by Jay Allan
I was escorted to a raised platform in the center of the dome. The president was standing there, flanked by Presidential Guard officers. The protocol officer had told me to salute when I stood in front of the president and then to shake his hand, so that is exactly what I did. I stood at attention while the president gave a speech. He spoke about the "brave men and women" fighting to preserve the freedom and prosperity of the Alliance. Then he began talking about me, describing Achilles, Columbia, Gliese 250, Eridu. He spoke about how I was wounded, and that I received the very best care possible, and then he announced that the very doctor who had headed up my medical team was present as well. He motioned over toward Sarah and told her to stand up, then he started to clap, followed by everyone in the dome. She looked a little embarrassed to me, but I was close to her and knew her expressions - to anyone else I suspect she looked as flawlessly poised as ever as she took a polite bow and sat down again.
After calling me "the most decorated officer my age in the history of the Marine Corps," he opened a small black box and pulled out the award. The Presidential Medal of Honor was the highest decoration given to Alliance military personnel, and its wearers enjoyed a unique set of perquisites and privileges. General Holm had won his in the Second Frontier War, and now his protégé was getting the same award. Except for Sarah, he was the one person I would have wanted here, but as he so succinctly put it before I left, someone had to fight the war.
So I leaned down and let the president of the Western Alliance put the blue and white ribbon over my head, and then shook his hand again and turned and waved around the room as I received a hearty round of applause. The president thanked me for my service and then moved aside for me to say a few words. I bowed to the inevitable and gave the shortest speech I thought I could get away with. I started by thanking the president, but I spent most of my time paying tribute to the men and women who had served with me, and particularly to the ones that weren't here anymore. That part, at least, was heartfelt. I couldn't quite bring myself to praise the Alliance overall - my hypocrisy has limits - so I spoke about the colonists on our various planets and how they fought and strove to build great new worlds. I finished with a mention of the troops we had fighting somewhere far away, even while I stood here speaking, and I said that I was anxious to get back to my soldiers and see that this war ended as soon as possible. There were more applause as I saluted the president once more (as I'd been told to do) and walked back to my table.
I allowed myself the fleeting hope that we'd be allowed to leave soon, but it turned out to be a long evening of listening to political gasbags drone on and on about the war and a bunch of other things they didn't understand. I envied the heavy drinkers in attendance, and I seriously considered joining their ranks. But while I was speaking, Sarah had managed to switch seats with one of my neighbors and at least we were together the rest of the evening. By the time the transport took us back to the hotel, we were exhausted. We made it back up to my room and collapsed on the bed, but not before I made a few dire threats to the AI if we were disturbed before noon the next day.
We had a few more days in Wash-Balt, and we had most of the time to ourselves, though we did have some events we had to attend, and both of us had interviews taped for netcasts. Then we were off on a tour of major cities all over the Alliance. We stayed in each of them a few days, attending a variety of local events. None of these was as over-the-top as the presidential reception, though the London party was close.
We got to see a lot of cities, but they were all depressingly the same. A small central area where the VIPs resided in isolation and almost limitless luxury and a larger, moderately comfortable zone where the middle class lived unquestioning and routine lives. But most disheartening, they were all surrounded by vast, decaying slums, where the hopeless masses lived the best they could in deprivation and despair.
Some of the time, Sarah and I traveled together, but others we were sent to different places. The chance to spend time with her made the whole thing worth it, but when she wasn't there it was nearly unbearable. I tried not to think about it, but I knew my battalion was in the Outer Rim somewhere, and I wasn't with them. They were well-trained and led, but it was just wrong for me not to be with them. Being with Sarah took my mind off of it, but when she wasn't there, I'd lay awake in bed at night thinking about all of it.
The last stop was New York. I wasn't very comfortable to be going "home," but I was excited because Sarah would be there too. I was coming in from Sydney, fresh from a reception with the president of Oceania, and she'd been back in Wash-Balt, attending a series of meetings at several of the hospitals there. I got to New York in the morning, but I knew she would be arriving around 3pm on the magtrain, so I headed back up to the Fort Tyron center to meet her. She expected to meet me at the hotel, so she was surprised when she saw me standing there. She ran right over to me, and at first I thought she was just happy that I came to meet her. But she grabbed me hard and didn't let go for the longest time. With a start I realized she was shaking like a leaf. I'd never seen her anything but totally in control.
I asked her what was wrong, and she told me she was just tired. I knew she was lying, and she knew that I knew, but we both let it drop for the moment. She calmed down a little and we chatted about some insignificant things. On the way back to the MPZ, she didn't so much as look out of the train window, just staring straight ahead at the back of the next seat.
It only took a few minutes to zip through the surreal landscape of the northern Manhattan wastes and enter the Protected Zone. Twenty minutes later we were at the hotel. I took her by the hand, and we walked right up to my room, not even bothering to check her into her own. She sat there on the bed silently, staring off into space with a glassy look on her face. Finally, I said, "You don't have to tell me what's bothering you if you don't want, but please let me know how to help you."
