by Lee Bond
It was the first time he, Candall, had ever gone against his principles, and the blood on his hands could only be cleansed by Shane, who saw no reason to accept an apology.
All was fair in love and war, after all.
Shane caught the look on Candy’s face and smiled ruefully. “If only things had been different, hey? You should’ve seen it. Your … your God soldiers are …” the captain shook his head. Words failed him. They always did. When the Latelians let him speak with the rest of his men, they all tried to relate what they’d seen and failed. They wound up shaking their heads and nodding in that way that said ‘you get it, right?’. “Goddie Hembert was a righteous force, Candy.”
Shane started laughing then, held up a hand to keep Candy from interrupting. Still laughing, he started explaining. “You, you wouldn’t have seen this on the footage, not unless they’ve declassified the soldier’s onboard records, but … ha … there we are, me, Sevetson, Shumanksie and that weasel Fibbs … we’re pinned down in this humungous factory and it’s on fire, right, because while we’re running away and Hembert is chasing after us, asking us very politely to lay down our weapons and submit for processing, some of my other guys are launching rockets at him. Well, some of them rockets bounced off the damn guy and hit the factory we’re hiding in, right, so it’s burning, stuff’s exploding all around us, there’s this black smoke coming from somewhere deep inside the guts of the place that’s got Fibbs coughing and retching like he’s going to die right there on the spot, and … here comes Hemby and … he just looks so damn sorry. Like he’s close to tears because we’re fighting back, trying to protect ourselves. This Goddie, Candy, is nearly eleven feet tall and looks like a fucking mountain, right? I personally dropped a griddade right on his face and watched it blow up and he’s maybe got a little scratch under his eye, and he’s close to tears because we keep shooting at him.
By this point, okay, nearly all of us are gagging or choking to death, right? But we’re soldiers, Candy, we knew the deal when we signed on Trinity’s dotted line. Do or die. Live to fight another day or die so hard we take some of the enemy with us.
So anyways, we keep shooting, everything we’ve got is either missing because … oh, I didn’t mention this … because the air around this guy is wobbly, okay, like … like there’s something wrong with it, making it hard to be accurate so … where was I? Right. Everything we’re doing is either missing altogether or bouncing right off the guy and he keeps coming. A damn juggernaut and Fibbs runs out at Hemby, yelling and screaming that he gives up. Guess you guys dropped some of those OIP things or something because ground troops I didn’t even know were there scoop Fibbs up. Sevetson’s already passed out from the smoke, Shumanksie … well, she died sometime while I was trying to decide if I wanted to climb up the girders to a higher floor. She’d been gut shot but didn’t say nothing. Ok.”
Shane took a deep breath. “Ok, so Hembert keeps coming, I’m down to my last clip of bullets, of all things, and suddenly I look up and there he is, and he’s crying. Now he’s really doing it. He’s actually weeping like a baby, Candy! A damn big baby! This soldier who could’ve killed us all in the blink of an eye is crying and he’s telling me he’s sorry that my friend Shumanksie died. He listed the names of every single person he accidentally killed while trying to subdue us. Alphabetically. He tells me in this real sad voice that he apologizes. What kind of soldier does that, Candy? What kind of unstoppable soldier who can’t be killed or even really hurt apologizes for doing his job?”
Candall was speechless. God soldier Hembert’s onboard recordings of the event were not declassified, and probably never would be until or unless Chairman Herrig decided it was time to mount a campaign against Trinity Itself. Even then, Candall would bet all his money and the remainder of his years that Fenris would put a stop to that straightaway, up to and including blowing up a planet to keep that secret.
God soldiers crying. Ha. It was unbelievable.
Just as unbelievable as what his fool friend was gearing up to do right then.
Shane Markson had been a soldier for Trinity his entire life, he’d seen and done things in the name of progress and civilization that most ordinary people would never dream of. He was –in his heart of hearts- a hard man. You had to be, Candall assumed, if you wanted to keep from going mad.
