by Strong, Ray
The pastor paused. “I can’t for a moment pretend that I know what you went through, Ms. Hope.”
Meriel flinched in anticipation of “poor dear” delivered in a tone of pity, but it did not come. “You’ve all had your own struggles here, and I’m not looking for sympathy,” she said.
“My trials don’t apply to you, Ms. Hope. Tests of the spirit are always personal.” He paused. “I do know that focusing on those that hurt you leads you away from life. Forgive me, but we know your story, and—.”
“Then you know I will never love them, and I can never forgive them.” Meriel gritted her teeth.
“It’s God’s grace they need, not yours. And all they need to do is accept it. But this is about you.”
“Isn’t God’s commandment to forgive?”
“It’s more of a request, really, but it’s your choice. It’s not about submitting to God’s will, or obeying some instructions for being a good person.”
“Then why?”
“Because God’s concern is for you, Ms. Hope. Focusing on the pain distracts you from living a full life of your own. That doesn’t mean opening yourself up to repeated harm by pretending it didn’t happen. God doesn’t ask you to trade your safety for your salvation.”
“It says that in the gospels?”
He smiled. “I’m sure it’s in there somewhere.”
Meriel looked down and clenched her fists again. “Do I need to forgive before I can find peace?”
“You’ve been carrying this with you a long time, no?”
Meriel nodded.
“You have love in your heart, Ms. Hope. Live fully. Peace will come in time. But don’t forget that it’s a frontier out here in more ways than one. Don’t let your kind heart blind you to evil.”
“Is that what JCS says?”
The pastor smiled. “No, that’s what a frontier preacher says,” he said, and Meriel noticed the blaster at his hip blink to indicate a full charge.
“Morning, Colonel,” John said as he walked up to them with plates of food in his hands for himself and Meriel.
“Greetings, John,” the pastor said and rose to leave. “Well, Ms. Hope. I hope to see you again next Sunday.”
Meriel nodded and watched the pastor leave. “Colonel?” she asked John.
“Pastor Lee. He’s a colonel in the militia. I report to him. He lost his wife and two sons with Annie at Kilgore,” John said and turned to the girls playing with their friends.
“Becky! Sandy!” he called. “The fair is waiting.”
***
The whole idea of a fair was foreign to Meriel. Spacers never had fairs. Ships could never stop working and were never in the same place long enough to have such a gathering. Even if stations would permit so many spacers to assemble, there would be the problem of dock space and the likelihood of riots.
Except for the tattoos on the men, spacers tended to wear more subdued clothing than Haveners did. Colors found on ships and docks were the color coding for function and safety. You had to get inside white-zone or a pleasure-cruise ship to see color for color’s sake, but Haveners wore their brightest colors to the fair. And hues were different on Haven—reds were sienna, not H-alpha, and greens were chlorophyll rather than O III. The hues blazed through the haze and made everything glow so vividly that Meriel teased John about being visible from space.
While John went to a Grange meeting, Meriel navigated the fair with his girls, marveling at the event that was so big and crowded that it seemed as though the entire planet attended. This was the annual day of thanksgiving for the blessings that God had given to Haven. After a hundred years of just scraping by, the L5ers knew how to make the most of this slightly hospitable environment, and they made Haven bloom. The L5ers knew that Haven was a gift from God that twenty-five billion other humans around the galaxy had not been given. They cherished it and had shed a lot of blood to keep it.
The young who had not experienced their parents’ hardships now enjoyed themselves unselfconsciously and moved with a rhythm like a common heartbeat. And throughout the fair, Meriel saw the familiar cross within an oval symbol of the Church of Jesus Christ Spacemen and the spirals that represented the Haven system in brilliant colors—quilted on bedspreads and drawn on everything from toys to farm machinery.
***
“Hey, M,” Meriel heard in a familiar voice behind her. She turned to see Elizabeth with Cookie and a handsome young lieutenant from the Haven Marines.
“Hey, sprites,” Elizabeth said, and the two girls jumped to hug her and then attacked Cookie. She took Meriel’s arm.
