"So how can you possibly expect this court to believe for one moment that you would have obeyed General Milner's order to abandon your pursuit of Yultorot, especially when Captain Cojo and Monster were so intent on bringing him to justice?"
Every eye in the courtroom was locked on Frank then. Not a single person spoke and most of them held their breath, waiting for him to respond.
Frank sat up straight in his chair and said, "Before I am anything else, I am a Lieutenant in the Unification Armed Services, sir. My commitment to Unification is permanent and unwavering. It is my solemn duty to follow orders, whether I like them or not. You were wrong to sentence my crew members to Gratersfield, just as you are wrong to allow a bastard like Yultorot to live, let alone work for us. But I am a soldier, and I will do as I am ordered."
The collar of Frank's uniform was itchy as he stood on the flight deck. It was fitted tight around his neck, like a hand clenching his throat, not letting him breathe. Sergeant Bob Buehl, the ship's pilot and technical wizard, shifted nervously. Too nervously, Frank decided. The man's muscular arms were tensed like coiled springs as he flexed and unflexed them at his sides, then decided to fuss with his uniform jacket, checking it for dangling threads or crooked buttons.
"Knock it off," Frank whispered. "You look fine."
"I always hated uniform inspections," Buehl muttered.
General Milner was dressed in his best parade uniform, the kind usually reserved for formal occasions. His black coat was tailored tightly to his figure and draped with gold braids and stars. His shoes were polished bright enough that he could shave in their reflection. He stopped at the far end of the line and stood peering down at the Grendel Unit's new captain, then nodded approvingly.
Captain Joseph Hill stood ramrod straight with his chin thrust in the air, showing off all the polished brass and colored ribbons that decorated his uniform shirt. Frank had seen the medals earlier and rolled his eyes. In the Unification Armed Services, it wasn't what you did that earned you medals. It was how well you knew the person who handed them out. Apparently, Hill had a few close friends at the top who likely gave him blue ribbons every time he tied his shoelaces the right way. Frank could list a hundred things his unit had done in one week that merited every honor on the list, but they weren't the kind to put in for them.
As the general moved past the captain, Hill's eyes shifted sideways toward Frank, locking onto him. Frank did not look away. He stared back at Hill until the other man gave up and turned his head back to face the ship sitting in the hangar bay in front of them.
Speaking of things that are shiny and gaudy, Frank thought.
General Milner had beamed like a peacock when he showed them their new ship. Hill and the new First Officer had fawned over it, gasping with admiration and gratitude.
The new First Officer hadn't just fawned, Frank thought. She'd gawked. Her eyes widened until they looked ready to burst out of their sockets and her mouth opened wide enough for her to make tiny squeaks that sounded like she was choking to death. Worse yet, she stayed that way until she was certain the General saw her gawking, milking every last ounce of attention she could get from him, making sure she was the person showing more appreciation than anyone else there.
Frank frowned when he first looked at the ship and wasn't impressed.
The Samsara, their old ship, had been a small, fast vessel. It was the same model that smugglers preferred because they could get in and out of tricky situations quickly. She carried a decent amount of weapons, but Grendel Unit was never a ship-to-ship combat outfit. They were hands on. Literally.
This new ship was as bright and flashy as a parade float. It had Unification markings in bold red letters painted across the hull so everybody could see them coming. The General saw Frank's look of disapproval and said, "What's wrong with the ship? What don't you like?"
"Aside from the obvious? Where's the airlock?" Frank said.
Captain Hill snorted derisively, "What are we, a cargo carrier? We have hull doors."
Frank nodded and said, "Well, you can't fast rope down to a planet's surface or Baumgartner Jump out of hull doors, Joseph. You'll suck everything out of the room at stratosphere height."
Hill looked at him blankly for a minute before he said, "Why in the hell would you ever need to do that? We don't even have Baumgartner suits equipped for this mission."
Frank just walked away in disgust.