Candall knew about being hard. He’d been a hard man all his life, as well, and sitting there, watching Shane staring at his hands like he didn’t know what the hell they were … well, Candall thanked whatever powers that were apparently real that he hadn’t seen soldier Hembert in action.
Still, though, he had the right answer for his friend. “You know what kind of soldier.”
“So it’s true, then?” Shane looked up from his hands. “They’re really all that old?”
“Yup.” Candall nodded. It was a tough one to swallow, but everything said it was true. “There’s young ones, of course, but the one you went up against … they weren’t certain if any of the newer Goddies would be able to control themselves properly, so they went all the way to the top. Goddie Hembert is officially classified as a type IV, or Foursie, making him …”
Laughter hooted out of Shane. It threatened to go hysterical for a moment, but he got it under control by clenching his fists tightly. “Four thousand years old. My God, Candy. Four thousand years old. That’s … insane.”
“Yup.”
“And the crying thing?” Shane couldn’t figure that one out on his own. None of the men he’d spoken to had come to any conclusions either. “Why all that?”
Candall took a deep breath, let it out slowly. He didn’t really consort with Goddies. They set his teeth on edge. A direct result of operating on the darker side of the grey area of the law for too long, he supposed. While he avoided the lumbering behemoths as much as possible, he and his men still engaged in brisk trade with people who had no problems with the ancient warriors; if he’d even imagined in his wildest dreams that one of his best customers would turn out to be Army, he’d’ve reached out forever ago.
Soldiers didn’t have a lot of cash to trade, so they traded information and gossip. Candall was positive that Herrig or this Huey fellow was involved somewhere in the mix, so he was mighty cautious about moving on some of the more blatantly lucrative rumors that reached his ears.
“There is a war coming, Shane.” Candall repeated the words as he’d been given them. “A war for all Reality.” Goosebumps pricked on his skin and he knew from the way Shane shifted that same was happening to him. “The God soldiers are preparing themselves to do battle with demons and nightmares from beyond the stars, my friend, and they will need all the help they can get. Every man and woman and wriggling thing that can pull a trigger or pilot a spaceship is needed for this confrontation. They say it is the most important war in all of time and space, and when someone dies before that fight, Goddies get moody. They say … and this is the messed up part because this sort of thing has been illegal in Latelyspace since colonists first set foot on Hospitalis … they say that the soul of anyone dying before the End is lost forever and there is no hope. They also talk about someone they call the Engineer being mighty pissed off if that happens, and if he’s the guy I think they’re talking about, well … keeping him nice and happy and staying on his good side is a real good idea.”
Shane ran a calloused hand across the goosebumps on his arm. The memory of Goddie Hembert, weeping and surrounded by wobbly, shiny air, would not leave him. “No chance for what?”
Candall pressed his lips together. It was bullshit. It was a lie. It couldn’t be the literal truth. It had to be something these ancient soldiers had cooked up to keep themselves from going crazy through the years.
Shane repeated the question.
Candall clenched his teeth. Struggled to keep the answer inside. He failed, as happened every time. “From being reborn in the real Universe. The one to come. The one they’re … we’re … all going to be fighting for. They’re calling this …�
� Candy threw his hands into the air and tried to grab the whole of everything in them, “they’re calling this,” he repeated as calmly as he could, “the Unreal Universe, Shane. Apparently we’re getting ready to destroy everything.”
It was like a chord had been struck in his chest. Shane put a hand over his heart, eyes held tight. Of course. It made sense. It all made sense. Everything around them was mad, everything around them was falling apart. He smiled. “Then that’s why I’ve got to do this.”
Candall looked at his friend, squinting his eyes at the sudden change in Captain Shane Markson. Just moments ago, the Trinity soldier had been willing to undertake the mission to spare men and women he might’ve fought alongside with from an attack by God soldiers, to prevent unnecessary lives against an unrelenting foe. It was the sort of noble thing that men like Shane did all the time. It was one of the reasons why Candall had taken to the man.
