by J.J. Mainor
Chapter 22
Remy locked his helmet in place and stepped outside onto the catwalk where he found Anders studying the army beyond the lava flows. The quakes grew more frequent and their intensity became more alarming. Each one, widened the hot rivers just a bit, decreasing Fortune’s chances of crossing. They also weakened the structure and threatened the integrity of the atmosphere inside, but Remy looked to the metal surface holding their feet three stories above the ground. One solid quake was all it would take to shear the walkway from the wall.
“What’s happening,” Remy wondered, focusing his own visor on a tighter view of the ground force. The men had some equipment they were assembling like a set of giant Tinker Toys.
“Colonel Fortune scrambled a bridge. They’re assembling it over the lava now. We don’t have much time before they’re on this side and coming for the doors.”
Remy sensed a morose tone drifting over the radio. Only an hour ago, they were on the RS Freedom. Anders had pledged his service to that ship, and now he was preparing to betray his commander. “Are you going to be all right?”
Anders took a deep breath that translated into Remy’s ear. “I know we’re doing the right thing, but I know what betrayal feels like. The last thing my mother ever said to me was ‘if your father divorces me, it’s your fault.’ I guess subconsciously I always knew both my parents blamed me for the problems in their marriage. They always kept me at arm’s length while fawning over my younger brother.
“My father would take him out for a father-son breakfast a little more than he’d take me. In fact, I remember waking up one time, I must have been five or six at the time, just when they were leaving, begging and crying to go with him. I mean, I was just a little kid and I wanted to be with my dad. He relented and took me with them, but the whole time, he just ranted that he didn’t want me there. He only wanted to spend time with my brother. Growing up, he was always proud about something my brother did; when I was dragged around over the years, that’s all I would hear him go on about with his friends, was my brother.
“I never fully appreciated that my mother felt the same way until I was older. When my brother finished junior high and they held the silly graduation, he was going through that phase when kids become embarrassed by their parents. So he said he didn’t want her to go. It was nothing more to him than a desire for independence, but she was pretty hurt; she stayed home crying.
“I tried to be there for her, whatever that means being a teenager myself, but she kept pulling away. The one son who wanted her, she wanted nothing to do with. Another time some years after, both of us were heading off to work, and she asked my brother if she could make him something to eat before he left, but offered me nothing. That one really stuck with me more than anything for some reason.
“I always chalked up those kinds of incidents to the usual parenting favoritism, but there was a point in college where I just gave up and shut down. From that point, all I ever heard from either of them was ‘if you’re unhappy, why don’t you leave?’ Every other day I got nonsense like that. One time I had bought cold cuts to make sandwiches for lunch the next day and when I woke up in the morning, my mother had thrown them out. I had to leave too early to replace it, and wasn’t able to go out at lunchtime. I was stuck with no lunch because my own mother wanted to play games.
“She had been unhappy with the marriage for years, but never had the guts to call it quits and leave. She always made the excuses that she stayed to give us a stable home. I didn’t realize until the end that she was really blaming me. She had been a younger woman taken by an older man when they first met. By the time disenchantment set in, I had already been born. If it weren’t for me, she would have been free to walk from that marriage. She didn’t blame my brother because she was already trapped when he was born. I was the one that trapped her. She would get no satisfaction from my father when they would fight, so she took her frustrations out on me instead.
“By the time I was in college, their marriage had crumbled. She was sure he was cheating, and she retaliated with a virtual relationship of her own. When the guy decided to take things to the next level and started calling her, she freaked out. She picked a fight with me as a distraction and dragged my father into it. It backfired. He found out what she was up to. That was when she openly blamed me for her marriage problems and confirmed everything my subconscious suspected over the years.
“Those would be her very last words to me. I had just graduated from college and left for the Marines a day after that incident. I never went back home after that. I haven’t seen either of them since. The distance helped to alleviate the anger I had, but whenever I start thinking of the few good times there were, my mind always returns to those words.
“It was easy not to be disappointed in the Marines. Your commanding officers don’t care about you as an individual. You’re there to do a job and that’s all they care about. But when I accepted a commission in the Space Force and took this posting, I kind of found Colonel Freedom to be the father I never really had. He personally toured the ship with me and introduced me to his crew. His door was always open when I had a problem. Even though it was up to the XO to drive us to further our careers, Freedom always followed up to make sure I was on track. He was there with the encouragement when I needed it. He was always understanding when I’d make mistakes while trying to find my legs on that ship. For the first time, I had someone who cared about me.
“And I just betrayed him.”
When the radio fell silent, Remy noticed his friend’s head hung as low as the suit would allow. He suspected that was the first time anyone had heard that story. It was an honor if that were so, but Remy wasn’t sure how to respond except by keeping his focus on this plan.
“Don’t forget, Lieutenant, his doctor was conducting illegal experiments. By allowing it, he put you and your friends in legal danger. At some point everyone is going to hurt you. I’m sorry your parents hurt you. I’m sorry Freedom hurt you. I can’t promise I won’t hurt you at some point. All you can do is stay true to who you are, and continue working for what you know is right.”
Remy looked out to the invaders once again. The bridge looked to be nearly finished, and soon they would be dropping it over the lava ahead of them. These miners didn’t have time for Anders to suffer a crisis of conscious. Nor could they wait to act any longer.
“If we don’t get this plan rolling right now, Colonel Fortune’s men will stroll over the last line of defense and come knocking on our doors. I’m sorry, Lieutenant, but it’s too late now to start having doubts.”
Anders looked up from his misery to study the actions across the field. Oddly, where this mission had stirred up a lot of long buried bitterness, it also gave the distraction he needed to keep it buried for a little while longer. He turned his back to the coming assault and led Remy inside to commence the first stage of his plan.