by Rick Partlow
The flare of light kept coming, intersecting the Defender amidships, and for an eyeblink there was nothing.
Then the ship transformed into a ball of light, an epiphany of blinding fire that grew and grew until it seemed to reach out for them, and the screen dissolved into a mass of snow.
“Oh God,” Shannon murmured, her eyes wide. She stumbled backward, catching herself on another row of consoles and using them for support.
“He must have already gotten off the ship,” Kristopolis attempted to assure her, rising from his seat and going to her side.
“I’m sorry...” Jameson said, shaking his head in confusion. “Did you...do you know one of the people?”
“Jason,” she whispered, not hearing the President. “Oh Jesus, Jason.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“It is no time for mirth and laughter,
The cold, grey dawn of the morning after.”
---George Ade.
“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” the medic was chanting as the capsule shuddered violently, buffeted by a wash of superheated air as the edge of the fusion blast touched the upper atmosphere. Jason wasn’t sure if she was praying or swearing.
“How much control do we have over this thing?” he asked, yelling to be heard over the roaring of the air around the pod. They’d popped the escape pod out of the hull only thirty seconds ahead of the fusion explosion, and Jason was hoping they’d gotten far away enough to avoid a potentially fatal dose of radiation. But that was premature. If they couldn’t bring the pod down safely, they wouldn’t have to worry about radiation poisoning.
“Not much,” Jock told him, struggling with the rudimentary control panel at the center of the pod’s floor. “We got about a minute’s worth of maneuvering fuel left. Where do you want me to try for?”
“We need someplace with people,” Jason told him. “Someplace with enough organization to take care of Vinnie.”
“Some of the cities might not have power,” Ari warned.
“The orbital control center,” Crossman said. “Lieutenant Stark’ll be there---they gotta have a medstation at the base.”
“Can you take us there, Jock?” Jason asked.
“I can try,” he said with a shrug. “At least we’re on the right side of the planet.”
He guided the tiny joystick in gentle moves toward a guesstimated point on the computer-simulated globe in the dinner-plate viewer, then squeezed the thruster control. There was a sound like a sledgehammer pounding on the hull as the maneuvering jets emptied their contents in a series of short bursts.
“That’s it.” Jock shrugged, giving the joystick a slap and watching it waggle. “It’s all in God’s hands now.”
“You believe in God, Jock?” Jason asked him, surprised.
“Not really,” the big man shrugged. “But now’s not the time to be making new enemies.”
Jason looked at Vinnie, head sagging, only his straps holding him upright. His face was pale, his breath so shallow that it took a few seconds’ watching to see it. He looked dead. Maybe God was on their side...but then again, maybe God required a human sacrifice.
The pod began to shudder and rock, and Jason’s ears were filled with the roar of the atmosphere as they slowly reentered. Gravity returned with a vengeance, pushing them back into their acceleration couches and against each other. With the return of gravity, the wound in his leg speared him with a fresh spike of pain and he gritted his teeth to push it back. Through the single porthole, Jason could see flames dancing over the surface of the pod as it heated up from atmospheric friction---he knew that the ceramic heat shield on the belly of the capsule had to be glowing cherry red.
Not just a human sacrifice, Jason thought with macabre humor, but a burnt offering.
* * *
It looked like the end of the world.
The smoke from the burning vehicles joined with the low, overcast clouds in conspiracy to block out the rising sun, casting a mourning pall over the plain. Shannon shivered, hugged her arms to herself. It was cold. The Indian summer was over.
Everything’s over, she thought, pacing past the wreckage of a groundcar, not looking at the burned body inside. Everything.
She hurt---she hurt almost everywhere, and she was sure she’d cracked a rib---but she ignored her own pain, just as she ignored the carnage and death around her. Nothing seemed to penetrate the shell of numbness that she’d built around herself. She’d left the President and Lieutenant Kristopolis in the control room and made her way to the surface without saying a word to her troops, without even bothering to bring a weapon.
What did it matter if she were to die now? The mission was accomplished, civilization was saved, she was expendable. They were all expendable. Those Marines on Aphrodite had been expendable, Nathan had been expendable, Jason...