Now? Now Shane looked like he’d swallowed the story about the End of the Universe whole.
More troublesome than that, more worrying than anything, was this sudden peace coming from his friend that hadn’t been there before. It wasn’t whole, it felt to Candall –who’d spent a lifetime gauging moods- that it could fray at any moment, but it was there.
Candall knew the look. Knew the feeling. He’d seen it before, during reclamation jobs when things went sideways and men incapable of dealing with the rigorous demands found themselves squeezed too tightly inside their own skulls to find answers.
Shane Markson was mad as a hatter. His encounter with Hembert the Foursie had cracked his brain wide open and no one … no one in position to gainsay the addlepated belief that he was on his way to being one with Harmony could spare the time to actually do so.
Candall had grown tired of flinging himself at every high-ranking soldier he knew. They all said the same, after a moment of unfocused, faraway deliberation.
“It … is possible.” They said. “It is possible Shane Markson feels Harmony. If this is so, he must do as he needs to find the path.”
And that was that. They all said the same. The same words, the same way.
Shane stuck out a hand, smiling warmly when Candall grasped it. “I need to see if I can convince these Deep Strikers to lay down their undeniably terrifying arms down and join us peacefully now, Candy. If I fail…”
Candall pulled Shane in for a manly embrace. He whispered into his only friend’s ear, fed Markson words the other man needed to hear. No matter they were poisonous lies. “You won’t fail. Tell them the story you just told me. That’ll show them.”
Shane smiled wanly. Intel on the Deep Strikers on the moonlet Pharisee was slim. They were running weird interference that neither AI minds nor the Latelian avatars could pierce properly, so he was literally just going to land and walk up to the cybernetic Specters, hat in hand, begging for peace. “It sure will.”
Candall watched his friend leave, marveling at the brave stupidity one man could possess. Then he started calling people on his prote. Time to move up the food chain, start bending arms.
He needed to ensure that when reports of Markson’s death reached the right eyes, everything was ready to go. No matter the cost.
Because there was no way in hell that Shane Markson was coming back from that stupid mission, not alive, and Candall … well, Candall was a firm believer in planning ahead.
***
Herrig put a hand over his eyes as soon as he finished reading the report. Sidra put a warm hand on his balding head. “That … that didn’t go well.”
“I have read the available data on these … Deep Strikers.” Sidra said slowly. “Most notably, blacked-out Intel from the Engineer.”
“Could you call him Garth? Please? For me?” Herrig knew it was an unwinnable battle. There were very few Goddies who called Garth Nickels anything but varying forms of Engineer. He’d even heard one of the younger Goddies calling his friend ‘Destroyer of the Universe’.
Herrig was unashamed to admit he’d needed to have a long lie down after that.
“I will try.” Sidra said with good humor. “Did you not make this information available to Captain Shane Markson?”
Herrig nodded miserably. “I did.”
Sidra felt the sorrow rising up through her love’s shiny head, wanted to wrap him in her arms so she could drink it from him, but knew that she would not, nor would she offer; Herrig DuPont was who he was because he grieved so readily. “Why would he try to convince these … beasts … on his own, then?”
“I suspect it has to do with that great big crybaby Hembert. Not to mention Fenris and the others issuing orders to all you Goddies to do dick all about it. Pretty sure they’re experimenting. Seeing if regular people actually can sense Harmony.” Huey said as he walked in the room. “The fuck, Sidra, I thought you guys were supposed to be in control of that kind of thing.”
Sidra snatched her hand away from Herrig’s head and moved to a more respectful distance away. “Sa Huey, it is not Hembert’s fault. The men and women he was attempting to pacify proved to be formidable in their own way. A warrior’s remorse grabbed hold of him and would not let go.”
Huey plopped down into an available chair. “A warrior’s remorse. Is that even a thing?” he demanded harshly. “There’ve been three other successful sorties against Trinity forces, and not one of the Goddies involved in those missions burst into tears.”
