by Bill Roberts
Copyright © 2016 Bill Roberts
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 153000960X
ISBN 13: 9781530009602
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1: Drop
Chapter 2: The Great Secret
Chapter 3: Awful
Chapter 4: Wonderland
Chapter 5: A Battle Won
Chapter 6: Immortality
Chapter 7: Debriefing
Chapter 8: A New Day
Chapter 9: Leave
Chapter 10: Wings
Chapter 11: Deployment
Chapter 12: Demonstration
Chapter 13: Loading
Chapter 14: Five Eyes
Chapter 15: Reunion
Chapter 16: The Forge
Chapter 17: Skullduggery
Chapter 18: Going Home
Chapter 19: Forgiveness
Chapter 20: Cataclysm
Chapter 21: Sowing Wind
Chapter 22: Vengence
Epilogue
Prologue
The Watcher, who has come to be named Patience, waits as calmly as his name would imply. He expects someone. Having existed since the Galaxy was young, an hour, a year, a millennium, these all pass easily for him. Patience suspects he knows the reason for the appointment. Little happens anymore that he does not know about. The real question will be what Patience will do about it. For some reason he cannot place, he remains undecided.
The expectation is met soon, well as much as that word has meaning for Patience. The Watcher named Adventure enters. He does not enter alone, the Watcher named Passion comes with him. Odd. Patience is unaccustomed to being surprised, he only expected Adventure to come, however, Passion’s presence only confirms Patience’s suspicions about the nature of the meeting.
Adventure speaks first: “We must call the council together.”
This statement is expected. “The council has not met since the end of the Second Darkness,” Patience replies.
Passion answers for Adventure, her voice certain: “Darkness again threatens.” Another surprise. Not the content, but that Passion would so quickly speak for Adventure. Interesting.
Passion is almost as old as Patience. However, as her name implies, she does not always look at things coolly. Normally Patience would simply dismiss her statement, but, her presence intrigues Patience so he asks, “How can you be certain?”
Before Passion can answer, Adventure speaks. “She is certain of me. And I am certain Darkness comes.” He pauses then states strongly, “I propose intervention.” Intervention. Just as Patience anticipated. Adventure is young, only one revolution of the Galaxy has happened since his creation. Of course he would seek intervention, action being the folly of youth. Passion’s support is also understandable, despite her unexpected presence. If darkness does indeed loom on the Arrow of Time she would want the course of the Arrow changed.
Something stabs at Patience, a remembrance of a time in the dim and distant past, a time when he was called Eagerness. The First Darkness had taught Eagerness to become Patience. He had not enjoyed that experience. The frustration he had felt had burned, burned with a heat that made the star outside his window seem cold in comparison. But it had been on the Arrow of Time. Lamenting the events on the Arrow was, and is, pointless.
Sensing his unease, Passion speaks: “Were you wrong then? I thought not. The Arrow can be changed.” Prior to the First Darkness it had been Eagerness seeking a council meeting. He too had asked for intervention, only to be denied by his elders. Looking back along the Arrow, Patience decides that no, he had not been wrong. Patience’s indecision transforms into certainty. Adventure will get a chance to present his case to the council. Patience also decides he will support Adventure’s request for intervention. Even Patience can grow weary in the face of yet another long darkness. He decrees, “The Council shall be called.”
CHAPTER 1
Drop
Master Power.
The button bearing that name gleams dully in the faint light from the vision blocks. It is a solid silvery alloy inlaid in a bezel of the same material. The whole setup is about the size of a quarter, not that we use quarters anymore. The button has block letters etched in the surface and filled in with a hard smooth material like onyx. It is very well made. Hell, everything is well made these days.
Master Power.
As I look at the button I take a deep breath and absorb the smells of the crew compartment of a fighting vehicle. I catch lubricants with their cloying tang, electronics with their acrid ozone, and the faint hint of stale sweat that never seems to go away no matter how much you clean. The old familiar smells are comfortable. At this point I could not count how much of my life I have lived in their embrace. There is always comfort in the familiar. Too bad the comfort will not last.
Master Power.
My sight remains on the button while my hands and feet touch the controls; after thousands upon thousands of hours in the cockpit the action is practically subconscious. My hands fiddle with the two control sticks with their checkered grips, buttons and triggers. My feet press the pair of pedals on the floor, feeling their pressure. These actions, too, are comfortable, but they also hint at the chaos which will soon shatter that comfort.
Master Power.
I think of the fears that will arise in the chaos to come. We all feel fear, even the bravest among us, and in order to succeed you must be prepared to ignore it, and listen to it at the same time. I dredge up the fears and confront them. I think of the Marines I will be leading and how they are like my family. I let the fear of losing a member of my family taunt me. I think of the friends I am about to drop with. I let the fear that I will fail them cackle at me. I think about her. That fear growls and rises up threatening to choke me. I let them all wash over me and then I look back at the button. With the fears swirling around me I wonder again why I keep pressing that damn button. Why do I still do this? I caress the button for a moment and take another deep breath. Is it the oaths I made? Is it for my comrades? Is it the desire to be something that drives me to push that button? Those reasons are all important, in their way. However, sitting in my Kodiak about to drop, they fade into obscurity behind what else will come when I hit that button.
