Space Knights- Last on the Line

by Emerson Fortier

  “They have yet to respond to our attempts to contact them.” Charles said. “Besides the copy of their ultimatum they broadcast at the start of the invasion, they haven’t sent a word in reply to our requests for dialogue.”

  “Still. The effort might be intensified. I know that his Holiness has expressed to me his wish -”

  The Vicar then, the appointed Papal authority of all Marain, was the real voice Chalres was hearing through this aging priest’s lips. Politics again, power, this time of a more sentimental sort. Feed the children and you’ll go to heaven, care for the sick and you’ll have the power to perform miracles. Charles had never seen a miracle, but he had seen what men with swords could do. He was spared the rest of what the priest had to say when his mother chose that moment to spot Charles and rush to the little group.

  “Charles! Charles, there you are! I have been looking for you everywhere. Everywhere! Why don’t you have your implant on?”

  “Again?” Charles asked. He downed his drink as she approached but did not stand, feeling the old irritation with parties and society grow with every step she came nearer. The very reason he’d put up a message filter on the implant when he returned from the pond with Willow was to avoid her summons. “What is it mother?” He asked.

  “You are wanted.” She hissed. “Locana sent me to find you. You and your brother are wanted for a picture with the soldier.”

  “The soldier?”

  “Is it time already?” Jonathan asked, rising with a grunt from his seat.

  “Yes.It’s a quarter to, and you’re not there Charles! Ooooh! Come with me, before we make the whole thing a disaster! Locana must be half dying by now.” She waved her hands at him to get him off his feet and Charles sighed, rising.

  “You’ll have to pardon me gentlemen. Padre.”

  “Please think on what I have said.” The priest whispered after him.

  His mother took his arm and hurried him along while the others were slowly rising from the chairs to follow. She glanced behind them every now and then until she was satisfied with something, then put her arm out to her son.

  “Link arms with me son.” She said.

  “Have you been enjoying the party, mother?” He asked, taking her arm in his own.

  “Very much.” The old woman said. They walked together for a ways and Charles found himself examining his mother, marking the way the years had changed her. The anxiety wrinkles around her eyes, the thin gray hair where it had once been a lustrous black. The years and experience now on display where the small anxious woman used to dress to show off a figure that he expected age had not deteriorated.

  Tanya Quinn had not been raised with the kinds of responsibilities that came with marrying Jonathan. She’d been a commoner in Quinn city, the daughter of a design employee who met the eldest son of the CEO at a small party put on by the wife of one of the engineers. According to his mother it was love at first sight, a romance meant to be, “If troublesome, afterwards, and before, and during. But always meant to be.” The way society told it of course she showed up at Jonathon’s office shortly after he’d been elevated to his first executive posting, and told him that she was pregnant. His father rarely weighed in on the topic, but when he did it was to say he’d married her because, “She was so beautiful, I wanted to see her in white.” And so, Charles was born, some thirty odd years ago into the home of a town girl with an elementary education, now the lady of an automated empire and the center of a high society web of drama that put the entire corporate city to shame.

  “Did you enjoy your walk with Willow?” Tanya asked.

  “I have nothing against Willow.” Charles said.

  His mother sighed. “I remember when you two used to run around together.”

  “We never ran around together.”

  “Still. I did hope. And I worry about you, being alone all the time.”

  “I am surrounded by people mother.”

  “I still worry.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  Locana appeared in the hallway and ran towards them the way his mother had.

  “Charles! You’re implant is off. Turn it on.”

  Charles sighed. “You’ve got me.” He did not turn it on, it still sent him updates whenever the command AI, Michael, noted any developments on the field but he didn’t care to find out how many messages he’d received from the society he found himself surrounded by.

  Locana took his arm and smiled at Mrs. Quinn then frowned at Charles. “Come with me.” She said, and pulled him away at double the pace his mother had made.

  The western lawn of the Quinn manor was a large field of cultivated lichen. It grew in broad mats of green/black spongy material that spread nets of fibers around them in an effort to crawl on top of their nearby competitors for sunlight and air. It was a process that could go on for years and sometimes left small hills in arid country untouched by the jungle that covered the rest of the planet. A small cement set of bleachers stood on one end of the lichen covered lawn, intended to seat family for high society games of discus or pinch. At present, the bleachers were slowly filling with the members of the fete, while a small group gathered in a corner of the field around something Charles’ couldn’t make out.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “Charles Quinn, are you so antisocial that you don’t even read the invitations I send you anymore?”

  Charles’ lips compressed in a thin line. He wanted to tell her he’d read it but the paper envelope had sat on his desk for a few days after Falkye had given it to him before he’d thrown it in the trash, unopened.

  Locana rolled her eyes as she had when they were young together. “Your brother has arranged for one of the new irregulars to be here, to demonstrate this knew mode of warfare. To demonstrate for the rest of us what we’re facing now, as corporation and a planet, and you’re getting a picture with him.You and Falkye both. Remember you’re part of the entertainment.”

  “I will never forget.” Charles muttered as he was dragged along.

  The soldier stood, replete in gleaming armor, with his sword before him, its tip in the ground, the long blade reaching almost to his shoulder. Only the helm was missing, revealing a grinning bearded man who was clearly enjoying his role in the spotlight. “Mr. Quinn.” He said, half bowing as the Charles approached. Falkye already stood beside him.

  “Charles, this is Erin Anast.” Locana said. “He’s an irregular in, which battalion again?”