Sidra opened her mouth to hotly lambast Huey but a worried glance from Herrig had the words dying on her lips. Of course. It was so easy to forget that while she was a four thousand year old soldier who was very nearly immortal and most likely impossible to kill as well, the man calling himself Huey was a disembodied AI mind in control of the Sigma Device. He had already proven himself capable of shutting God soldiers down where they stood, and only recently at that; Harmonized memories of a Foursie on the cusp of becoming a Fivesie losing her mind and going on a rampage still burned through the communal mind that God soldiers now properly shared.
Most prominently visible in those memories was Huey, the nonchalant, bland-looking man arguing with Herrig at the moment about what to do next, materializing in the hangar bay where Fivesie Monsal raged against the torrent of power flooding through her. Materializing in a haze of light, snapping his fingers at the limitlessly powerful God soldier and nodding with relief as she fell to the ground, cybernetic links to Harmony burned to scorched metallic flakes. All across Latelyspace, every God soldier peering through Harmony to see what was going on had born horrified witness to a thing they never could’ve imagined.
Fivesie Monsal, dead. Gone. Snatched from Harmony and tossed into the darkness.
With the simple click of an AI’s cloned fingers.
Sidra knew through Harmony that Fenris and his brethren were displeased with how Huey had dealt with Monsal so … decisively. So efficiently. It was a sliver of a feeling, a shard of brilliant anger directed at Herrig’s only other friend. In her heart, Sidra feared that the bad blood between the first Harmony soldiers and Huey would lead someone to ruination.
Between here and there, though… that road could very well lead to the death of millions.
The Foursie brought her focus back to the impromptu meeting.
“Sa Candall is making a huge stink already, Herrig. Markson’s ashes haven’t even cooled.” Huey gestured and the walls flickered into data streams of the requests, threats and promises the Reclamation specialist was making of every single person he’d helped. There were a lot of them. Many of the newest names on Candall’s contact list were high-profile Army commanders of varying power, some of whom had a great deal of worrying to do, should the services rendered by Candall and his cohorts be made public. “You should’ve listened.”
Herrig took off his glasses. “I know. I know. Pressure from the Goddies, from Fenris … they’re insistent on trying to … convert the Deep Strikers. They’ve never seen anything like these Specters. To a one, they’re eager to discover what those … beasts… can bring t
o the war. They couldn’t care less about the ‘normal people’ in this system. They imagine these Specters to be the equal of Garth.”
Huey didn’t give one backwards shit about Deep Strikers and let everyone know, adding, “And you better fucking pray to whatever you do or don’t believe in that not a single goddamn one of the Specters in our space are anywhere near Garth in terms of skill or violence because I will bet you one dead Universe that if someone like that exists, he, she or it doesn’t possess his self-control. Now. Let’s quit dicking around and get down to it. Someone convinced Shane Markson that he’d be able to talk those Deep Strikers down, Herrig. When Candall wasn’t around. Me? I blame Fenris, sure, but more than that, I blame Harmony.”
This time, Sidra was unable to restrain herself. She surged forward and was in front of Huey before Herrig knew what was happening. “This,” she bellowed loudly, rattling the windows and startling her love quite badly, “this is not Harmony’s fault, Huey! We would never do anything like this! Captain Shane Markson was a good man. Foursie Hembert is beside himself with grief at the man’s death. No one who is with Harmony would intentionally convince a non-Goddie that they could succeed at such a foolhardy mission.”
Reams of information spilled from Sidra’s implants and not for the first time, the AI mind wondered if anyone, if Fenris, realized just how much data leaked out when the heavily augmented soldiers lost their shit. Naturally, the ‘first’ Harmony soldiers had nothing to fear; they had no implants. They were so steeped in Harmony itself that their minds –and their motives- were barricaded behind impenetrable layers. Now, that didn’t mean what they were up to would remain hidden. It just meant digging around the old-fashioned way. Every other Harmony soldier in the system, though … they were ‘LINKed to the HIM. Under certain circumstances –as now- Goddies were essentially thick paperback novels, complete with chapters and footnotes.