Warzone: Nemesis: A Novel of Mars

by Morris Graham

  “You look absolutely stunning tonight.”

  “Thank you. You clean up real nice, too.”

  I smiled as I recounted my very serious effort to dress in the very best clothes I had, which in this case was my dress uniform. ASDC dress uniforms were distinctively black, with red trim and cords, and gold rank insignias and buttons. I could have worn civvies, but I honestly didn’t own a civilian suit. I never had an opportunity that required one and blue jeans didn’t seem appropriate that night.

  I hardly noticed what I ate, but I knew that we did. We spent the evening telling each other stories of our youth and service. Her parents raised her in the Russian Orthodox Church, and she was a devout Christian. I felt as though my mother would approve of her and wished she were alive tonight to meet her.

  “Your family name Pastukhov, is it very common?”

  “Yes, Pastukh is the root that means shepherd. I am descended from goat and sheep herders. My father’s last name is Pastukhov and mine is a feminine version of it. And your real last name is Bordelon, from the French root name borde, meaning farm. Your brother runs the family farm. So shepherd and farmer aren’t that much different.”

  “No, not much difference. You have done your homework.”

  She spoke, and the conversation rapidly turned to more serious fare.

  “You’ve spent your entire career on Mars killing Russians, and yet here you are, having supper with one. Does this feel like a contradiction to you?”

  I stopped and thought that over. “I’ve sent money to societies for Bibles for Russia, so I do understand the difference between the Soviet people and enemies. I fight soldiers because my duty dictates it, but the Soviet people aren’t my enemies. I see no contradiction here.”

  She smiled. “I think you’ll do, but then, you’re leaving for Mars at the end of the week.”

  “Yes. In just two days. I’d already signed up to extend my tour. I’ve just barely started to serve as post commander.”

  “When do you think you’ll have fulfilled your obligation to your duty?”

  “I honestly don’t know, but I have a feeling it has to do with COL Tkachenko. Who knows, I may be assigned there for “such a time as this”.‏”

  She nodded at the reference from the book of “Esther.”

  “Yes, sometimes, God appoints people for tasks at a time and place that’s a crossroad. I feel I’m about to step into that crossroad, and my destiny is intertwined with Tkachenko’s.”

  She shuddered. “I just want to see you safely back home, and that one is dangerous.”

  It was getting harder than ever. I’d already signed up for another four-year tour on Mars. My next leave would be travel time back, two more years and travel time back. I was to leave in two days. I didn’t want to hurt her but couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her.

  “I have to tell you. I’d stay here with you for the rest of my life if I had peace about my duty. I’ve never met anyone like you. I just don’t want to sit on the front porch and look at the stars in the evening and wish I were somewhere else. It would be very unfair to ask you to wait for me.”

  “Promise me you’ll be careful and that you’ll come back for me. I’ll wait.” Her eyes showed that she honestly would.

  “I will, under one condition. If the wait is too hard and you change your mind, just tell me and I’ll release you from your vow. As for me, if I live to return, I’ll marry you; that’s my vow.”

  “I won’t ask to be released.”

  “But you must agree that you can be released if you feel you can no longer wait.”

  “I agree, but I swear if we have to adopt children, I’ll still wait.”

  “I’ll be right back.” There was a jukebox, and I wanted to dance with her in any case, just to hold her. I scrolled through the selection and found it.

  Perfect, I thought. I returned back to the table and extended my hand.

  “Shall we dance?”

  “Yes.”

  We moved to the dance floor just as the song I put in started playing. The bittersweet words of the song were as though they were written just for us, from the movie Romeo and Juliet.

  “A time for us, someday they’ll be,

  When chains are torn, by courage born,

  Of a love that’s free.

  A time when dreams so long denied,

  can flourish,

  As we unveil the love we now must hide.

  A time for us, someday they’ll be

  A life worthwhile for you and for me.”

