by J. J. Green
It was also true. She was convinced of it.
“I told Major Wright something he found hard to believe, so he thought maybe I was a little crazy.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That...” Taylan sighed. “Okay, I’ll explain it to you, but, ma’am, I need you to hear me out before you pass judgment.”
“Go ahead.”
So she tried again. This time, she went more slowly, telling the brigadier about the legends surrounding Arthur but not connecting him with them at first, only emphasizing the facts that coincided with the manner and timing of his discovery. To her credit, Colbourn didn’t interrupt her once or roll her eyes as Wright had done. Next, Taylan went on to the rescue and the state of Arthur when he was found. She described the torques and his tattoos, particularly the dragon because it was significant to the story. His father had been Uther Pendragon, and the mythical beast had also appeared on his battle standard. She also related how the translation software hadn’t been able to identify the language Arthur spoke.
Before she could get to the crucial part, however, when she would tell Colbourn she thought the ancient monarch had miraculously returned, the brigadier interrupted her.
“You think our mystery man is the same legendary King Arthur?”
Taylan let out her relief in a heavy exhalation. “I do.”
It sounded less impossible when someone else said it.
Colbourn was silent.
Taylan waited for a while, and then said, “Are you from BI? Have you heard the stories?”
“I am and I have. A long time ago. All that you’ve told me is correct as I understand it.”
“So you think he’s the same Arthur?”
“No, of course not. I understand now why Major Wright thought you were mentally ill.” She continued to frown, her lips pursed, not speaking.
Taylan didn’t know what to make of the brigadier’s reaction. It was disappointing that no one agreed with her. She’d also told Abacha about her idea, but he’d only laughed and patted her condescendingly on the shoulder.
“Leave it with me,” said Colbourn suddenly.
“So you’ll—”
“Dismissed.”
That was it?! She wasn’t going to tell her anything? Taylan didn’t leave immediately, hoping if she hung around the brigadier might relent. But the woman ignored her, re-opening her interface.
Angry and frustrated, she marched to the door, but then Colbourn ordered her to wait.
So she was going to tell her something.
The brigadier was rummaging in a drawer. “I thought...” she murmured. Then she looked up and squinted as she focused on Taylan’s neck.
She was wearing Kayla’s necklace again. Major Wright had given it back to her, probably without Colbourn’s say-so.
“I see,” said the brigadier quietly, apparently understanding the jewelry that had transported back to Taylan without her permission. She snapped, “You can go.”
Stepping quickly through the door before the woman changed her mind, Taylan almost walked directly into Wright.
“What were you doing in there?” he asked accusingly as the door slid closed.
“I went to see Colbourn.”
“I can see that. What about?”
“Arthur.”
“You aren’t going to let this go, are you?”
“No. Did you tell her you gave me back my necklace?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Well, she knows I have it.”
Wright grimaced. “I thought she’d forget about it.”
“Looks like you were wrong.”
He took her arm and pulled her away from the door, muttering, “That’s me up shit creek.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Taylan. “I think she was going to give it back to me. You only beat her to it. I don’t think she’ll make a big deal of it. She’s...changed.”
“You think?” Wright asked.
They’d begun to walk along the passageway. Taylan didn’t know where he was taking her.
“I don’t mean her injuries. She isn’t as scary as she was.”
“Hm, maybe.”
Something seemed to be bothering him. Taylan realized she’d thought the same about him, that he was different now. Did they know something she didn’t? What could be so bad they were keeping it to themselves?
“I thought you were on your way to see Colbourn,” Taylan said.
“No, I was on my way to find you. Abacha told me where you’d gone. I was hoping to catch you before you spoke to her and save you from embarrassing yourself, but it’s clear I was too late. What did she make of your fantasy?”
“It’s not a...” she protested angrily, but then she gave a frustrated groan. “I know it sounds loopy, but there’s no need to make fun of me.”
“You’re getting way too familiar, corporal. Watch yourself.”
Taylan rolled her eyes but she didn’t say anything.
“Another reason I wanted to find you was I have an idea for something that’ll convince you you’re suffering from a delusion.”
“Oh right. What’s that then?”
“A language acquisition program.”
“Huh?”
“Learning software. It’s only recently been developed. Direct computer/brain interface that fast-wires the mind into acquiring new knowledge and skills without the need for all that boring teaching and rehearsing. We plug your Arthur into it, he speed learns English, and then, after three or four days, he’ll be able to tell you himself who he really is.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Uh huh. Hm. Uh huh.” Lorcan drummed his fingertips on the arm of the park bench.
Sometimes it made a nice change to get away from the Bres’s control room and his suite, and to visit in person some of the sections of the ship that were already built and finished. Here, at West Lake, he could imagine what his life might be like when the ship was finally complete and, with her sisters, she would sail into galactic space on her long journey.
He could imagine wakening from cryo for a few months of physical recuperation, and wandering down to the lake or another of the Bres’s many natural habitats, where he could sit or walk, or even swim in the water, enjoying the pleasant warmth of the pseudo-sunlight. Then, all the strife and worry of the construction phase of the colony fleet would be far behind him. Earth itself would be light years distant, along with the ridiculously conservative BA and the insanely cultish EAC.