Master Power.
It is time. My thumb drives the button down. The Kodiak starts to come to life all around me. It is almost impossible to describe how that feels. You hear it, a faint sort of thrum that is almost inaudible. You feel it, a subtle vibration that barely reaches the threshold of perception. It is a minute change really, but as minute as the change is, it jolts you down to your very soul. As the power plant finishes spooling up, the lights, dials, and holograms that surround me all start to come to life and the kaleidoscope of color and light bathe me in their glow. I soak up their glow greedily. I close my eyes and feel something growing inside me. It fills me from the soles of my feet to the top of my head. My fingers tingle with it, and my heart races. It pushes out every fear, pushes out every doubt. It makes me forget all of the things I want to forget. It is a feeling of power. Not just any power, but the ever seductive power of death. I embrace it. I revel in it. I am hopelessly addicted to it now. So be it.
Fears gone, doubt gone, pain gone, I open my eyes. The TACNET login screen comes up in a three dimensional display in front of me. I say: “Lieutenant Colonel Morris, Shawn eighteen oh two.”
TACNET responds: “Password please.”
I i
ntone: “Nothing can be half so melancholy as a battle lost, except a battle won.” Even the Iron Duke had a soul.
“Password accepted. Welcome to TACNET, Iron Six,” TACNET replies. A new array of icons and menus fills the three dimensional display in front of me.
TACNET is a tremendously powerful tool. It stands for Tactical Network and it allows me to access any information I could possibly need. Naturally, I only use about ten percent of what it is capable of, but I love it anyway because I get to see the people I talk to as I talk to them. It constantly amazes me how many people think warfighting can be reduced to numbers and icons on a holographic display. Fools. Warfighting is a people business at its core; everything else merely supports and frames this core. When I can see my people’s faces they tell me as much about what is going on as their words.
The first face I see is, of course, absurdly young looking, as I know my face is absurdly young looking to her. I cheerfully say, “Hello, Gloria. The boys and girls are still firing up. I should have confirmation in about fifteen minutes.” She smiles. Gloria and I have been working together for many, many years now. Her face has not changed a bit over the decades. Commander Gloria Johansen, United Humanity Navy looks like I always imagined Ada from Wagner’s Die Feen. Her blue eyes twinkle in her Scandinavian face and she strokes her long blonde braid running over her right shoulder and down almost to her waist. The hair marks her as Navy as much as her uniform. Marines always wear it shorter.
“No problem, Shawn,” she replies. “The commodore is being as bombastic and pointless as usual. I’ll be quite surprised if the Group will be ready to move on time anyway.”
“Stunning,” I return. “Tell me how that idiot … Never mind, no use rehashing this old lament anyway. I will let you know when the battalion is ready.” I cut the TACNET link before Gloria can clearly see my disgust. She would understand it, but she would gently chide me for it anyway.
Fifteen minutes until insertion, more than enough time to check my Kodiak. I call up the checklist. It floods the space head level to my direct front in my three dimensional display. The display can show an endless array of different things, but now it just projects the checklist as a simple set of block letters and boxes.
At the top, it rather prosaically says: “Earth Defense Industries M5A4 Kodiak Main Battle System.”
Next: “1. Primary Power.” I check the readouts for the power source that drives my Kodiak. The readouts lie in the waist high dashboard to my front. No problems there, the dials and bars are all in the green and in optimal positions.
“2. Main Weapon.” I look at the readout for the electromagnetic weapon that makes up virtually the entire left forearm of the Kodiak. The dials and gauges for that are mounted on the left side of the dashboard. All the readouts are in the green. There is enough room in the drop bay to run the arm through most of its field of movement. So I quickly raise the arm over the Kodiak’s torso then lower it and rotate the electromagnetic cannon forearm through one hundred and eighty degrees. The arm responds smoothly. Done.
“3. Secondary Weapons.” There is one secondary weapon on the left arm mounted coaxially to the main, also electromagnetic, but significantly smaller and rapid fire. The other secondary is on the right forearm, mounted on top. It is a medium caliber rapid fire electromagnetic weapon. Both read green on their readouts in the dash.
“4. Right Arm.” Unlike the left arm, the right looks like a traditional arm. I work it through the range of motion available in the drop bay and, of course, no problems. I also quickly run a dexterity and operations check on the 4 fingered ‘hand’ on the end of the arm, by dancing my fingers along my right control stick. It too checks out fully.
“5. Missile Battery Left/Right.” The Kodiak carries forty missiles in the torso, twenty on the left of the cockpit and twenty on the right. The dash tells me that both batteries are full up and each missile is in the green.
“6. Legs.” The drop bay is not large, well not large considering the Kodiak’s ten-meter-tall bulk fills most of it, however the Kodiak hangs from its back in the drop bay. This leaves just enough room to move my war machine’s two powerful legs through their full range of motion. Again, my hands caress the control sticks. The legs smoothly and perfectly respond. Excellent.
“7. Jump Jets.” The Kodiak’s jump jets are mounted in pairs, one set on the front of the torso, one set on the rear. All readouts show a friendly green. Given what the next half hour holds I find this quite comforting.