  We danced until the song ended. I escorted her to her quarters and kissed her goodnight. Tomorrow night was my last night on Earth. We decided to take a field trip out to the surrounding hills and watch the sunset and the next morning’s sunrise.

  The last day of teaching seemed to drag on forever. I went through all of the motions and finally the day was over. My brother had sent more of the shark steaks to the academy, and I’d bought thirty pounds of ribeyes to pack. I had my container of meat, tuna fillets and shark steaks on dry ice and ready to go, but my clothes, tea and other personal effects I would pack in the morning. Slinging my holster over my shoulder, I carried my backpack to meet Katya.

  I met Katya at the officers’ club, and she was thrilled see I’d brought my colts. She laughed, her blue eyes shining with excitement. “Now I have a real American cowboy to take me out!”

  “Oh these, just in case we run into snakes.”

  We loaded up my bike’s saddlebags with some provisions for the evening. I had purposely taken the sidecars off, so that she would have to wrap her arms around me on the trip. We left the box canyon that hosted the Academy and headed west about thirty klicks into the desert. Katya directed me to a hill and motioned me to head to the top. There was a dirt trail up the side with a gradual rise to it, which made it ideal for biking up. I was able to ride all the way to the top and park my bike on the mesa’s flat top. It was only about eighteen thirty, and we had about an hour and a half until sunset.

  We busied ourselves with gathering a wood supply before the sun went down. There were plenty of small sticks and deadwood from trees and brush nearby, and an old, dead piñon tree stump provided some pitch pine for a great fire starter. I had brought a small hatchet, a machete, and a cigarette lighter to help with the fire preparation. Making a circle of rocks, I arranged the sticks and wood into a teepee shape and shoved a couple of pine cones and some dead grass under it. Finally, I took my knife and made shavings of the pitch pine for a fire starter. Taking stock of my creation, I surveyed our wood pile and was satisfied it would make a nice fire at sundown.

  I had brought a shovel, but I had forgotten to bring a flashlight, a rookie mistake for an Eagle Scout. We were of the opposite sex and trying to use the bathroom in the dark without a light to see by may prove both embarrassing and even dangerous. Quickly surveying my surroundings, I spied a small piñon tree with several branches the right size. I cut four branches about three feet long, and three inches in diameter. With my ax, I split the top nine inches, then again crossways with all four sticks, then pried the splits open and filled it with wood shavings. These would make fine torches for four trips to the mountaintop privy. The sun was beginning to set on the mountain range to the west.

  Katya laid out a blanket and unpacked supper. She had some fried chicken, potato salad and apple pie. She teased me about Americans needing to eat apple pie. After praying, we ate and watched the sun slowly slip behind the mountain range. I recognized this scene. It was the same spot where the painting in her quarters was painted. The colors painted by the dying sun seemed to gain intensity and by degree became more colorful, until the sun was behind the mountain range. The clouds on the mountains had a yellow undercoating on the bottom and were fiery red and darkish purple throughout. The breaks in the clouds showed a few fluffy white clouds at the distance, with a bluish purple sky as a backdrop. The purple and red gave yield to dark black clouds higher up. This was truly magnificent. Katya had chosen
to bring me here to share this precious gift. The sun finally surrendered and I lit the campfire. I knew that getting too physical alone with her tonight would be a big mistake.

  “Some things are best left until a promise is fulfilled,” I said, indicating a need to keep it honorable.

  “Good, if I have to wait, so do you.”

  With the rising of the moon, we were serenaded by the mournful howl of the coyote, which seemed to be a fitting backdrop for our separation tomorrow. We talked all through the night, and I learned a lot more about the woman I was leaving behind. Katya was Russian-born, and her father was not only an Olympic fencer, but also a Soviet cryptologist. He worked for the Soviet intelligence community before he defected to the United States and started working for the CIA. She was only five when they came to America but she still loved the Russian people. It dawned on me that this was the reason why she had to know that I didn’t actually hate Russians, but was simply a soldier doing my duty. Her singleness at age twenty-seven was why she had time to pursue cultural things like painting and fencing, when other women her age were too busy raising children. I still had one nagging question in the back of my mind.