And now, General Milner was coming down the line toward the new First Officer to inspect her uniform. Wendy Simone's long, black hair was pulled tightly back on her head in a severe ponytail. Her heels clacked together as she snapped to attention, her arms so stiff they shook against her sides. She kept her eyes cocked up at the office's lights, offering her throat to the General like she was a small dog.
The General tugged the collars of her shirt down to fine, sharp points, and said, "Good morning, Commander."
Wendy Simone nodded slightly and replied in a loud voice, "Good morning, General Milner."
Milner smiled with grating beneficence. "Are you ready for the big day, young lady? Your first assignment in the field after all that simulated combat."
"There is nothing in the field I have not already seen sir. The simulated training is statistically more rigorous than anything field operatives experience."
Frank smirked at that. Simone had spent four years in a pilot-program at the Academy, designed to take raw officers and turn them into full-fledged veterans in one fifth the time and with no casualties. The trouble was, Simone had mistaken all that classroom work for actual experience. She was going to find out the hard way that it was a lot different out here in the real world when there's no one to push the emergency stop button. I'll be doing her a favor, he told himself. Putting her out of commission before somebody blows her brains out or cuts her throat from ear to ear.
A tiny voice in the back of his mind said, "That's right, make all the justifications you want. People can always justify things, no matter how horrible."
General Milner turned toward Frank and began to approach, taking his time to give Frank a minute to snap-to and click his heels as the others had done, but Frank simply turned his head to look forward. He'd polished his boots that morning and put on a clean, pressed uniform. That was the extent of what the old man was going to get. The general paused in front of Frank and said, "Well, Lieutenant?"
"Yes, General?" Frank replied.
Milner looked behind where Frank was standing, seeing that Frank was the only one without a large gear bag. The others had assembled their bags so that every flap was open and exposed, showing that they were fully equipped. Wendy Simone had even gone one extra step by removing most of the important items and laying them outside of the bag, just to make a point. The space behind Frank was empty. "Where is your duty gear?" the general said.
"Loaded on the ship already," Frank said. After a long pause, he threw in "Sir," for good measure. He'd conned the duty station officer into letting him aboard the ship earlier that morning and loaded his gear already. It was a gamble, but it wouldn't do to have the general go poking around inside Frank's bag at that point. The only way any part of the plan was going to work was if Frank had both the gear he needed, and the element of surprise.
"Did I not say this was a full duty inspection?"
Frank nodded. "That was what the Captain told me."
"So why is your gear not out here for me to inspect and ensure it is mission-ready, because if I leave it up to you people, God knows what you'll wind up taking."
Frank could feel the Captain's hot stare boring into the side of his face like a heat lamp. Commander Simone seemed to be smirking a little. The General was a tall, block-shaped man. The kind who stood over you with hunched shoulders and jabbed a finger down in your face when he was angry. His nostrils flared when he was angry, and right now they were flaring wider than a stallion's.
Frank squared up with the general and said, "Sir, my gear is mission-ready, because the last tim
e I used it was on a mission and not in some boardroom and not on some computer simulation. I know where it is, what I have, and how to get to it as fast as possible in order to save someone's life. If I take it all out and spread it on the ground for you look at, I might not have time to get it all back in order again and that's not an option."
The two men stared at one another.
Frank threw in another, "Sir."
General Milner got close to him then, close enough that Frank could smell his acrid coffee breath and see the saucer-sized pores on his wide, flat nose. "Today marks the beginning of the largest, most ambitious operation Grendel Unit has ever been a part of, Lieutenant. Using our newly-developed assets, we are going to single-handedly wipe out the main players of this quadrant's most dangerous terrorist organization. Tell me, are you excited about that?"
Frank shrugged and said, "No."
Wendy Simone let out an audible hiss like someone had unplugged her tires. Even Bob Buehl flinched a little.
Frank did his best to look impassive as he said, "I don't get excited, sir. I just get prepared."
