.

  “Spartan, it’s Marcus. Are you okay?” came the voice again.

  Spartan eased back on the controls, it looked like he might be alright after all. He tried to peer through the visor but he was evidently on his back and looking up at the sky. The sound of electric motors and a buzzing from his right arm confused him.

  “We’re opening up the suit, hang in there, buddy!”

  The buzzing sound continued until with a clunk the armour around the inside of his right arm popped open to reveal his skin to the cool air of Prime. More whines and clunks came from around the suit as the damaged sections were removed. The torso section pulled open in two parts and helping hands pulled him out of his suit and into the open air. Already his eyes were becoming accustomed to the light. The nearest was a marine, he could tell by the distinctive shape of the PDS suit.

  “Holy shit, Sarge, we thought we’d lost you in the middle of the storm!” he said with obvious relief.

  Spartan shook his head and looked around, getting his bearings. He was almost exactly where he had been standing when the storm him. Around the area a number of the shock troopers’ bodies were being dragged away, while other vehicles were helping to clear the rubble and masonry from the storm and battle.

  “What happened? Did we win?”

  Marcus moved up closer to Spartan, placing his hand on his shoulder to help stabilise him.

  “Better than that, the storm was their last attempt to break the siege. We broke them on the walls and their survivors tried to escape across the plains,” he said before being interrupted by another marine.

  “Escape? You kidding me, the Air Force has been bombing the crap out of the area for the last hour. Nobody is getting out of there alive,” he said with undisguised glee before turning back and continuing his work.

  Spartan’s eyes were now back to normal and as he looked about the scene of the battle, he was amazed at the carnage and death. Bodies from both sides were stacked up as well as abandoned equipment and weapons.

  “How is our CES platoon, Marcus?”

  “Not great, I think only a couple of the units are still working, I’ll tell you what though. If it hadn’t been for them we would have broken. No way could we have held off the attack in that storm. I saw some of your guys taking on two or three of those troopers and come out on top,” he beamed at Spartan.

  He turned back to see his damaged and scorched armour on the ground. There were multiple holes in the framing and some of the panels were torn from falling debris and projectile fire. He bent down and examined the visor with its many scratches and holes.

  “You were lucky, if it wasn’t for that suit you would have been crushed like the three marines that were dragged down with you.”

  A trio of Thunderbolt fighters blasted overhead, each one leaving a supersonic shockwave in their wake. Spartan could see the fuel tanks and extra missiles slung under their wings and they moved off to continue harassing the retreating forces.

  A small group approached from the left, it was marines and civilians as well as an army officer. They were moving slowly down the line speaking to the officers and NCOs as they went. Spartan recognised Lieutenant Daniels in the middle. Like Spartan he was no longer wearing his CES suit and had reverted to the standard issue PDS. As Spartan watched them the officer noticed him and, after saying a few words to those around him, made directly for him. As he came nearer Spartan noticed he wore a bandage around his right shoulder.

  “Sergeant, damned pleased to see you made it!”

  He lifted his arm to salute but was stopped by a spasm of pain that sent pangs through his body.

  “Sir, what happened to your shoulder?”

  “Oh, yeah, my war wound!” he laughed. “In the middle of the storm part of the apartment block behind us collapsed. Some of the masonry hit our machine gun post and I took a fragment on my suit. It bloody well hurt too! I’ll tell you what, without the suit I’d be a dead man. I owe you that one.”

  A man holding a satellite radio ran over to him. “Sir, I’ve got Captain Mathews for you.”

  Lieutenant Daniels signalled to Spartan that he needed a moment before turning to the man and the radio. As he started a long conversation with the Captain, Spartan turned back to Marcus and two more marines who’d wandered over.

  “Holy shit, you should have seen the hole that took you. Man, that was some crazy business,” said the first.

  The second was pointing to a massive breach in the outer barricades.

  “Just after you vanished a dozen guys came through that hole. We don’t know what they used but it blasted a hole five metres wide.”

  “How did you stop them?” he asked, genuinely interested in hearing their stories.

  “Well, a mix of guts, stupidity and luck! One of them had thrown a demolition charge up into our position. James here, our illustrious private, managed to grab it and tried to throw it back from his position on the OP. When he threw it the pack got stuck on the framing out there,” Marcus said as he pointed to an open space with a crater in the ground. “Luckily for us, it exploded as they came up from the breach and brought down half the structure on their heads.”

  “You lucky son of a bitch!” said Spartan, now laughing at the story.

  “Hey, Sergeant!” shouted Daniels from a few metres away. “You’re not going to believe this!”

  “What do you mean, Sir?”

  “We’ve just received word from Kerberos that a Summit has been called between the colonies of Proxima as well as with representatives from the militant organisations.”

  “So?” asked Spartan who looked nonplussed.

  “So?” responded Lieutenant Daniels. “The Zealot leadership has announced an immediate ceasefire while the summit takes place.”

