Metal Legion Boxed Set 1

by C H Gideon

  Matthew nodded in silence for several seconds before saying, “This interrogation is concluded. Do you have any closing remarks?”

  Xi shook her head with conviction. “I think I’ve said it all.”

  “We’re about finished here,” Sandra said, lacing her fingers together and gesturing invitingly. “Is there anything else you’d like to add, Lieutenant Podsednik?”

  Podsy shook his head in wonderment, knowing he would never get another chance like this to voice the strain of resentment that stretched from one end of the Terran Republic to the other. Sandra wasn’t just an interrogator sent to conduct inquiries for later review, she was a member of the One Mind-linked Solar human race. Whatever she learned, whatever she saw, and whatever she heard would eventually be uploaded to Sol’s vast data network, where every Solar human might eventually peruse it.

  “Yeah, I do.” Podsy nodded. “I’ve been cooperative with your questions, and I think it would be stupid of me to suggest I should have a say on how you deal with me. Putting all that aside, I’d like to talk about New Australia.”

  Sandra cocked her head interestedly. “Go on.”

  Podsy had thought about how to phrase this for months, or even years. He normally wasn’t the type to become tongue-tied, but given the circumstances, he was less than surprised to find himself at a near-loss for words.

  Still, he pressed on and managed to find his voice. “My family lived on New Australia, which was the third most prosperous Terran colony for over a hundred years. We had rich natural resources, a low-gee parent star, and ample cheap fuel to power our growth and development. We had our ups and downs, like any nation, but my people worked harder than most to achieve the Terran dream of self-reliance and independence. And for a few generations, we thrived, even building up vital military industries to support the Terran Armed Forces’ ongoing efforts against the Arh’Kel. Then… Well, actually, what do you know about New Australia?”

  Sandra’s eyes narrowed fractionally. “I know that it was devastated by an Arh’Kel attack at the outset of the latest series of Terran-Arh’Kel engagements.”

  “Devastated.” Podsy snorted bitterly. “That’s one way to put it. Another way would be to say that of the New Ozzies who survived, only one in four has a living relative. Think about that. One. In. Four. We weren’t ‘devastated,’ we were cleansed. Erased from the cosmos as a culture and a society, with just a few scattered pockets persisting in carrying forward our tradition.”

  “You must hate the Arh’Kel,” she observed, and it seemed as though she genuinely empathized with him at that moment.

  “You know, not really.” He shook his head. “How can you hate something that just does what it’s designed to do? The Arh’Kel are, by any moral yardstick worthy of the label, a force of evil in the universe. Their selfishness is a key part of what makes them unique life forms, and they have a peculiar reproductive bottleneck that drives them to commit atrocities that would make Mao or Hitler cringe. I think the universe would probably be better off without the Arh’Kel in it, or at least without them able to leave the confines of their home systems, but no, I don’t hate them. I understand them, and I understand they need to be fought tooth and nail whenever they appear because to do otherwise is to tacitly encourage evil.”

  Judging by her expression, the Solarian interrogator understood where Podsy was going. And to her credit, she made no attempt to interrupt him as he passionately continued.

  “After I buried my family…all of my family,” he said, his nose burning and eyes misting as memories of those days came back in an unwanted flood, “I took a good long look in the mirror and asked myself one question: why would anyone let this happen? The answers I came to led me nowhere good. I couldn’t fathom why that kind of evil would be permitted by thinking beings. We’d done what we could to fight off the rock-biters, but we were outmanned and outgunned. We Terrans have a euphemism that I’m guessing you’ve heard. We say ‘as clear as a Solarian’s conscience,’ and what that means is that none of us can understand how our Solar cousins could sit back and watch while Terrans bled and died fighting the Arh’Kel. We. Can’t. Fathom,” he jabbed his finger on the table emphatically with each of those three words, “the indifference or the apathy or the tacit approval of evil that could lead one human, let alone the hundred billion of them in Sol, to stand by and watch their ‘aboriginal’ cousins suffer and die at the hands of evil personified. You know what I decided while I was looking in that mirror, Sandra?”