“8. Biological Support.” I check the three small tubes plugged into the surgically implanted plugs on my right, lower abdomen. Catheter, tight and solid. Blood In, tight and solid. Blood Out, tight and solid. I follow the hoses back to the BioMed unit with my fingers, checking for leaks. Finding none I then check the readouts on the unit. All in the green.
“9. Cabin Pressure.” The gauge on the dash reads 1 ATM. The indicator lights for the various seals show green.
“10. Central Computer.” I hit the Built In Test or BIT. A long list of gibberish scrolls through the display to my front. I ignore that useless crap and just focus on the bottom line as it completes. More prose: “All BITs good.” Perfect.
Done and done. I confirm checklist complete and my display returns to its normal setting. Now I just have to wait for the rest of my Kodiak pilots to finish doing the same thing. On other ops I could kill some of this time chatting with a back-seater. But today the seat sits empty behind me. No artillery is making the drop with us today, so I had the Fire Support Officer sit this out. He’s not a bad guy and quite a good FSO (he should be; I have been molding and mentoring him for years) but I don’t need him jabbering at me if there is nothing for him to really do anyway. I am pretty sure he is sulking in the Battalion’s shipboard Combat Operations Center. He will get over it.
Another face now pops up on the display via TACNET. This face is also a woman’s face, however as different as night is to day to the face that preceded it. Like me, she wears the lightweight comm helmet of a Kodiak pilot. Hanging just below the helmet you can see that her hair gleams a raven black and hangs straight in a chin length cut. Her eyes shine a blue so dark as to almost appear black. Her pale china colored skin practically glows and her finely cut features exude pure femininity. In an even sharper departure from Gloria, there is not a trace of humor lurking in this face’s expression. It is as cold as the land of her birth. There is the barest hint of a Russian accent as she announces, “Good Afternoon, sir, all elements have reported in and are ready for drop.” TACNET could have told me the same thing. In fact, in a small corner of the display all sixty-two Kodiaks and six Cougars of the battalion show up as color coded icons indicating their readiness and status. The row of icons is quite useful and in many ways better than voice reporting, on the other hand, I am a fan of old fashioned voice reporting. Seeing a person’s face and hearing a person’s voice connects us and binds us together. A flashing red icon is just another destroyed Kodiak. But a missing face and voice is a comrade lost or in peril.
I match her formality as I acknowledge her report. “Thank you, XO. Commander Johansen predicts a delay to the timeline. Let the Marines know and I’ll update them as soon as I have word.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” she responds and her face winks out.
I punch the button for the Stern’s bridge and Gloria’s face pops up on my display. I report: “Captain Johansen, 2nd Heavy Armored Battalion is ready for drop with sixty-two Kodiaks and six Cougars.”
“Roger. UHNS Andrew K. Stern is ready and prepared for insertion,” she replies. The formalities dealt with, she returns to our usual banter. “Not that it appears to be happening anytime soon.”
The Task Group commander, Commodore William T. Smith, could quite possibly be the worst officer I have ever worked with. How he survived as long as he has in the Navy, let alone how he became a Task Group Commodore, is a mystery on par with Easter Island and the Bermuda Tri
angle. The current scuttlebutt amongst the Marines and Sailors of Task Group 61.1 leaned heavily towards something involving admirals and blackmail. As I contemplate this a sigh sneaks past my guard.
“I know, Shawn, I know. But like you said, no use going over the old lament right now.” She is right of course. But I can’t help my thoughts darkening. If that son of a bitch’s arrogance or incompetence gets one of my Marines crippled or killed, I will fly over to his ship and I will kill him. Gloria continues, “Let it go, Shawn. I’m doing everything I can, which, as you know, is quite a bit. He won’t be around much longer I swear it to you.” Many, many years of working together also means Gloria can read me like a book.
I relax and reply, “Okay, Gloria. I’m going to talk to my staff … and thanks.”
Gloria waves off my thanks as she responds, “No problem. I’ll cut in when the timeline gets nailed down.”
I break the TACNET link to the Stern’s bridge and bring up my staff. I start with my S-3 (Operations Officer) in his Kodiak. Next, I bring up the Master Gunner piloting his Kodiak then the Executive Officer (the second in command) piloting her Kodiak. Finally, I bring on the S-2 (the Intelligence Officer). She is not a Kodiak pilot, but rides in the backseat of one of the Kodiaks of the battalion headquarters element. Their faces crowd the TACNET portion of the three-dimensional display, but the display’s excellence makes their faces clear and readable. “The timeline is completely shot and I don’t yet have a good answer for when it will straighten out,” I tell them as soon as we are all connected.
The Master Gunner, Chief Warrant Officer 5 Larry Wright, responds first as is his wont. “That fucking clown Smith is going to get us all killed one day, mark my words, sir.” His young face is scowling darkly. His Eastern Asian featured face looks so much like cross between a sumo wrestler and a body builder that the scowling is truly impressive. An unmatched Kodiak pilot, the grumpy, scowling bastard had saved my life times beyond counting. I am also lucky enough to be one of his few, and very exclusive, friends.