Milner stared at Frank for several more seconds, then decided it was pointless to argue. He moved on to briefly inspect Sergeant Buehl's uniform, glancing at it up and down, and then waved his hand and said, "You know what, I'm too anxious to begin for any more formalities. What do you folks say? Do you want to get started now?"
"Yes, sir!" Hill and Simone called out in unison.
The general clapped his hands and rubbed them together briskly, "All right, at ease then. I'm envious of you all, I admit it. I had some of the best moments of my career when I ran Grendel. Sitting behind a desk gets old, let me tell you. Being here, in the thick of it, planning your op, it gets the blood flowing again."
"We're honored to have your guidance, sir," Captain Hill said.
"Absolutely, sir, thank you again," Simone chimed in.
Frank felt the muscles around his eye twitching involuntarily. He wondered if anyone else could see it.
The General looked past them at the hanger doors and said, "Right on time. That's a good sign."
A gaunt, bird-chested man came through the doors carrying a computer tablet in his scarred, discolored hands. He was a slight, skinny man, with dark circles of baggy flesh under his eyes that looked like loose chicken skin. His voice was deceptively soft and slightly high-pitched, with a kind of oily quality that made Frank's skin crawl. "I apologize for not being here sooner, General," he said. "I have been adding important notes about the first target to our operational plan."
Yultorot.
The man's name and face were seared into his brain by the fires at Andoho-Sky and the hundreds of murdered women and children. The bastard actually nodded to Frank as he walked past to hand the tablet to General Milner and Frank said, "What are you looking at, child killer?"
Buehl touched Frank's arm, making sure his friend wasn't about to launch forward and whispered, "Not yet."
Frank glared at Yultorot and said, "Don't you ever look at me again or I'll carve out your eyes, you understand me?"
Yultorot scowled in disgust as if the very idea of such violence were too far beneath him to indulge. The General's face went flush, but before he could say anything, Captain Hill had his arm around Frank's shoulder and was leading him away from the rest of the group. "We've been over this, Frank," Hill said. "Yultorot is a major asset for us now and you're going to have to live with it."
Frank took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. He needed to get a grip if any of this was going to work. He needed the rest of the crew to believe he was on board enough to put his plan into play. He swallowed his anger and said, "I'm sorry. It's just, you weren't there. You didn't see all those dead kids."
"I know, Frank," Hill said calmly. "I can't imagine what that was like, but right now, you have to look past it. The General has made a decision and we will stand by it. After all, that's what you agreed to in order to stay out of prison, isn't it?"
Frank closed his eyes and nodded.
"Whatever Grendel Unit used to be is gone, Frank. Cojo and Monster are gone. I know you aren't exactly happy about that, but that's life and you have to face it. Now, Grendel is just you and me, like it was in the beginning. Maybe like it should have always been, but I can't do this without you. Can I count on you, Frank?"
Frank looked at the other man for a moment, then said, "I'll do my best."
Hill patted him on the shoulder and said, "Good. Come on. He's starting the briefing without us."
They walked back to join the others, who each held a tablet as Yultorot instructed them, "I will be the one making contact with the target. This has to be done very low key, because he is probably the most skittish person I've ever dealt with. You must do exactly as I say, or else he will become suspicious and alert the others."
General Milner nodded solemnly, "That's fine. My team will do whatever it takes. What happens after you make contact?"
"I'll purchase the explosives and transmit our location. You can all swoop in and either kill him or arrest us both. Simple."
Milner scanned through his tablet and said, "Perfect. Nice job. Let's make it happen."
Frank turned to Bob and whispered, "Am I nuts, or is the asset planning the operation?"
"First time I've ever seen it," Buehl said. "Day one, Vic said to me that the golden rule of Grendel Unit is we do not educate the assets. We keep them in the dark and feed them horse crap, just like mushrooms."
"No, that's what he said we do with bosses."
Bob smiled slightly, "Actually, that's what he said we do with both. I bet he's turning over in his grave right now."
"He's not dead," Frank said. "Don't say that."
"He might as well be."