  “Why did you become interested in me?”

  She smiled. The flickering firelight illuminated her face and showed how truly beautiful she was. “Well, you know what I do. I have to dig into the backgrounds of each command officer. I have to do security checks, which include your history, military service records and psych evals. Something between the first look at your picture and all the other things I looked at made me want to meet you. You might say I knew you long before I ever met you. Your unit has the lowest rate of transfer requests in the system. There’s a list of pilots trying to transfer in. That speaks well of you. By the way, that young marine sniper has been assigned to you.”

  “Nice. Thanks for the head’s up.”

  “You’re welcome. I must confess the story of the cowboy who wears six guns over his space suit was larger than life. Now that I’ve met you, the image has been replaced by the man.”

  “And you’re still interested?”

  “Yes, I guess I still am.”

  It was turning cold, so she wrapped up in the blanket. We stayed close to the fire and talked all night. Sunrise was beautiful and peaceful. Gone were the fiery skies of last night, yielding to the softer colors of the early morning. The light yellow sun started to emerge on the horizon, coaxing the sky to start to turn blue. The clouds that did appear were few and far between, but they were beginning to turn white with the rising of the sun. The morning was awakening with the sounds of birds and animals beginning to stir.

  We packed up all of our stuff onto my bike, and then took one last drink of our canteens before leaving. Breakfast would have to wait until we got back.

  “You never showed me any shooting. How do I know if you’re a real cowboy or not unless you show me some shooting?”

  I dared not miss. This would break the spell cast by our perfect evening. I was accustomed to shooting in a different gravity, temperature, and atmospheric density than this. It was a good thing I shot off a couple of boxes of rounds on Earth a couple of weeks ago. Anyway, she did say she was able to accept the man over the larger than life image she once had, so I could risk failing. I pointed at her aluminum disc shaped canteen. “That will do. Throw it about twenty yards out and about twenty yards up, flat side facing me.” She smiled, and tossed it up pretty close to where I asked her to, and I drew both pistols and put two holes in the canteen. I was relieved, and she was elated. She retrieved the canteen, now leaking two streams of water.

  “I promise to keep it as a reminder of our date. You are a real cowboy! Maybe you can buy a ranch and raise cattle and horses when you come back for me.”

  “Nothing would please me more, milady.” We arrived back at the academy at ten hundred. Breakfast was over in the officers’ mess, but we grabbed a bite at the bar in the officers’ club. After lunch, Katya excused herself to go back to her quarters and change but promised to meet me in fifteen minutes at my quarters.

  Upon returning to my quarters, I had a video conference request from my XO. I made the connection, and I saw his smiling face on the video screen.

  “Greetings, Colonel.”

  “Greetings. Is my post still standing?”

  “Sir, yes sir. Are you coming back?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Rumor has it that you’ve taken up with a blonde-haired beauty, and may stay on Earth. In fact, a certain unnamed captain is giving odds on just that.”

  “What are the odds?”

  “It started out four-to-one that you were coming back. Then someone got a picture of said beauty and posted it on the bulletin board. The odds dropped to two-to-one that you would remain.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I may just be a full-bird colonel soon.”

  “Well, don’t count your eagles before they’re hatched. I’m packing now.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “I’m bringing back two marines with me.”

  “Good. So, you traded one sailor for two marines. I would have held out for three.”

  I didn’t want to ruin it for him. “I’ll tell you the whole story when I get back. Is that it?”

  “That’s all I got, sir. Have a nice trip.”

  “Thank you. Kahless out.”

  Katya knocked lightly on my door. She’d taken the day off as a personal day and volunteered to help me pack. After packing, we picked Blaze up from the vet. She had been treated gently for ticks and fleas. She was pregnant, and special care had been taken to treat her. Her bedding and bed were destroyed and replaced, and my quarters fumigated. Regulations didn’t allow an animal to board a ship for points abroad without being certified free of ticks and fleas. I got her certification papers from the Academy vet and cleared her to board. We ate a late lunch at the officers’ club. Blaze and I were ready to board and arrived at the launch pad at fourteen hundred.