“You look happy, Mom,” Elizabeth said.
“I’m not their mom.”
“Too late. They’re not giving you a vote, Sis,” Elizabeth said, squeezing her arm. “You gonna stay?”
“Not sure. Maybe for a while longer.”
“You love him, huh?”
“Yeah, but he needs to stay with the girls.”
“And the girls?”
“I love them too, but I can’t bring their mom back.”
“That’s not what they need now.”
“But the Princess is our dream, Liz.”
“I’m not sure I’m so ambitious, M. But I understand. You’re twenty-two and just starting out. You know the kids aren’t all gonna stay here.”
“I know,” Meriel said. “Tommy and Sam are likely to renew their contracts, and Erik loves it out there.”
“And they won’t all jump onto the Princess when she’s fixed up.
“I know. But this will be an option for them. They’ll have a place here regardless and a ship, if they want her. That’s what our folks wanted.”
Elizabeth nodded. “Penny just passed her medic-two exams,” Elizabeth said. “Turns out she’s a genius.”
Meriel was quiet, and Elizabeth caught her mood. “What is it, Sis?” Elizabeth asked.
“I’m afraid I’ll lose what I have here if I leave.”
“And rightly so. But you know, you can just freeze some eggs somewhere. The kids and I will pick out a papa for them.”
“I’ll pick out the father of my children myself, thank you very much.”
“Well, you better do something to lock down John. Jerri is still on the loose, and Socket plans to take a long vacation planetside next week.
Meriel smiled. “I think Cookie and Socket are going to vacation together.”
“About time,” Elizabeth said. “Hey, M, I’m bored. Abrams here has offered to take us on a tour of Johnston Valley, where the Haven Marines are bivouacked. Want to come?”
Meriel smiled. “He’s cute. You found him, or he found you?”
“He thinks he found me and wants to winch me in.”
“Cookie’s your chaperone?”
“Maybe. For a while. We’ll see.”
“What about Tommy?” Meriel asked.
“Old news, Sis,” Elizabeth said with a frown. “He just won’t let it go.”
“Don’t break his heart.”
“Too late,” Elizabeth said and looked away.
“Thanks for the offer, hon, but John will be back soon.” Meriel said. “You go have some fun.”
Elizabeth kissed her sister on the cheek and turned to wave. “See ya back home. I mean at the farm.”
***
John came back from his meeting and found them a place on a ridge where they could watch the sun set. The girls had finally settled down, tired from playing all day with neighboring children. When John found their spot and sat, Sandy sat near him and leaned onto his arm while Becky cuddled into Meriel’s lap.
“Little girls are blurry whirls,” John said.
Meriel nodded while weaving tiny flowers into constellations in Becky’s hair. Becky aimed the toroidal device at native varmints and made the world safe for children again.
John looked at Meriel. “They came to me last night, the girls, and asked me if you could stay with us.”
Sitting in Meriel’s lap, Becky overheard them. She kn
ew what he struggled to say and closed her eyes and crossed her fingers. Meriel looked back at John with a soft smile.
John took Meriel’s hand. “Darling, stay. We love you. There’s nowhere else in the whole universe you’re happier than here, and I can’t live without you. Together we can make this farm work and quit our wandering. Meriel, I—”
Fireworks behind them interrupted John’s proposal, and they turned to watch. When the display ended, the smoke cleared, and the spiral arms of the Milky Way appeared at a shallow angle. The racket of the fair hushed to whispered sighs, and everyone looked with wonder.
There are worlds out there, uncounted worlds within our reach, Meriel thought, places where the future shines brightly as it does here on Haven. These L5ers are spacers, and the night is space to them; it’s life. They know our future is out there, calling us, but you can only hear it clearly from out here.
While the others watched the galaxy rise, Sandy walked a few feet away and looked at the Milky Way.
“Hi, sky. I’ve saved my wish till you could be here all at once. Mommy said that everything that’s made is made of you, so all of you together make my wish as strong as things can be made.