  “Ceasefire? Here, on Prime?” Marcus asked surprised.

  “Yes, as of fifteen minutes ago all fighting on Prime has stopped. Peacekeeping forces from the other six colonies here are still taking away any survivors from the insurgents. We have orders to let them leave, right now we need to consolidate our hold here.”

  “Am I getting this right?” asked James. “The war is over?”

  “Not the war, but for now we have a break. I have orders from Captain Mathews to collect all our people and equipment for extraction in sixty minutes. Looks like we’re going home to the Cruz!”

  “Back to the Cruz?” asked a surprised Spartan.

  “Indeed,” Lieutenant Daniels replied with a wry smile.

  Spartan looked around him, at the equipment and fires that were still burning. There didn’t seem to be much of a city left but he knew they had done well. All he could hope for now was a break from the fighting. Even a few days would be nice.

  “Hey, brother, I know what you’re thinking!” said Marcus as he slapped his hand down onto Spartan’s arm. “Santa Cruz here we come!”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Two years before the outbreak of the Great War a religious controversy erupted through the colonies of mankind. The argument started with a simple schism of the Church of Man, the largest of the cults on Terra Nova. The problem was the display of icons and their use. Until the schism it was normal practice for icons to only be kept in the churches. When the Bishop of the City of Echidna declared icons could be carried by anyone the schism
was formed. His martyrdom saw the birth of the new religion and the first of the religious conflicts.

  The Iconoclast Controversy

  The journey to rendezvous with the Tamarisk had been slightly shorter than expected. Even so, twenty hours in a cramped shuttle with the four marines had been a trial in itself and Teresa needed some space to move. As they reached within ten kilometres of the ship, the display at the front of the shuttle changed from the automated navigation page to a video communication relay with Commander Anderson who was already onboard.

  “Greetings, I hope your journey was uneventful.”

  The video showed the officer but from his surroundings the ship looked less than spacious. Commander Anderson was actually stooping under a bulkhead so that he could see the screen. It didn’t inspire confidence in Teresa and her hope for more space to move around in. From the port window she could see the ship getting closer. The engines of the vessel were on full burn as the transport propelled towards the Rim and their destination. Only a fast craft like their shuttle had a chance of meeting them in time without slowing down the Tamarisk and risking the mission.

  “Agent Johnson is already onboard and I have taken delivery of items of equipment that should prove useful to our mission. That is all for now, we will discuss this in more detail upon your arrival. Please watch the gravity when you come aboard, due to the acceleration we are operating at a few percentage points over normal. Anderson, out,” he said and the screen cut to black.

  “Short and sweet,” said Kowalski.

  “Just like Teresa!” laughed Bishop.

  Teresa turned to the two of them and gave them a look that stopped their amusement in their tracks.

  From inside the shuttle the Tamarisk was definitely less than inspiring. She was an old ship by any standards and though she had been well repaired, no effort had been made to beautify the vessel in any way. The outer hull was pockmarked with scratches and marks from her many voyages. The shape was unusual, as the vessel looked like three spheres joined together by a series of gantries running along the outer parts of the ship. As they moved ahead she could see that the spheres were just the last third of the ship. The remaining middle of the ship consisted of a dozen rectangular sections designed for carrying mechanical parts and supplies. Only the front of the vessel appeared remotely friendly, with its rounded nose and many windows installed for the crew and passengers. From the datasheets Teresa had been reading on the way, she knew the ship could carry up to thirty passengers at a time. It contained enough sleeping room and storage for this number for up to six months.

  “No rotating sections? I take it the ship is a zero-g environment craft then?” Teresa asked as she leaned over to Kowalski and Bishop who were sitting in front of her.

  “You’ve never been on a clipper before?” asked a surprised Kowalski.

  “No, why would I?”

  “True. Still, clippers work like any of the high-speed ships that we use to move people and materials through the System. They’re just the same as the colony ships and military transports.”

  “I don’t understand, same in what way?”

  Kowalski looked at the other marines with a look that told Teresa it was a question you shouldn’t need to ask.

  Private Williams, the youngest of the group and an avid reader of anything technical or military, turned around in his seat so he could see Teresa. He looked at her for a moment before receiving a withering stare. He looked nervous, something Teresa found amusing for a marine.

  “Uh, the high speed ships are all designed to be able to move their cargos quickly through the System. This is usually used for volatile or time critical items, sometimes even the military use it for the rapid transfer of troops to a warzone. It is expensive and not all the ships are equipped to travel in this way.”

  “Explain it to me, please?” she said in a tone that Bishop and Kowalski instantly recognised as the dry sarcasm she used with them. Williams hadn’t noticed though and launched into a simplified description.

  “If you want to travel between two places in the Confederacy you will need speed, a lot of it or it could take you months or years depending on your destination. Many ships will just accelerate to a certain speed and then coast using Ion thrusters to maintain a speed to their destination. That is how most of the heavy transports work. In fact some never technically slow down, they follow a continuous path on their elliptical courses through Proxima. They have to be loaded and unloaded at speed by other craft.”