  Sandra’s cool gaze seemed, for at least a moment, to have softened into something approaching genuine human sympathy. “What did you decide, Podsy?”

  Ignoring her use of his nickname, he made a firm, final gesture with his hand on the table. “I decided that I would never stand idly by while people suffered like that. I decided I’d rather risk doing evil myself than let evil run its course uncontested. Maybe that makes me a bad person, and maybe it makes me irredeemable. But I came to Luna and did what I did because I care more about you and yours than you cared about me and mine. Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe I caused undue suffering. If I did, hey, I’ll wash my neck to keep the headsman’s axe clean of my ‘aboriginal’ filth.” He smirked. “But the simple, undeniable truth is that,” he presented his palms to her, “this blood on my hands will never wash away…and I’d do it all again in a heartbeat. Because given the choice, I’d rather lovingly cause harm than indifferently permit it.”

  “My interrogation is now complete, Colonel,” Alice said smoothly. “Is there anything you’d like to add before I go?”

  Jenkins, sitting up in his hospital bed, shook his head adamantly. “I’ll stand by whatever my people say and abide by whatever you choose.”

  Alice lifted a brow in surprise. “What do you think your people might have said?”

  “Whatever they said, it’s better than anything I could come up with.” Jenkins shrugged. “What we did here was unforgivable, and that’s not self-pity or despair. It’s true. We attacked Sol at a key, vulnerable point and, ultimately, we didn’t even know if we were doing a good thing. For all we know, Jem could have been aligned with the enemy, and we might have just unwittingly acted on that enemy’s behalf. Were our intentions noble? I think they were. But every abuse of power in history has sprung from the self-righteousness of its authors. That’s why we have courts and laws and indifferent arbitration systems. Nobody thinks they’re the villain in the story… Well, almost nobody,” he allowed. “We didn’t come here because we thought it would be the popular thing to do. We didn’t come here seeking approval. We came here to do what we thought was right under the circumstances, and now it’s time for you to judge whether that’s what happened.”

  Alice’s eyes softened significantly before she asked a wholly unexpected question, “Is this about your wife?”

  Jenkins did a double-take, swallowing past the suddenly dry knot in his throat. “Excuse me?”

  “We have extensive records detailing the personal histories of Terran Armed Forces personnel,” she explained dismissively, although her persistent eye contact suggested she was anything but dismissive of this particular issue. “Your file paints the picture of a troubled man whose sole focus has become to find redemption for an event he had no direct responsibility for. From your experimental Combined Arms project under the Terran Fleet to that project’s transfer to the Terran Armor Corps, all the way to the attack on Luna One, your record shows a man desperately seeking redemption even at great personal peril. Some would say it’s the picture of a man seeking martyrdom. Is that picture inaccurate, Colonel Jenkins?”

  Jenkins set his jaw, clenching his fingers into fists at his sides. Of all the lines of inquiry he had expected and planned for, this had not been among them. Still, some small corner of his mind seemed all too eager to indulge her latest probe, and he grudgingly gave that sliver of himself the opportunity to do so. “My wife died because of me, Alice. You can say I didn’t have direct responsibility for it, but that’s a
semantic copout. I was passed out drunk when Sarah called for a ride home from the airport. She’d come home a day early, and she knew I had a problem with the bottle. She also knew I was at our cabin and, being the dutiful life partner she always was (and who I never deserved), she took a private taxi to come bring me home. It was her last car ride.”

  As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t shed a single tear as he spoke about an event that had haunted and driven him since the day it happened. Captain Murdoch had been right, at least in part. The Legion had been some sort of redemptive endeavor for Jenkins, at least in the beginning. Despite the brevity of his service in the Armor Corps, the bond he had formed with his fellow servicemen was unshakable. The purpose he derived from serving with them was undeniable.