“Oh God, Jason,” she moaned, rubbing a hand over her face, feeling tears there that she didn’t remember crying.
When she hadn’t cried for Nathan, she hadn’t thought herself capable of it anymore. Now the tears came. In gentle sobs, not the violent spasms that had wracked her on Aphrodite, yet still she cried, crying for Nathan and for Jason...and for herself.
“Ma’am, are you all right?”
Shannon spun at the unexpected voice and saw Corporal Lee stepping up hesitantly behind her. He looked beat up, as they all did, with a blood-stained makeshift bandage wrapped around his forehead and dirt and grease staining his fatigues. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, beyond embarrassment.
“I’m fine, Corporal,” she replied. “What do you want?”
“Well, ma’am,” he said, shrugging, “it’s just that no one seems too sure of what’s going on. I mean, did we win?”
“Oh yeah, Corporal,” she barked a humorless laugh, struggling to hold back a fresh wave of tears. “We won all right.” She shook her head. “The Protectorate ships have been des...” She had to swallow the lump in her throat to continue. “Destroyed.” She let out a deep breath. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to be alone for a while.”
She turned away from him and began to walk toward the shoreline.
“Ma’am?” She heard his persistent call before she’d made it ten paces.
“What is it now, Corporal?” She turned back, exasperation in her face. But the young man was staring into the sky above the satellite control center, eyes squinting.
“Ma’am, what the hell is that?” He pointed upward and she followed his gesture, found the dark outline of a small, rounded object falling slowly out of the clouds, dangling beneath the eggshell-white canopies of multiple parachutes.
“It doesn’t look like one of the biomech delivery pods,” she said, brow wrinkling in confusion. “I mean, they had a maneuverable parasail and this has a regular parachute setup. Looks more like some kind of emergency reentry vehicle.”
Shannon’s breath caught in her throat. Without another word, she took off across the grassy field at a dead sprint.
The bulbous metal hulk hissed and pinged, sending up a pale cloud of steam as it heated the morning dew. Its belly had dug a trench in the soft earth a meter deep when it hit, despite the huge silken expanse of the parachutes that trailed behind it now, flapping in the wind. Shannon stopped a few meters away from the thing, going from a full-out run to a haltering stop in two steps, reason finally penetrating the fog of her thoughts.
A Protectorate flag, scorched by the fires of reentry, was emblazoned on the side of the capsule, proving it had indeed come from one of the ships of the invasion fleet, but giving no indication of who---or what---was inside. And she was unarmed.
Shannon jumped involuntarily as a metallic groan issued from somewhere in the guts of the pod. She backed up a step, remembering hordes of biomechs pouring out of drop pods in Capital City. The hatch in the nose of the capsule inched upwards, opening towards her, giving no clue as to what manner of creature lay behind it. Behind her, Shannon heard the hum of a groundcar motor---most likely some of the troops from the
control center come out to investigate the capsule, she surmised---but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the opening hatch.
An arm, clad in dark-hued camo, braced against the edge of the hatchway, giving the leverage needed to push the hatch over. The heavy portal fell open with a hollow, thunderous bong, a sound that Shannon could feel echoing through her sinuses. She blinked involuntarily at the sound, and when her eyes refocused, she was looking into the sweat-drenched, smoke-stained face of Jason McKay.
“Hi honey,” he said with a lopsided grin, “I’m home.”
“I’ll be damned,” she murmured, a smile slowly spreading across her face. “Jason McKay, you have got to be the luckiest son of a bitch I’ve ever met.”
“Yeah, well,” he said, the smile running away from his face, “not all of us were so lucky.”
He clambered slowly and painfully out of the hatch, making room for Jock and Tom to lift Vinnie through, then he helped them lower the wounded man to the ground.
Shannon turned to see the groundcar she had heard pulling up behind her, disgorging Lieutenant Kristopolis and a pair of armed RSC troops.
“Get over here!” she ordered. “We need to get this man to the infirmary!”