  “Yeah, and what about the high speed ships?”

  “Oh, right. Well, to go farther these ships spend all of their time accelerating. So they leave and fire their engines and keep them on till they reach the halfway point. Then they rotate around and fire the engines in reverse and continue for the other half.”

  “Ah, that’s why we have gravity in this shuttle?” asked Teresa.

  “Uh, yeah, you only just worked that out?” Bishop laughed.

  Barca, the fourth marine in the group leaned into the conversation.

  “I’ve always wondered about that actually. Most of our ships have rotating sections to provide artificial gravity for long journeys. What happens with the high-speed ships? Surely constant acceleration will create a g force that will effectively create an amount of gravity.”

  “Holy crap, you actually studied?” laughed Williams.

  “You’re a funny guy, Williams,” responded Barca.

  “Well, that is why the ships tend to used a linear, fixed acceleration. For ships carrying crew it is normal to stay on a 1g burn. So the ship maintains a continuous level of acceleration that is approximately 1g in thrust. Providing the ships are designed for the trips the rear of any inhabited sections will become the floor. You might have noticed the signing on the marine transports that implies you could walk in multiple places depending on the orientation of the ship. If the vessel is coasting or moving at low levels of acceleration we use the rotating sections. Once the ships speed up the rotating sections can be stopped and the gravity is provided by the thrust alone.”

  “Interesting. We didn’t do that on the Santa Maria when we made our way to Prime,” said Teresa.

  “That doesn’t surprise me, the Maria is also used as a training ship. You will have spent most of the journey coasting while picking up new recruits and supplies. You signed up in Prometheus as well, right?” he asked.

  Teresa nodded.

  “Well, it is very dangerous to use the high speed transport option in an area like Prometheus. Hell, I know a few decades ago an army transport tried a direct run to the planet and was lost with all hands in the storms. I think a few thousand died in that incident.”

  “Look, we’re nearly there,” said Bishop.

  The marines watched the vessel, the computer handling the entire operation as the shuttlecraft approached the side of the ship. The process appeared painfully slow but the marines knew that both craft had been accelerating until this point and at incredibly high speeds. With a sickening feeling in their stomachs the primary engines of the shuttle cut off in synchronisation with the Tamarisk. At first the larger ship appeared to drift ahead but minute adjustments by the shuttle’s computer helped them maintain the speed.

  “Crap, weightless again,” Bishop moaned.

  With the two spacecraft now travelling at a constant speed the shuttlecraft moved sideways, the small manoeuvring jets helping to nudge the craft inside.

  “Uh, are they going to let us in?” asked Kowalski.

  As if on cue a large metal shutter raised to reveal a cramped hangar space. Teresa noticed two more craft already stowed inside. One looked like a civilian shuttle, similar to the one they were in but far older and undoubtedly much cheaper. Clamped next to the shuttle was what looked like a Marauder a larger version of the Thunderbolt fighter that could carry extra crew. She turned to Bishop.

  “Is that what I think it is?”

  “You bet your ass it is. I never thought I’d see one, the Marauder is pret
ty rare these days. Most have been scrapped or converted back to Thunderbolts. I guess they think we might need something with a pit of a punch.”

  Their shuttle moved slowly inside the hangar space and alongside the other craft. No sooner were they past the shutters, they started to close again. The blackness of the hangar was lit by the interior lights of their shuttle alone. Teresa sat quietly, waiting for their automated docking to complete. Their craft rotated a full ninety degrees before approaching one of the landing clamps to the rear of the space. With a final clunk the shuttle shook and a series of green lights flashed around the airlock and various displays on the walls. Teresa made to move before Bishop’s hand held her shoulder.

  “No, not yet, we are still coasting. Wait till we get the double green before getting up.”

  Teresa looked at him, a little confused as to what was going on. Then a shudder shook through the shuttle and she could feel herself being pushed back into her seat. She felt heavier and heavier until finally they must have been back to normal gravity. A hiss echoed through the passenger area as the airlock opened to a small doorway leading into the hangar. Releasing her harness Teresa expected to float out, completely forgetting the entire point of what had just happened and instead found she was pinned in her seat. She looked over at the amused face of Williams.

  “The acceleration, remember?” he laughed.

  Teresa stood up and walked to the doorway, her legs aching from sitting for so long. As she passed through the airlock she reached the open space of the hangar and looked around inside the darkened area. Bishop was out next, quickly followed by the others as they yawned and stretched.

  “Well, we’re here,” said Kowalski.

  A noise came from the far wall, followed shortly by a metal hatch opening up. A dull yellow light poured in and hurt their eyes for a few seconds as they adjusted to the brightness. Through the light stepped two men, both in civilian clothes. The scrawny man at the front Teresa recognised as Commander Anderson. She straightened up and saluted, the other marines quickly followed.