  Katya and I shared our first goodbye kiss. She handed me a chain and pendant. It was a broken heart with the words… “Mizpah. May the Lord watch between me and thee whenever we’re absent one from another.” She pulled the other half of the pendant and necklace out from under her shirt to show me she held the other half. I held her hand and our fingers entwined.

  “When did you buy this?”

  “The day after our fencing match. The Academy has a post exchange with a small jewelry counter,” her voice as thin as a whisper. A single tear streamed down her cheek, and I wiped it away with my shaking hand. I felt a wave of emotion wash over me. I kissed her goodbye for the last time, reluctantly released her hand and called Blaze to heel. We boarded, and I watched Katya on the launch pad until we were commanded to strap down for lift-off.

  THE MARATHON POKER GAME

  I met the transport freighter with my dog and two transfers, but my heart I left behind. We were on the short end of Mars orbit in relation to Earth’s location in its orbit around the sun, but not quite as short as on our trip here. It was planned that way to make my time away from the post shorter. Since my course was plotted and I was committed, I decided to settle down to the three and one-half month trip back to Mars. We play a lot of poker, and everyone reads everyone else’s books on the way back, which made for a lighter travel bag. There were a lot of videotapes in the transport freighter’s archive to help us pass the time. There was the inevitable Russian language class to keep us busy. The gerbil gym was only large enough for one person at a time, and we had assigned times in rotation. Sleeping arrangements are the same as a submarine, three men per bed, eight hour shifts in rotation. We had Internet access for APO e-mails and news, so we never lost contact with our country, or our post.

  Blaze fared well and had six pups, six weeks into the trip to Mars. This caused no little stir. All of her pups were spoken for within hours. CPT Ripsnort wanted a pup but conceded it wouldn’t be fair to the dog, being cooped up on a transport fre
ighter in space.

  Two and a half months into our trip, CPT Ripsnort got a communiqué from the transport freighter America. Very rarely do transport freighters pass each other and the captains and passengers take advantage of it by having a marathon poker game. Usually it lasts for about twenty-four hours, providing there’s no ranking field commander in a hurry to get home. America locked its docking clamps to our transport freighter and CPT America, his crew and passengers came aboard. Two field commanders were on this flight, Titan’s commander COL Ice Man and me. Ice Man, the former first officer from Europa, was the one the ASDC sent back to dig back in after COL Tkachenko nearly destroyed the post on Titan. He was as tenacious a fighter and leader as they came. CPT Ripsnort pulled the two of us aside to see if we’d approve the time delay.

  “I’m looking forward to cleaning COL Kahless out,” announced COL Ice Man, eyes boring into me like a drill as if it were personal.

  “I don’t have twenty-four hours. Raise the table stakes and the raise limit and make it twelve hours. You can lose a war in twelve hours.”

  CPT Ripsnort was undaunted. “Okay, gentlemen, it costs two thousand dollars to play. We start six to a table and play until that table is down to one man. Then when all the winners of the tables are ready, we play one last table until there’s only one player left, winner take all. You won’t be allowed any additional money to gamble with. When you’re broke, you are eliminated. COL Kahless informs me he’s in a hurry, so the opening bids are fifty dollars and raise limits are fifty dollars. If we run out of time in the final elimination, we will raise both limits again. There will be no cheating and no hard feelings. Anybody breaking these rules will be ejected from an airlock.” He paused for effect. “Just kidding. But let’s have fun, and keep in mind, with only one winner, the odds are that you’ll lose. If you can’t take that, don’t play.”

  There were a total of twenty-four men playing today: flight mechanics, crewmembers and captains of the transport freighters, recruits, seasoned pilots, and two field commanders. Both 2LT Pale Rider and CPT Luv2bomb were in, as well as COL Ice Man and me.