The RSC soldiers slung their rifles and rushed to load Vinnie into the open groundcar, while Ari Shamir and the Marine medic climbed out of the pod. Jason limped away from the uncomfortable heat of the escape capsule and slumped to the ground, stretching his injured leg out in front of him.
Shannon watched the jeep head back toward the control center with Vinnie, the Marine medic and Kristy, then she walked over to Jason and sat down beside him. They sat there together for a moment in silence, not looking at each other, not touching, before Shannon finally spoke.
“You’re hurt,” she said, nodding toward his leg.
“Yes, I am,” he sighed. “But I’m alive.”
“Is this everyone?”
He shook his head. “There’s another pod full of Marines---don’t know where they touched down.” He looked her in the eye. “Gunny Lambert’s dead.”
Shannon hissed a breath through her teeth and closed her eyes. “He was a good man.”
“They’re all good,” Jason replied, his face stone.
“And we’re all expendable,” she said, remembering the pain she had felt and imagining it transferred to Lambert’s wife, or mother, or child...
“Well hey,” Jason barked a sharp, humorless laugh. “We saved the world, didn’t we?”
“Well, what do you say, Captain McKay?” Shannon levered herself to her feet and offered him a hand. “Wanna come let someone take a look at that leg?”
“All right, Lieutenant Stark,” he assented, taking her hand and letting her pull him to his feet. He chuckled hoarsely. “As Supreme Commander of all Republic forces, I make it a point to listen to the suggestions of my loyal minions.”
He tried to take a step, but his leg collapsed out from under him and Shannon had to catch him before he fell on his face.
“Come on, Supreme Commander.” She got his arm around her shoulders, and Tom Crossman stepped up to take the other side, half-carrying him away from the grounded pod. “Let’s get your Supreme ass to the medics.”
“No respect,” Jason muttered hazily. “Us Supreme Commanders don’t get no respect.”
* * *
Glen Mulrooney awoke suddenly, feeling the touch of a hand on his arm. He sat up straight in his chair and saw Valerie’s eyes on him. She had rolled halfway over in bed, and he could see the pain in her eyes from the motion.
“Lie back,” he cautioned her, putting a hand on her shoulder and gently pushing her back to the bed. “You don’t want to strain yourself yet.”
“What’s happening?” she asked, her voice hoarse and whispery. “Where am I?”
“You’re fine,” he assured her, stroking her hair. “You’re going to be okay, Val.” He reached to a night table and retrieved a cup of water, guiding it to her lips.
She didn’t look okay. Her face was pale, her hair matted with sweat, and there were lines of pain around her eyes and mouth. Her skin was cool and clammy, and she reminded Glen of a fresh corpse---but she was going to be all right.
Pushing away the water, she looked around at the darkened confines of the barracks room where she lay on a military bunk, eyes squinting at the gloom lit only by chemical ghostlights. They were alone. She looked into his eyes and he saw the realization in her gaze.
“I lost the baby,” she said, her voice like a ghost sighing.
Glen nodded, hand clenching hers. He hissed out a long breath, not knowing what to say. A day before, he had told himself that he no longer cared if Val lived or died, but it wasn’t so easy to be dispassionate now.
“They did the best they could,” he told her. “But their first priority was to save you.” He shrugged. “Considering the conditions they had to work with, they did a hell of a job.”
“They should have let me die,” Valerie muttered, letting her head fall back to the bed.
“Don’t talk that way, Val,” Glen adjured her. “You have everything to live for. You’re intelligent, you’re beautiful, you have a great career ahead of you---your whole life’s ahead of you.” He shook his head in exasperation. “What’s happened to you, Val? You always used to be the one who was in control of everything, the one who’d never let anything rattle her. What made you give up?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it again, licking her lips hesitantly.
“I mean,” Glen went on, “it can’t just be this thing with Jason.” Val’s head snapped around and her eyes narrowed, but he pretended not to notice. “I know you must still have feelings for him---you decided to have his baby, after all, when you could have avoided it. But how can you let it mess with your head like this? So he loves someone else, so what? Is your self-image so weak you can’t take one Goddamned rejection in your whole life?”