  Jenkins’ driving regret every day since joining the Metal Legion was that it had taken Sarah’s death for him to find that purpose. He would never forgive himself for that, no matter how high the praise was heaped or how many accolades he earned. He had failed her when she needed him, and that was an unforgivable sin.

  Alice spoke into the pregnant pause. “Her taxi was struck head-on by a malfunctioning vehicle. She died instantly. It was an accident, Colonel, by any reasonable definition of the term.”

  “You’re right. The collision was just bad luck,” Jenkins allowed. “But the fundamental reason it happened is that I selfishly crawled into a bottle. I was hiding from life like the coward I was. Like the coward I am.”

  “I feel obligated to point out,” Alice said measuredly, “that the tragedy of your wife’s death would have been impossible in the One Mind. We of Sol no longer live in constant fear of such events as a result of our continuous interconnectivity.”

  “You no longer live in fear?” Jenkins shook his head in wonder, having never expected the conversation to take this latest turn. “I’m sorry to hear that, Alice, because fear drives every second of my life. Fear of failure. Fear of rejection. Fear of embarrassment. Fear of being wrong or acting like the coward I know I am,” he explained with the utmost sincerity. “It was fear that brought me here. Fear that something horrifying would happen to Sol, that humanity would fall victim to a nefarious conspiracy thousands of years in the making. If you think the One Mind network would have spared me the fear that drives every second of my existence… Well, I’m not sure you could have made the case against your vaunted network any better than you just did.”

  He sat up intently, knowing this was the best chance he would ever have to make the unlikeliest proposal of his life. “The only thing I’ve learned for certain here is that Sol and Terra need each other, Alice. Sol would have been under Jemmin influence, possibly until its final moments, if not for the Metal Legion’s sacrifices. You need us, and much as we like to say otherwise around our ‘aboriginal’ campfires, we need you. I don’t expect you to like us, and you shouldn’t expect us to like you, but we’re family. If we can’t make it work with each other, there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that either of us will make it work with the rest of the universe. Jemmin drove a wedge between us and did its level best to set us up for total annihilation. The wounds of the past and the blood that’s been shed—we won’t be made whole overnight. But we have to start sometime, and I think that time is now.”

  “That seems a curious suggestion, given its source,” Alice said with fractionally narrowed eyes.

  “Humanity’s young,” he explained urgently, “but every other race has taken notice of us. The Arh’Kel, Jemmin, the Vorr, even the Finjou. All of them recognize that humanity has the potential to play a key role in shaping the future of this galaxy. That’s not hyperbole,” he added adamantly. “I’ve looked them in the eye and seen how they look back. Every single species capable of doing so has attempted to manipulate us for their own gain or has secretly tried to eradicate us outright.”

  “You speak of the Vorr as though they might be antagonistic to humanity.” Alice cocked her head skeptically. “Yet it was they who made possible your transit here, and it was they who gave you Jem’s location. What cause do you have to mistrust them?”

  “I know I’m not smart enough to play poker with either the Vorr or Jemmin, and I think humanity is too young and fractured to threaten either of them at this moment,” Jenkins explained. “But both of them insisted on us taking a seat at the table and anteing up for the biggest game in either species’ history. I think that on some level they fear us, and fear doesn’t make for a strong foundation to a mutually beneficial relationship.”

  Alice nodded slowly. “Do you have anything else you would like to add to this interview?”

  Jenkins shook his head in negation. “How long until your people reach a verdict?”

  “I am uploading the final contents of our interview to the One Mind network now,” she replied simply. “However, ninety-three percent of Solar humanity has already reviewed the matter, having actively participated in this exchange. The Venutians will require another two hours to process and review the findings due to the light delay, but a preliminary verdict has already been reached.”

  She paused, seeming to invite Jenkins to ask about the verdict, but he made no attempt to do so. He was too stunned by her suggestion that what was effectively a ninety-three-billion person jury had listened in on the interrogation and had already arrived at a conclusion regarding Operation Antivenom.

