by Rolf Nelson
Emerging from the heavily sandbagged entrance and jumping to a raised shooting platform so he could see over the top easily, the tech sergeant scanned the thick smoke and dust-filled air looking for something unexpected. He watched a huge swirl of dense black, gray, and white over the nearby river as it swallowed up the angular and indistinct form of Tajemnica. Lieutenant Colonel Marks joined him just as the back end of the ship becomes invisible in the impenetrable mass of eddying air. The firing ended, the weirdly silent and haze-drenched landscape looking otherworldly. “We need coms back, NOW! We need to know who they are, where that ship went, and how they got into our net. Send a driver and two runners to the rifle company surrounding the city, order them to fall back to here as fast as they can, double-timing in formation if they have to! Get every tech on electronic security, find out what happened!”
Colonel Fischer hadn’t chewed his fingernails since nearly washing out in Officer’s Academy from accumulated demerits, but the old habit had returned. Too many changes, too many unknowns, players showing up on the field with no warning. The only bright spot since he recognized First Sergeant Reel was that for unknown reasons there was suddenly a lot of unencrypted open channel traffic, and first analysis indicated everyone else was as panicky and in the dark as he was, maybe more so. And that made him even more nervous, because known unknowns could be managed, but unknown unknowns were minefields much harder to navigate. The shelling of the city was utterly unexpected, and a breach of terms, but there was nothing he could do at the moment except let the lawyers on staff with Lieutenant Seven make noise and protest events. The cruiser’s sensors were getting jammed. However, he couldn’t admit that as using them was also a breach, but from the electronic noise on the battlefield he assumed they’d had some sort of major problems. The sketchy reports of mercy ships in the city were confusing, and there were at least three for sure, but they’d found images of no less than six, with only two known, and no inbound flight data on any of the other possible craft because of limits on sensor usage. It, or they, had come out of nowhere and dropped off a lot of injured for sure, then landed in town, maybe, then flew north… perhaps. Had it flown in low from the islands, as one improbable report of it coming in over the beach indicated?
He should have heard from the cruiser by now, but he knew from long experience that rushing ship captains rarely had the desired effect. Finally the empty window he’d been expecting to be filled at least two minutes ago came to life, and the cruiser captain looked unsettled.
“They disappeared,” he reported bluntly. “Lots of jamming, passive and visuals only.” The captain’s image on the screen was replaced by a long-range low-angle camera view with lots of distortion from the many kilometers of atmosphere as the ship came over the horizon. He could make out few details other than the river and an indistinct gray angular form surrounded by a great deal of smoke and dust and steam and vapor. The ship lifted, turned, and headed east, becoming invisible in the cloud. Then the video fast-forwards as the cruiser arrived more directly overhead, and the only two things that were obvious was that the smoke was clearing away, and the ship wasn’t there. But it didn’t fly anywhere unless it was invisible. Flies into smoke, smoke disappears, nothing left. Impossible. “Pretty much the same thing on thermal, except lower res, with lots of airbursts consistent with white phosphorous rounds, and other sources consistent with known munitions, looked like a very faint twin-core drive signature entering the cloud, then nothing as the jamming cut off. Just… nothing. Not a damn thing. What the hell have you gotten us into, Fischer?”
A flustered Lieutenant Seven appeared in another window. “Sir, apparently a Lieutenant Colonel saw the ship disappear shortly after he talked to its commander. He was blathering on an open freq about a cloaking device and Planet Movers, sir. That’s just the raw feed, no specifics yet.”
Tajemnica sank beneath the river’s surface nearly to the bottom, then moved downstream only slightly faster than the current’s five kilometers per hour. She did not raise any boils or wake on the surface, acting like just another log deep under the muddy surface. “You sure they can’t see us down here?” Allonia asked nervously, looking out the bridge portals at the murky gray-brown light filtering in.
“Visibility is less than three meters, we have slightly more than ten meters of water overhead. The city bridges all use a simple pair of mid-span piers in shallower water, so dodging them through the deep center should not be difficult.” Taj’s armored woman avatar informed her.
“Poof, in a cloud of steam and smoke. We disappeared.” Helton grinned. “Just like magic. I’d love to be a fly on the wall in that intelligence briefing.”
“They will figure it out, eventually, won’t they?” Sharon asked.
“Most likely. But they learn slowly. Starships don’t normally do deep oceans-”
“And they’ll have more than few problems with the very… friendly… software I planted.” Taj’s avatar smiled maliciously. “Should keep them busy playing whack-a-mole for a while, even though they won’t know it too soon. Love to tap into their field nets again some time.”
“But we still don’t want to be anywhere nearby when they figure it out. How long to one of Skelton’s port docks?”
“Two days, if we don’t push it or lose anything more,” Quiritis replied, eying readouts closely. “We don’t have much to spare.”
“The tech squad is pretty good. They should be able to help us get things back online.” Helton thumbs the mic on his armor. “Nesbit, how’s it going?”
After a brief pause, Tajemnica’s avatar morphs into the elderly monk. The avatar wears a very tired, sad expression on his face as he shook his head slightly. “I’m very sorry to report the untimely death of Duke Nesbit, the only fatality in the battalion position assault.”