Her mouth dropped open. She’d never heard Glen speak this way to her before. And how had he known about Jason? She was so dumbfounded, she answered him without thinking, without trying to conceal the truth behind comforting words.
“Everyone I know is fake,” she blurted. “Their words are fake, their clothes are fake, their houses are fake, their lives are fake. They live for the camera, for the politicians or professors or lovers they want to impress. Jason...” she trailed off, seeming to regain her control, but past caring. “Jason was a real person. He didn’t care who my father was, or whether I was going to be a Republic Senator in ten years, or what media personality I’d been associated with.” She closed her eyes, mouth in a tight line. “And, in the end, he didn’t care about me.”
“Mirror mirror on the wall,” Glen murmured with a wry smile, “who’s the fakest of them all?”
She glared at him, her depression beginning to give way to anger.
“Leave me alone,” she said.
“Sure, I’ll leave you alone, Val.” Glen laughed, standing. “But first I’d like to tell you something I’ve been holding back for a while. You know, you’re right---everyone we know is fake. And you and me are no different. Damn it, Val,” he exclaimed, “people have died for you! Real people with real families and real lives. They gave up everything to save your life, and now you’ve decided, shit, they may as well have not tried.” Glen paced back and forth across the room in agitation, hands thrust in his hip pockets.
“I’ve learned a lot from being around these people, Val.” He nodded at the room’s door. “And the main thing I’ve learned is that unless you think about more than yourself and your petty little problems, you’re just wasting your life. I don’t know about you, but I’ve wasted enough of one life.”
She stared at him closely, as if she were seeing him for the first time.
“You’ve changed in the last few months, Glen,” she said. “I don’t think I know you anymore.”
He laughed softly, sitting on the edge of her bed.
“Well, darling, is that a go
od or a bad thing?”
She slowly reached out her hand and took his.
“I think you know,” she said, biting her lip like a schoolgirl on her first date. “Glen, I’m sorry. I can’t apologize for my feelings for Jason, and I won’t. But I wasn’t honest with you, and all you ever tried to do was be there for me. Can you forgive me?”
“The old Glen,” he mused, staring thoughtfully into space, “would have walked out of this room and never spoken to you again. But that’s not me anymore.” He looked her in the eye. “I forgive you, Val.”
“Glen, I know this isn’t fair to ask, but...” she faltered, the words not coming. She paused and took a deep breath. “I don’t want to be alone. Not now. I know we can’t go back to the way things were, and I don’t expect you to go through with the engagement. But can we...” She shrugged helplessly. “Can we still try?”
Glen swallowed hard. He’d thought she might ask that, yet still he was unprepared.
The door to the room burst open, the inrushing form of Daniel O’Keefe granting him a reprieve.
“Glen!” he exclaimed, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. “Glen, we just...” He trailed off as he saw Valerie. “Honey!” He rushed over to her bedside, kneeling down and embracing her gently, as if she were a china doll. “Oh, God, I’m so glad you’re awake! I almost died when I saw you in the infirmary, darling.” He stroked her hair, burying his head in her shoulder. “Oh, God, Val, I couldn’t stand to see anything happen to you.”
“I’m all right, Daddy,” she assured him, patting his arm. “I promise, I’ll be okay.”
“Christ, I forgot why I came in here!” O’Keefe slapped himself on the forehead. “We just received a transmission from the satellite control center outside Capital City! They’ve done it! The Fleet has arrived! They’ve destroyed the Protectorate ships!”
“Thank God,” Glen sighed, his shoulders sagging with relief.
“Then it’s all over,” Valerie said.
“Well, hardly over,” her father replied, coming to his feet. “After all, aside from President Jameson and myself, there is no Republic government to speak of. Most of the cities have had their power feeds cut. There are still Protectorate troops on the ground on the North American continent, and God only knows what’s happening in the star colonies. No, we have a lot of work to do still.” He leaned down and kissed Valerie on the cheek. “I’m very sorry about your baby, honey. But maybe now when you and Glen decide to have another child, you’ll have a better world to bring it into.”