"Well if he is, you and I are going to resurrect him. Just do your part and let me handle the rest," Frank whispered.
"Then start doing a better job of going with the flow. Stop causing trouble," Buehl said.
Frank shrugged and said, "If I stopped causing trouble, they'd all get suspicious and think something was up."
An hour later they were all boarding the new ship while the General waved them on. Frank noticed he shook hands with Yultorot. He looked at all of them, including the terrorist, and said, "Listen. I'm counting on each and every one of you. Be careful."
Yultorot followed Commander Simone up the ramp, keeping his eyes on the ground as he passed Frank. Not looking at him.
"Lieutenant?" the general called out.
Frank came back down the ramp and said, "Yes, sir?"
"Listen, I know all this hasn't been easy on you. It's not your fault, of course. Cojo was a bad apple and he filled your heads up with all sorts of the wrong ideas. The biggest shame of it all was that he took Monster down with him. Just be grateful you walked away when you did. Otherwise, you'd be rotting in Gratersfield with them."
Frank nodded. He'd heard this speech before.
"Just keep your chin up and do your job and everything will be fine," Milner said. "I need you on this team, Frank. Hill and Simone are the best of the best with bright futures ahead of them, but you've got a little more field experience than they do. I want you to keep an eye on them and make sure nothing happens. I want you to treat them like they are your family, you understand? Your family." The general's eyes narrowed on Frank as he said, "It's been a long time since Iscariot-Four, all right?"
Not long enough, Frank thought, but when the general extended his hand, Frank took it and squeezed firmly. There you go, Bob, he thought. I'm playing nice.
"You need a win on this one, Frank. Your career depends on it, but I know you'll be up to the challenge. Don't let me down," Milner said.
Frank let go immediately and turned to head up into the ship. He wiped his hand on his pants leg as he walked. No, it most certainly had not been easy on him, but then again, it was better than being trapped in the lowest level of the lowest hole in the universe with thousands of blood-thirsty aliens trying to rip out
his innards.
But if anyone could survive Gratersfield, it was Vic and Monster.
And that's all I need you two crazy bastards to do, Frank thought. Survive long enough for me to stuff these two amateurs into Baumgartner suits and send them hurtling toward a deserted planet, because we're coming to bust you out.
7. Shut Up, Be Happy
THEN
From The Philosophy of Unification, Chapter Four, Birth of an Ideal
Required Reading for General Civics Credit, Galactic Sectors 6-202
Unification Education Counsel
In the last days of the Verillius Cycle, the final High Evolutionist Priest, Tamar the Defiler, ended the era of organized religion with these fateful words: "Everything I have ever believed in is a lie. The holy books are wrong. We have reached our final stage of humanity and will evolve no more."
It was a crushing blow to a massive religious empire that was based on the idea that someday homo sapiens would develop new physical and mental characteristics that allowed them greater advantages. The priests taught that by attending their weekly instructional sermons and daily mediation-praying, one would eventually form a symbiotic bond with various machines and cyber-instruments. Or, that by enrolling in various courses and seminars, you might break free of your biological and genetic prison and suddenly fly off into the sky, or shoot laser beams out of your hands.
They argued with the scientific establishment that the mystical forces of higher evolution could not be explained by mere study, or proven by simple observation. It required faith. It required faith and it required devotion and it required a lot of money. Particularly, the money of those who wished to evolve the fastest, or had the most desperate need.
"Humanity," Tamar went on to say, "Does not change. It has not changed since the earliest stages of ancient man, who first stood upright and fashioned tools out of stone and wood. Technology will change. The planets we inhabit will change. Our governments will change. We, as an individual human species, will not. We are, despite all of our glorious achievements, no physically different than the Romans, nor the Americans, nor the Europa Colonists, nor the Prime Inhabitants of Reparian Four. And, more importantly, those who come after us will be no different. They will spread this never-changing humanity far and wide across the universe, for it is our nature, as those we encounter will soon learn."
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