Epitaph
Gloria Nesbit was quieting her fussy child as best she could when the screen in the corner of her small apartment on the 38th floor chimed twice. One was a normal incoming message bell, the other an unusual tone she didn’t recognize. Looking at the two new messages didn’t enlighten her much. One indicating a recorded video message from someone she didn’t know, and one from the Territorial Integrity and Peace Enforcement Agency, Volunteer Training Department. She tapped on the official looking message, which appeared to be nothing but text with an impressive-looking department seal.
To whom it may concern:
Duke Nesbit is no longer available for wage garnishment. Child support transfer payments are permanently discontinued, effective immediately.
“Damn that useless man,” she muttered. “Managed to skip the planet. Territorial Integrity my ass.” She bounced the child a bit more, pacing in a short and well-practiced back-and-forth path in the narrow passage between the entry door and the back wall. When the toddler quieted down again she tapped the other message.
She didn’t recognize the man on the screen. He looked very serious, very professional, and very military in a dress uniform unfamiliar to her, with an expanse of medals and decorations on his chest and many stripes on both sleeves. The swarthy face had a solemn look about it. His voice starts firm and professional, but occasionally cracked with emotion as he continued.
“Mrs. Nesbit, my name is First Sergeant Harbin Reel. As the senior noncommissioned officer in the unit, it falls to me to inform you with the utmost regret and respect that your former husband, Duke Nesbit, died honorably in combat. Through an accident of fate we were press-ganged together into military service as conscripts for your government. Though it may surprise you, he was picked as a squad leader. He grew rapidly in the role, and performed his duties admirably, earning the respect of his squad and the company commander, a man I’m proud to call my friend. There is no doubt in my mind that through Duke’s efforts, casualties in the unit were minimized. Such conscript companies as ours frequently have more than fifty percent die, but ours had less than half that. The conscripts we faced fared much worse, with near one hundred percent casualt
ies. I’ve spent a lifetime on battlefields, but there are few men who can say they have saved my life. Duke’s final action saved myself and four others. He leapt onto a grenade that would have certainly killed or seriously wounded all of us.
“He didn’t talk much about you, his politics, or his past life, but please remember him as a smart, courageous, honorable man. A man who died a hero’s death. Tell your child to be proud of him. He was looking forward to continuing work with our freelance unit, and we will miss him. You have our most profound sympathies at your loss.”
Gloria sat down hard on the love seat, or perhaps collapsed was a better word, the fussiness of her little one forgotten. The words rung in her ears, sounding formal and foreign. Her meek and bookish ex-husband, a hero? But the seriousness and gravitas in the uniformed man was unmistakable.
Harbin’s image faded, and another man appeared on the screen. Dressed in the simple camouflage uniform she’d seen on the news many times, with no rank insignia or ribbons, only a name tag reading MOFFETT N 12/19 V. He stood nervously, hands working his cap as he talked.
“Hello, ma’am. I’m not really used to this. I’m a… I was picked up with him. Your husband. Well, I guess he’s your ex. He didn’t talk much about it, but he said he wished he could see his kid more. He, ah, we got picked by the captain… well, he’s not really a captain, but he ran the show, and he’d got his own ship, so I guess he is really a captain, but not an army-type captain. Anyway, Captain Jones, I mean Captain Strom, he’s… ain’t nobody really who they seemed to be at first, I guess. Captain Strom picked us to be squad leaders. I, uh, didn’t think a lot of him at first. Duke, I mean. Completely soft. He thought the government was on his side. Thought it was all a mistake. But he learned fast. Captain made a good choice. I’ve seen guys die before, but usually stupid shit like in a bar fight over a hooker, or alcohol poisoning.
“But Duke was a totally different kind of guy than I normally run with. Smart, and honest. Too honest, I thought. He was going to get totally run over, I figured. But he hung in there. Even went on a space-walk in a cheap suit to help take control of our ship in orbit. Scared shitless but he still went. He even set a new record on weapons conversion, shaved almost three seconds off the time. Made me look like a fool in the process.” Moffett grinned wryly. “Not sure what it says about me, but I’m pretty sure I learned more from him, a guy half my age, than he learned from me. And I thought he was a nobody when we met….”
His face becomes much more somber. “When that grenade came rolling over the edge of the bunker, I froze. Time stopped. I stopped. Nesbit didn’t hesitate at all, just curled around the thing, then just… fell. I knew he was dead before he hit the ground, and I was alive because of…. Never imagined anyone giving up his life for me. Let alone him. Doesn’t make sense, you know? He had so much to look forward to. He’d finally found a home where he felt… I don’t know… comfortable. Like he was really wanted. He was so happy that last hour of action, so amazingly full of life it was contagious. He had so much to live for, it should have been me taking that blast. Doesn’t make sense. None of my kids will talk to me. Won’t even admit we’re related.” He paused a minute to wipe his eyes and get his voice back under control. “Sorry ma’am. Let the kid know his old man was a good guy. One of the best I’ve ever met. I hope things work out for you.”