She looked up at me with an expression that seemed to combine love and despair, gratitude and hopelessness. He eyes glistened with moisture for a few seconds before the tears began streaking down her cheeks. "It's just hard being back here." She tried to stifle the tears, unsuccessfully. "We never discussed our pasts. Mine is bad."
I put my hand on her cheek and looked at her. "Is that what this is about? Whatever happened, it is past and gone. My history is bad too, really bad. But that isn't us anymore."
She was quiet for a few minutes, and then she started talking. Once it started to come out, there was no stopping it. She told me things that day that she had never confided to anyone, things she never spoke of again.
When she was fourteen, the thirty year old son of a high-ranking politician saw her out one day with her family, and he decided he wanted her. Her father was approached about allowing her to live in Sector A as the ward of the politician, but they said no, both to the initial suggestion and the more forceful one that followed. So one day her entire family was arrested on charges of plotting terrorism, and her father, mother, and 8-year old sister where dragged from their apartment in restraints. She was taken to Sector A and placed under the guardianship of her admirer, and that night, when she wouldn't give in to his advances, he raped her three times.
She was kept for weeks, locked in a small room where he would come whenever he wanted to and abuse her horribly. One day, after he'd beaten and raped her, he didn't notice that a writing stylus had dropped out of his pocket, and the next time he came to her room she buried it into his neck, twisting it around to make sure he bled to death before help could arrive.
She used his passkey to get out of the building and Sector A, and somehow she managed to escape the MPZ entirely, despite the massive alert that went out. She kept running, somehow managing to just about survive, barely eluding capture. The land between urban areas consisted of mostly abandoned suburbs and reclaimed farmland. The suburbs, once densely populated, were now devoid of public services and occupied only by a few renegades and outlaws.
Somehow, through blind luck she ran into a
family living in a big house in an otherwise uninhabited old town. They took her in, fed her, and gave her a place to stay. The father had been a doctor in the Philadelphia Enclave, until he'd had to flee for some reason or another, and he removed her spinal implant. I'd seen that little scar on her neck a hundred times, and always wondered where she'd gotten it.
She stayed there for several months until one day the house was assaulted by Federal Police. She was sure they were there for her, but it turned out they had finally caught up with the doctor. Without her implant they had no idea she was wanted as well, and they just assumed she was some local vagrant. They raped her and left her lying on the front porch of the house.
She wandered for months, not in the populated urban hell were I scavenged, but in the vast areas between cities, through rotting old ghost towns, past vast tracts of polluted industrial wastelands until, by the blindest luck, she wandered into a range of land used by the Corps for training. A group of third year trainees found her half-starved, mad with thirst, and sick, and they brought her to the base. There, she was nursed back to health and allowed to stay until she was sixteen, when she was given the chance to enlist. The rest I'd known already. She participated in two assaults as a private and was offered a transfer to the medical training program.
After she'd told me the whole story I just put my arms around her and we sat silently. I don't know how long we just stayed there, but it was hours, because it was dark out before either of us said a word. We sat up the whole night talking, and by morning I'd told her my entire sad story as well, the first time I'd said a word of it to anyone.
In the morning we left the hotel and walked out of the Sector A checkpoint into the main area of the MPZ. I had called Sergeant Warren, who'd turned out to be a great assistant, and told him to cancel our appearances in New York and get us transport permits to leave immediately. Somebody would probably be pissed that we were bailing on our commitments, but to say I didn't give a fuck would have been an understatement of epic proportions. We were sitting on a small bench in the park when he called me.
"Major, I got your events canceled and travel permits issued for you to go back to Wash-Balt today. I was stunned they said yes. Apparently Presidential Medal winners do have some influence. Is there anything else you want me to do?"
"Nice job, Chris," I replied. "Yes, I need you to arrange to have our baggage sent from the hotel to wherever we're staying in Wash-Balt. Oh yeah, I need you to get us a place to stay there too."
He responded sharply, "Yes, sir. Consider it done."
"And Chris...thanks. This was important."
"I'm at your service, sir."
"After you finish, take the rest of the time to yourself. Stay here or go wherever you want with the rest of your leave. Use my name if you think that stupid medal has juice."
"Thank you, sir. I appreciate that, sir."
And so Sarah and I had stayed one sleepless night in New York City, which had once been home to us both, and we left never to return. Two hours later we were on the magtrain to Wash-Balt, and that evening we were eating dinner at Aoki's old haunt.
By the next morning we'd pushed the demons back into the recesses of our souls, and we were back to normal, more or less. The two of us were closer than ever. I had been nervous on my way to Earth, uncertain how several years apart would have affected us. But now I knew, we both knew, that time, distance, war, hardship - none of it - would get between us.
We had a month's leave coming now that the tour was over, and we'd both had just about enough of Earth. We decided to go to Atlantia, which was a big rec center for troops on leave. Anywhere but Earth.
As we boarded the orbital shuttle we both knew we'd never see Earth again. I was wrong, I'd be back once more, under circumstances I couldn't have imagined at the time. But Sarah never returned to the planet of her birth, and as far as could tell, she never even thought much about it.