Once he was gone, they could continue slugging it out till kingdom come for all he cared.
He squinted up through the tree canopy, appreciating the quality of the dappled light. He hated to admit it, even to himself, but Kekoa had done a good job in creating the forest. The trees were growing healthily, plunging their roots into the rich loam, reaching up their leafy branches to the intense lighting of the overhead lamps. They might have been growing in a forest in New England for all their plant minds knew.
A breeze started up and set the foliage rustling and swaying. Through a gap in the vegetation, the surface of the lake became busy with waves. Lorcan smiled.
“Are you still there?” Dwyr Orr asked.
“Yes, yes,” he replied. “Go on.”
“I asked you a question.” The Dwyr sounded peeved, which was unsurprising as Lorcan had in fact tuned out of their conversation minutes ago.
He’d understood the reason for her comm after the first few sentences she uttered—carefully avoiding the topic of her loathsome son. The rest was all nonsense and flattery. She clearly wanted his help and was desperately backtracking after their earlier schism. He didn’t need to hear anything else she said; he only had to decide whether he was going to agree to re-form their alliance.
“I apologize. I must have been distracted. Could you say that again?”
“I asked you if you believe my interpretation is correct.”
“Of what this faction within the BA has planned?”
“Yes.” Exasperatio
n leaked into her tone.
“I think it’s reasonable.”
“Reasonable enough to act upon? This could be our best and only chance for crushing the BA so hard it never recovers.”
“And for eliminating this threat that concerns you.” Lorcan guessed that was her real focus. Was she regretting withdrawing from the battle and losing the opportunity to destroy the BA ships and all they contained? It would be typical of the way her mind worked. She seemed to have a weird superstition about this threat, as if it was more dangerous to her and the EAC than the entire BA.
“That might be a welcome side benefit.”
Of course it would, my dear.
“My problem is,” he said, then hesitated as he considered how to frame his objection, “my problem is, we had that opportunity not so long ago. Mustering the ships and crew for the battle was not easy or cheap, and things were heavily in our favor—”
“We’ve been over this.”
“And yet I feel it’s worth going over again, particularly when you’re asking me to commit to a similar undertaking.”
“I explained my reasoning,” said the Dwyr irritably, “and may I remind you, if it weren’t for my intel and the support of my ships and my crews, your precious colony vessel would be nothing but space flotsam by now.”
Lorcan paused as a way of avoiding conceding the point. He hadn’t decided what to do about her proposal and needed time to consider. Stalling, he asked, “Did your research turn up anything about the phenomenon?”
“No,” she sighed, “but I haven’t given up. I know it must mean something, I just don’t know what.”
He wasn’t surprised. To someone like her, everything meant something. “Has it occurred to you that this thing, whatever it was, might return? And this time it might take one of our ships?”
“It’s a possibility, but this time the assault will be on the surface, not out in space. Has it occurred to you that it might materialize out there and swallow the Bres?”
Frowning, he stood up and began to walk down the path to the lake. There was something about the Dwyr...he couldn’t put it into words, but there was something about her that got under his skin. He had a temper and suffered no fools, but beneath it all he was generally calm and collected.
Except when it came to Dwyr Orr.
She seemed to instinctively know which of his buttons to press, needling away at him and unsettling him, forcing him to take her seriously and bending him to her schemes.
“It’s important that we understand what happened,” she continued, “but we shouldn’t let it influence our decision on what to do here on Earth.”
“I’ll be frank,” he said. “How am I to know that, if we go ahead with your plan, you won’t back out at the last minute as you did before?”
“Those were unusual circumstances. This will be different. The BA will be at its weakest. I have no intention of backing out. This chance will never come again.”
He’d reached the lake, where fresh, clear water lapped against a pebble shore. The pebbles had come from a beach on the coast of Baja California, and it had taken considerable effort to clean them of the sea salt and macro- and microorganisms before placing them around the edge of the lake. Then Kekoa had seeded them with flora and fauna appropriate to the new conditions. So much time and so much work, and the same was true of everything that made up the Bres, the Balor, and the Banba.
“Ua Talman,” snapped Dwyr Orr, “I need a decision from you quickly. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to need all the time we have available to prepare.”
The truth was, what she was proposing made sense. In her shoes, he would do exactly the same thing. But there was the history of his last experience of working with her, and the woman herself. His gut reaction was to say no, simply because there was something about her that set him on edge.
“I’ll think about it,” he said.
“But—”
“I said I would think about it.”
He closed the comm.
Make her wait. Let her be the one to squirm in discomfort for once.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The waiting was unbearable. It had been four days since Taylan had seen Arthur, four days while Wright put him through the learning program that would allow him to understand and communicate in English.
She’d insisted on their separation herself. If she hadn’t spent the entire time away from the ancient man, not even setting eyes on him, when he could finally tell his tale, Wright might accuse her of coaching him.