Through her tears, Gloria watched as one stranger after another gave condolences and a brief testimonial about her husband, sounding as though he was someone she didn’t really know, but would have liked to. Her child, his child too she reminded herself for the first time in months, finally settled down to allow her to grieve in silence as she watched the message to its end
And then she watched it all over again.
Chapter XIII
Brothers in Arms
Brother Libra sat alone in the officer’s mess, quietly saying a prayer over a middle-of-the-night meal of warmed something, the result of Kwon’s experiments. “… and please let this be a reward for a hard day’s work, not a penitence for some forgotten uncharitable thought, like the last one. Amen.” Around him, the ship vibrated faintly as it flew silently through the watery depths back to hopefully useful territory. As he finished his prayer Moffett walked in looking worn out and sleepless, carrying a mug of soup with a spoon sticking out of it. Libra waved him to a seat and waited for him to take it. Moffett looked across the table at him uncertainly and vaguely crossed himself, as if he half expected to be asked to, making Libra smile and nod in acknowledgment and approval of the gesture. One again it could be observed that there are few atheists in a foxhole.
“Couldn’t sleep,” Moffett mumbled, his eyes nervously rising to meet Libra’s, then falling and wandering around uncertainly.
Brother Libra smiled warmly. “A common after-effect of battle. It will get better.” He reached for his own spoon.
“Good service for the…” He paused and hunted for the right words. “My friends. Never been to church. Didn’t feel the need. But… what you said made it make a little more sense.”
“You are welcome. A sad but sometimes necessary part of the job. Prayers for the fallen can be silently done anywhere. But the still-living need to hear them, too, more often than not. Even if– no, especially if–they have not been to church for a long while. Helps them feel not so alone.” His thoughts were interrupted by Taj’s elderly monk avatar appearing on a side-screen.
“Tell us about the order, the Monks of St Possenti.”
“Don’t you know?”
“I remember many things. Too many, perhaps.” The avatar smiled a lopsided smile. “But I know far fewer. Some of the conscripts were asking about it, and you. Kell might want to hear your understanding of it. Your human understanding of it.” Moffett nodded affirmatively.
After tentatively taking a bite and deciding he may have had a good day, he considered the question. “Not much to tell. Wars happen. Young men, usually healthy and in the prime of life but not highly educated, are used up and tossed aside by rulers who see battalions as little more than interchangeable numbers on a map. For every one who dies of his injuries on the modern battlefield, three more are injured for life. Medicine has gotten miraculously good at fixing the physical damage, but not nearly so much progress has been made on repairing the mental damage done to people pushed to the extremes. A limb lost can be easily qualified and quantified and paid for by planners and politicians, and a prosthetic made or a replacement grown or a soldier medically retired.
“Psychiatric stresses are much less tangible, and less predictable, even among the most stable and well-grounded minds. Bishop Cranberry saw a need and looked for a different approach amid the cauldrons of war during the collapsing states of the middle twenty first century, a need to minister to young men who had seen and done things that broke their spirit, but who were not normally religious people. Studying neuroscience, history, and psychiatry as much as the Bible, he founded the order to take in and help them find a spiritual peace. His methods were unorthodox, demanding physical labor and a largely ascetic life with simple and nutritious foods, mixed with the study of history, how the brain works and learns, prayer, and precision shooting. It caused a great deal of consternation among the more traditionally minded. Even the more militant members objected because it stressed internal discipline rather than external, hierarchal, church-imposed discipline.” He paused to have a few more bites, Kell doing the same as he thought over the monk’s words.
“Some within the Church called him a heretic and demanded he be excommunicated for such beliefs. They were very afraid of him, for a heretic is a far greater threat than a common criminal: the criminal only threatens the person robbed; the heretic threatens the entire order of things. It almost worked. But the Pope at the time was a practical man, as were some leading cardinals, and they saw results among a population that no one else seemed willing or able to reach. Some other monastic orders objected because it wasn’t a life calling. But with the recent purges and
incarcerations in non-papal jails, things were in flux, and it was allowed to continue. The numbers have varied hugely over the years, as wars come and go. We usually have a few members of the order out in the field, finding those in need and sending them our way.”
“But why shooting, bro-… brother, or is it father?”
“Brother.”
“Why shooting if they were traumatized in war?”
“Three very important reasons. First, because precision shooting demands concentration and a great deal of self-awareness, self-control, focus, and keen observation and evaluation of the world as it is. Much like meditation, all else must be shut out. It teaches that these skills are not the same as killing. It isn’t for everyone. Shooting well also demands physical fitness. A physically challenging life is good for the body as well as the mind, and I cannot imagine a God who wants a man to have an unhealthy physical or mental state, or people that refuse to see the physical reality of the world.
“Second, symbols are important, and arms have long been a symbol of power. People are drawn to power; the weak for protection, the strong to get stronger. I cannot imagine a God that wants his followers to sign the suicide pact of absolute pacifism. Forgive your enemies, but do not bow down before them. Many suffer mental stress because they found themselves helpless on the battlefield. We help them learn the skills and discipline to feel that they are never totally helpless, with their own physical action as the first defense, their friends and the faithful as support, and with God if they are in extremis. It’s not that guns are of greater power than God, it’s a gateway to get men on a path to spiritual strength.”