Chapter Twelve
I Corps Assembly Area
Columbia - Eta Cassiopeiae II
Ten years of war. Ten years since I finished basic training and made my first assault at Carson's World. Sixteen years passed for that angry, animalistic kid saved from an early death by a marine. A marine who later died himself fighting half a kilometer away from his recruit on a planet they had travelled very separate paths to reach.
Ten years of war that saw us beaten and forced to retreat, only to regroup and claw our way back into the fight and throw the enemy onto the defensive. In the four years since I'd graduated from the Academy we'd taken a big swath of Caliphate territory and reclaimed the momentum. Or at least evened the score.
But the enemy still held a whole sector of our worlds, conquered in the disastrous early years of the war, and now we were going to do something about that. I Corps was the largest formation ever fielded in space by the Western Alliance. The 1st and 2nd U.S. Marine Divisions, the Royal Marine Division, the 1st Canadian Spaceborne Brigade, and the Oceanian Assault Regiment. Over forty-five thousand troops, all committed to Operation Sherman, the campaign to recover our lost systems. Commanding I Corps was a marine I'd served with before, and one I would have followed into hell itself, the newly-promoted Lieutenant General Elias Jackson Holm.
While I was on Earth trying to keep a smile on my face and the contents of my stomach inside while dealing with politicians and government officials, General Holm was organizing and training what would become I Corps. After the successes of the Tail and Outer Rim campaigns, the general pretty much had a blank check, and he used to it appropriate every veteran formation he could find for the offensive.
This left many of our systems defended by green troops, but the general made sure that every crucial planet had a least a component of veterans and a seasoned commander. The newly conquered rim worlds were left lightly defended. The Outer Rim campaign was a diversion, intended to shift the enemy's focus to retaking his own systems, and we couldn't realistically hold the worlds we took anyway. They were just too remote, too far from our own bases of support. Hopefully, the Caliphate would be fully committed to recovering some of this territory, giving us an opening to take back what we'd lost early in the war.
The whole conflict had become more complex, and was showing signs of widening further. There was a lot of diplomacy and spying going on, though we generally didn't get too much information from those quarters, at least not until it was time to act on it.
Our alliance with the PRC was starting to pay off. Fully mobilized now, the PRC was keeping the CAC busy, launching attacks on multiple worlds, raiding supply lines, and generally preventing them from starting any new offensives against us. The CAC outnumbered the PRC, but the Coalition had great technology, certainly better than the CAC's, and even superior to ours in certain areas. In a long one-on-one war of attrition the PRC would probably lose, but as an ally causing the CAC a world of problems they were perfect. On a personal level I enjoyed the reports I was getting on the exploits of Major Aoki Yoshi, who was rapidly becoming the hero of the PRC. Aoki was a good officer and a good friend, and I wished him only the best.
Open war had broken out between Europa Federalis and the Central European League as well, though for now it was a separate conflict. No one was seriously wooing either of them since an alliance with one would mean war with the other, but most likely that conflict would eventually merge with this one. This new fight would play havoc with the general's supply of good cognac, but that was likely to be the biggest effect on our war effort for now.
Our intel teams were more worried about the South Americans. Generally, they were more closely aligned with us than our enemies, but the systems they really wanted to annex were mostly ours, so it was easier for the Caliphate to offer them a reward. Intelligence reports suggested that they had been very close to entering the conflict before our recent victories caused them to delay. There was still a lot of concern they would eventually come in against us, though, and we just didn't have the reserves to manage another front. Their empir
e was in decline, barely holding onto superpower status, and they desperately needed a bigger presence in space. They were cut off from the rim by the other powers, and they were effectively landlocked in space. They needed to conquer someone's colonies to create a pathway to unexplored areas, and ours were juicier and better located for them. I was no expert on diplomacy or intel, but I suspected greed and expediency would win out over other considerations.
We had our own diplomatic initiative underway - we were trying to get the Martian Confederation to come in on our side. They were closely aligned with us and would never have sided with the Caliphate or the CAC, but they also had a strong resolve to remain neutral. While they'd fought a skirmish or two over the years, they had managed to stay out of the First and Second Frontier Wars, and they had no desire to get dragged into the third. I suspected they would enter the war rather than see the balance of power shift significantly to the Caliphate and the CAC, however. My opinion was unqualified, of course. One thing I have never been is a diplomat.
Regardless of diplomacy and the shifting of national alignments, I Corps was going to liberate our people. Some of them had been held by the enemy for seven or eight years, and it was well past time for us to free them from the yoke. I believe that opinion was shared by every member of I Corps, from General Holm to the lowest, greenest private fresh out of camp.
The assembly point for I Corps was an amusing one, at least for some of us. The Eta Cassiopeiae system had the warp gates to facilitate our advance, so the planet Columbia was again the destination of troop transports, though this time the situation was significantly less dire. When I stepped out of my ship onto the field outside Weston it felt odd, as though I'd only been away a very short time. Six years. Had it really been almost six years?