Supporting training sessions had helped to pass the time. The sergeant leading them was different from the one she’d crossed swords with previously, and she’d done her best not to go up against him, not even when she felt he was teaching something incorrectly. It was hard, but she couldn’t deny that she’d stepped out of line before, when she’d been heartsick for her kids and feeling useless. Her dissatisfaction must have shown, however, because at one time the training officer had said sarcastically, “If you think you can do it better, be my guest, corporal.”
So she had done it better.
To give the man his due, he’d only blinked and said, deadpan, “Good job spotting my deliberate mistake. Everyone, copy what Ellis did.”
Playing xiangqi with Abacha had also helped to keep her occupied as the days dragged by. He continued to beat her consistently. She didn’t think she would ever grasp the intricacies of strategy her friend demonstrated. Every game, she would find her general blocked and defenseless and she would lose. It was as much of a foregone conclusion as the outcome of their sparring sessions.
“You know,” he said when they were in an empty cabin one day, toward the end of a particularly hard-fought game, which at one point she’d actually thought she had a chance of winning, “I almost feel bad when you realize you’ve lost again, little chick, and your face falls.”
“Almost feel bad?”
“Almost.”
“Is that feeling strong enough to ever let me win?”
“Would you ever let me win when we spar?”
“Absolutely not.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“But that’s a life and death thing. What if I threw a fight one day out of pity and you used the same moves in a battle and died?”
“Exactly.”
“But it’s not the same as playing xiangqi! This is a game.” Taylan wasn’t seriously asking him to play badly so she could win for once. She was only kidding. Beating Abacha at xiangqi wouldn’t mean squat if it wasn’t a genuine victory.
“Isn’t that what battles and wars are?” he asked. “Games?”
“No, people die. That’s no game.”
“Not to the people who die, but perhaps to those who move them around...” He lifted a chariot and moved it two squares, cutting off one of her general’s avenues of escape. “Perhaps to them, it’s a game. Maybe one day you’ll be the person moving others around. You’ll need to understand strategy then.”
“Huh! I don’t think so.” Taylan shivered. Abacha’s analogy was right on point. To the admirals, generals, and commanders, he and she were xiangqi pieces, to be deployed with a single end in mind, sacrificed as needed, important only while they remained useful.
She’d been naive. When she’d enlisted, it had been with the idea she would be able to do something about the things that mattered to her: Free West BI from the EAC, allow the refugees to return home, punish the soldiers who had killed civilians in cold blood, find her children. But to the Royal Marines she was only a unit, part of a fighting force for others to command. What she thought, felt, or wanted didn’t matter. She’d signed up to try to do some good in the world and right wrongs, but in fact all she’d done was hand over the decision about how to do good and exactly what ‘good’ meant, to someone else.
“Don’t let it get you down,” said Abacha, studying her expression. “At least we know we’re on the right side.”
“Do we? I’m not so sure. If our last a
ttack had succeeded, we would have murdered thousands of civilians on one of Ua Talman’s colony ships. Have they done anything evil? If they have, I’m not aware of it. They’re innocent people doing their jobs. They’ve just signed up to an enterprise that’ll take them away from Earth one day. Are they to blame for the way the Project ravages the world’s remaining resources? Are they wrong for wanting a better life?”
“No, they aren’t wrong,” he replied softly. “I guess that’s what we all want—a better life, a safe life.”
Taylan was about to make her next, futile, move, when she suddenly lost the little enthusiasm she’d had for the game. She let her hand fall to her side and said, “I concede.”
“Why? There are many more moves available to you before I win.” He smiled at her wickedly.
“What’s the point? I know when I’m beat. Sometimes, it makes sense to give up.”
“No, seriously, even now you can get out of the trap. Can’t you see it?”
“If I could see it, don’t you think I would have done it? Xiangqi just isn’t for me.”
“If you say so.” Abacha shrugged and began sweeping the pieces off the board into their box.
Taylan leaned an elbow on the table and rested her chin on the heel of her upturned palm. “This whole situation’s a trap.” She paused, then blurted, “I told Wright I wanted to resign.”
“You did?” her friend replied, surprised. “What did he say?”
“He told me it was impossible, said I had to serve out my term. I suppose even if I could resign, there’s nowhere for me to go. I’d still be stuck on the Valiant.”
“There are worse places to be. I wouldn’t like to be Earthside right now. Between the EAC-controlled countries, where technology is being phased out, the polluted, ecologically ruined areas the AP is exploiting, and the BA territories, mostly under attack, where would you go?”
“Home,” she replied simply. “I’d go home.”
“But what about your friend, the one who came back from the dead?”
“I’d take him with me. No one believes who he is anyway. Maybe that’s what I’m meant to do,” she added, musing. Her eyes widened. “Maybe I’m supposed to take him back so he can save the BI from invasion like he did before.” She sucked in a breath. “I’ve been wrong all this time. I’ve been trying to make Wright and Colbourn believe me, but why? What would they do if they did believe he is who I say he is? It isn’t like they could promote him or take orders from him. He’s an Iron Age chieftain, for god’s sake. He’s from a time when men fought with swords in muddy fields. If he’s going to save us, it isn’t going to be through commanding the BA military.”