“Star light, star bright,
All the stars within my sight.
Wish I may; wish I might.
Grant the wish I wish tonight.”
She closed her eyes and crossed her fingers again to prove her sincerity. “Please let Merry L. stay here with us.”
Booms from a new round of fireworks returned their attentions to the sky. There was something odd about this round: there was no rocket trail from the ground and fewer sparklers and streamers fell to the ground. And the flashes seemed to encircle the fairgrounds.
John’s link buzzed, and he picked it up. “Time to go, kids. We’ve gotta move. Now.”
“They’re not fireworks, are they?” Meriel said softly.
John shook his head. “Wait here. I’ll pull the wagon around,” he said and took off at a run.
Meriel could not run and watched the lights in the sky with the girls. Flares followed the explosions, but just before reaching the ground, the flares slowed and seemed to land gently. Just like a marine, she thought.
John pulled up in the wagon, and Meriel and the girls got in.
“They’re here, aren’t they?” Meriel asked, and John nodded.
“Who’s here?” Sandy asked.
“The bad guys.”
Defense
Elizabeth sat in the backseat of Lieutenant Abrams’s small armored personnel carrier, or APC, and watched the fireworks through the rooster tail of dust thrown up behind them. Cookie rode in front looking comfortably at home with a hand on the barrel of the EMP cannon mounted above the backseat. The fireworks seemed to end, and Elizabeth turned to look at the road in front them. Another set of explosions, closer to their position, rocked the jeep.
“Sonic boom. Those aren’t fireworks,” Cookie shouted to Abrams. “Looks like drone capsules.” Drone capsules could stand higher g forces and went in before the paratroopers landed.
Abrams nodded. “Looks like they’re heading for the Johnston Valley.”
“They’ll roll right over John’s farm on the way,” Elizabeth said. “We need to stop them.”
“You’re civilians here,” Abrams said.
“You think they’re gonna let us go just ’cause we didn’t fight?” Cookie said. “We can help.”
Abrams’s link buzzed. “They’ve turned off the evaporators. Dust storm’s on the way.”
A squadron of flying drones streaked past and peppered them with small slugs. One of them hit Abrams in the leg, and their jeep skidded off the road. Three of the drones stayed back while the others flew past, heading to the valley. Elizabeth took Abrams’s sidearm and knocked down one of the drones. She nicked the second, which spun and shot the third.
“Like he said, we can help,” Elizabeth said.
“The nearest marine base is up ahead, Base 4A,” Abrams said and groaned. “It protects this side of the valley. Follow this road.”
Cookie put a tourniquet and compress on Abrams’s leg and gave him a shot of painkiller. Elizabeth took the wheel, and they sped off down the road.
Drones, flying and crawling, headed toward the valley to their right. She came upon them too suddenly for the drones to target the APC or get out of the way, so she ran right into them and over them, leaving a trail of debris behind her. Cookie took the turret with the EMP cannon, and his finger never left the trigger.
“How much juice has this got?” Cookie yelled from the turret.
“It’s run off the generator,” Abrams yelled back. “As much as you need until the engine quits. Then one last discharge.”
The trio could see the front gate and fence of Base 4A less than a quarter mile ahead. Most of the drones had bypassed it. The jeep’s radio squawked, and Abrams turned up the volume.
“Avoid Base 4A,” the message said, and Elizabeth stopped the jeep. They looked up and saw the trails of missiles heading to the base in front of them.
“Crap! Where to now?” Cookie said, but Abrams was snoring, dopey from the drugs. Cookie shook him. “Where to, boss?”
“Turn right and straight on till dawn,” Abrams said with a wave of his hand and a laugh. He groaned, his head bobbing like a doll’s from the effects of the painkiller.
Elizabeth spun the wheel and gunned the APC. Less than a half mile away, the missiles hit Base 4A, lifting it—dirt and all—forty feet into the air where it exploded into flame.
“Johnston Valley is to the right,” Cookie said as dirt and smoking debris fell around them.