  She flashed an impish smile before continuing, “You and your people have been found guilty of the vast majority of the charges brought against you. Interstellar piracy, violation of the One Mind, terrorism, sedition, and several lesser charges have been corroborated to Sol’s collective satisfaction. By a margin of 99.3% to 0.7%, your guilt is, in the opinion of Sol’s One Mind, undeniable. Death is the only appropriate sentence for these crimes.”

  Jenkins nodded slowly, feeling strangely relaxed at hearing the verdict. “Is there an appeals process?”

  “No.” She shook her head firmly. “When such an overwhelming degree of consensus is achieved in a verdict of this magnitude, there can be no system of appeal. Who would you appeal to? Not just a majority has spoken, all have spoken.”

  He exhaled a long sigh. “When is the sentence to be carried out?” he eventually asked.

  “The sentence has been commuted,” she replied matter of factly. “By a margin of 97.5% to 2.5%, respondents have indicated that Operation Antivenom was conducted under what we of Sol consider to be the equivalent of ‘extraordinary circumstances’ and our modern variation of the ‘Good Samaritan’ principle. As a result, no punishment would be appropriate. In fact, early returns suggest over 86% of Sol received your call for colonial reunification favorably. This differs significantly from polls conducted just two weeks ago, which showed fewer than one-third of all Solar humans viewed reunification with the Terran Republic as a worthwhile endeavor.”

  His brow lifted in surprise. “Antivenom created that large of a swing?”

  “Certainly not.” She cocked her head dubiously. “Following your ‘inoculation’ of the One Mind’s vast network of distributed processors, we became aware of ongoing interference with the network’s internal transparency. It seems that processes hidden beneath the virtual architecture of One Mind were actively manipulating sentiment in cascade effects that created vast divergences between true and perceived sentiment. We have yet to catalog the entirety of these manipulations, and it is possible that Venus will suffer serious loss of life since the light delay restricts our ability to directly interface with their system and curtail these interferences, but the manipulations we have thus far discovered appear to be consistent with your testimony, the testimonies of your crews, and with the evidence provided by Terran and Vorr sources, chief among that evidence being the capsules containing irrefutable proof that the species known as ‘Jem’un’ observed humanity thousands of years ago. After examining that capsule, as well as the capsule containing archeo-tech that demonstrates to our satisfaction that Jemmin did, in fact, technologically uplift humanity, we are overw
helmingly convinced Jemmin did, in fact, exert significant influence on the inner workings of Sol, for perhaps centuries or even millennia. Relatedly, you may be personally pleased to learn that Solar confidence in the One Mind system is currently at an all-time low.”

  Jenkins shook his head grimly. “Whatever you think of my people or of me, we don’t revel in any form of human misery. The One Mind system, foreign and incomprehensible as it may be to Terrans, is an integral part of your society. I can’t even fathom what shaken confidence in it must feel like for you. I’m…” He hesitated, still reeling from the idea that he wasn’t speaking to just one person but rather ninety-three billion. Words seemed pathetically inadequate given the circumstances, so he mustered the best ones he could and finished, “I’m sorry for the pain this has caused all of you.”

  “Your sentiment is acknowledged, Colonel Jenkins,” Alice replied before standing from the bedside chair. She stretched out a hand, which Jenkins slowly accepted, still reeling from the rollercoaster of information she had just taken him through. “On behalf of Sol, it is my privilege and pleasure to say,” she offered with genuine human solemnity, “thank you, Colonel Jenkins. You may yet become a martyr who suffers and dies for a crime he did not commit, but your end will not be at the hands of…” her lips twisted into a bemused smirk as she finished, “Solarians.”

  She moved toward the door, which slid open to reveal a small crowd of people.

  All of whom were Metalheads.

  “You and your people,” Alice gestured to the throng outside the door, “will be released immediately. Transport has been provided, along with an escort that will safely conduct you and a Solar delegation to Terran space.”