Abrams nodded. “Follow the drones.”
Within a few hundred yards, the APC caught up to the drones heading into the valley, and Cookie turned the EMP turret to clear their path on the ground and in the air.
Elizabeth sped through the obstacle course of mechanical debris, but then the road dropped into the valley exposing a drone mech crawler twice as large as their vehicle. Unable to avoid it, the APC hit a leg of the crawler and flipped, throwing Abrams, Elizabeth, and Cookie from the vehicle.
Sensing some small disturbance, the crawler fired a variety of ordnance in all directions. Then, with one leg disabled, it hobbled over and inspected the APC with a camera stalk. It detected a reflection in the APC’s mirror and opened fire again, leaving a smoking crater where the vehicle had lain.
Twenty yards away, Elizabeth whistled. The crawler’s camera stalk turned toward the unfamiliar sound, and she fired the last charge from the EMP cannon. The crawler collapsed in a heap.
Abrams signaled them to head to a bunker at the top of the hill. Cookie threw Abrams over his shoulder like a toy and carried him up the grade. Elizabeth followed, dragging the EMP cannon.
Another crawler detected them, extrapolated their destination, and directed its firepower and that of the nearby drones onto the bunker. The entire hilltop erupted in flames, and the crawler and drones returned to their primary mission.
***
John drove the wagon toward town to find the police station and the militia staging area, but he stopped at the edge of town.
“Why are we stopping?” Meriel asked.
“The lights are off,” John said. “The lights are never off.”
“What about the militia?”
“We’re all the militia.” His link buzzed. “They turned off the evaporators. Let’s find some shelter before the dust storm hits.”
“Where can we go?”
“Home. To hide. If Khanag is coming for us, our marines know where we live.”
“Khanag may know as well.”
“We’re not defenseless,” John said.
Explosions lit up the night sky to the west, and laser beams cut through the smoke and sparkled.
“That’s Johnston Valley,” John said. “The sparkle is from snow blown in the air to scatter the lasers.”
Meriel remembered that was Elizabeth’s destination.
Heading to the farm. Are you OK?
Small robots like spiders crossed the road ahead of them, heading for the valley. John ran over a few, but that did not stop the others. “Bugs. Drones.”
Floodlights illuminated the farm compound when John, Meriel, and the girls arrived, but that was normal for early evening when everyone was celebrating at the fair. On the horizon, they could see the approaching dust cloud covering the low stars and rising galaxy.
“Get your pellet guns, girls, and your dust gear,” John said as they entered the farm kitchen, which was large enough to feed the entire work crew during harvest. The girls scattered to get their guns, and John led Meriel to the locked weapons closet. From it, he removed stunners for each of them, a shoulder-mounted rifle with a sniper scope, and a large canvas bag.
“Nothing bigger?”
“Anything bigger and we’ll blast each other,” John said.
“I’m not up to a fight, John.”
“Don’t worry, M. The marines will be here.”
I hope that’s soon, she thought, looking at the rifle. “Slug shooter?”
“Pneumatic. No tracer rounds, no muzzle flash, no laser trail.”
The girls came back with their pellet rifles. “By the kitchen windows, girls,” John said. “Look for drones and bugs flying or crawling. Anything bigger than a sheep, it’s a mech, and you gotta hide. Got it?” The girls nodded and went to the kitchen door. As the girls’ rifles popped, John headed for the front porch for a view of the main road, but Meriel shook her head.
“Paratroopers, John. They don’t need a road,” she said and led him back to the kitchen to view the compound. “We won’t be able to see much in a dust storm. Do you have proximity alarms? Something to tell us when they arrive?”
John smiled, reached into the canvas bag, and produced a small metal box with switches. He pulled out two pairs of tiny goggles and gave one to Meriel. Her eyes narrowed. What are these gonna do? she wondered.
“What do you have up your sleeve, John?” she said loudly over the rattle of the windows from the wind.
“OK, girls. Put your gear on. Into the shelter now,” John yelled. “And take the stunners.”