  “It’s the fifth battalion miss, best there is.”

  “How long have you been with the fifth battalion?” Charles asked. He had not actually met any of the corporations new soldiers yet. He found himself curious what sort of man this one might be.

  “I’ve been with ‘em from the first. Almost a week now. Enough time to get to know Anastasia here pretty well.” He patted his sword. “And the ghost in my shell.”

  “It is a pleasure to meet you Mr. Quinn.” A disembodied voice said from a small speaker on the soldier’s chest.”

  “Just look at him Charlie!” Falkye said taking Charles’ shoulder and leading him over to the knight. “I told you we should have called them crusaders!”

  “And a righteous crusade it would have been.” Erin replied.

  Released from Locana’s grasp, Charles walked around the Knight. The armor was a replica, so far as they could replicate the Kamele soldier’s armor in the amount of time they’d had. At this distance it added an impressive bulk to the man wearing it. Belts of ammunition weaved up and down the knight’s back around the bulge of the singularity chamber and its connected power nodes. Charles noted the servo mechanisms in the joints the way the amor folded together allowing it to fit itself to anyone that signed into the army. They’d pumped out thousands of these suits of armor in the last few days, with little time for more than a few preliminary tests, all of which showed that, like the Kamele suits, this combination of mankind and machine had nearly complete superiority over the automated war machines t
hey’d stocked up over three years of preparation. It looked new. It looked, untested. “How do you like your armor?” Charles asked the knight.

  “Its splendid.” The knight replied. “Never had gone so fast in my life, and I swear, I could do the work of ten men in a suit like this if I was still working the docks.”

  “You’re from the river then.”

  “Quinn city’s always been home for me, but the battalion’s home now.”

  “May I see your sword?” He asked holding out his hand when he stood in front of Erin.

  Erin handed it to him with a whir of servo motors in his elbow and wrist. “Anastasia is heavier than she looks.”

  Charles held it up. As with the knight, the sword came up to Charles’ shoulder. The blade itself extended from a large blocky hilt at about chest height leaving a very long handle to rise the remaining three feet to Charles’ shoulder. It was heavy as Erin said, too heavy for a man without an armored suit to wield effectively, but the weight was deceptive. A tiny singularity chamber was nestled into that hilt which meant that gravity surrounding it was subtly different, though un-noticable to human senses until the blackhole was “dillated” and the rules of this dimensions physics were blended with another in which spacetime was more easily bent. “Why Anastasia?” He asked.

  Mr. Anast laughed. “Well my brother always did tell me to fuck myself. Pardon the language miss. So I gave it my name, but as a girl. Anastasia for an Anast.”

  Charles found the sword’s implant signal and IM’d it to turn on. A containment sphere in the hilt shot twinned edges of warped light along the blade of the sword and a sheath of brilliant fluorescent light flickered into existence between them. It display was extremely impressive, particularly when Charles considered the sub-quantum physics at work in his hand. The crowd behind Charles let out a breath as he held the fluorescent sword.

  “Want to be careful with that.” Erin said, suddenly serious.

  Charles turned it off and planted the tip in the ground to tilt it back to the knight. “The glow is not too bright to fight with?” He asked. “It doesn’t blind you?”

  “No sir.” Erin replied. “You hold her low when you fight, so’s to keep the belly in front of the hilt, keeps it out of my eyes too. Anastasia is just right for me. Gotten used to her I have.”

  Charles nodded.

  “Now you two stand together.” Locana said. “You too Falkye. Get in there with them. We want the whole military might lined up for this. Move back everyone, we need some space to get a really good picture.Move back.”

  As the crowd moved back Falkye glanced at Charles. “Did you have fun with lady Willow?” He asked with a grin.

  Charles watched Locana ushering back the crowd. “Falkye, I may be a pagan, but I do have some decency.”

  “I’ve some decency myself.” The knight said between them. “But I don’t miss a chance at a bit of fun when it comes my way.”

  “Does everyone have an opinion on my personal life?” Charles asked without looking at either one.

  “Oh come on, Charles. You’re no pagan, your a stoic, and we all know it. What harm in a little fun?” Falkye asked still grinning.

  “Yoohoo, over here boys.” Locana said, with a wave. “Now smile.”

  All three did and she blinked several times as her implant recorded her ocular readings.

  “Wish I had tech like that.” Erin muttered. “I tell you, this suit is a fine thing, but you corporate types got all the fun toys.”

  Locana straightened and smiled. “Alright.” She said. Lets have everyone back to the bleachers, back to the bleachers, and Mr. Anast will tell us all about life in the army. That means you too Mr. Quinn, Mr. Husband gets to stay here and introduce Erin.”

  Locana gave Falkye a peck on the cheek and a smile that made Charles’ stomach turn, then she left them to chase the rest of the audience towards the bleachers. Erin leered when he saw Charles’ expression. “I don’t know what a stoic is.” He said. “But I know that face.”

  “Epictetus was a stoic.” Charles said. “I’m just the Quinn CEO.”

  “And a very fine one.” Erin said with a grin and a mocking half bow.

  Charles left for the bleachers. As he did, something black lunged from the other side of the fence encircling the lawn and hurled itself towards the knight as a dozen girls still on the lawn screamed and ran for their seats, and the show began.

  Chapter 8: Moses // Base Camp

  The hoppers were stupid fast. One moment the air above Carmichael was clear, the next something screamed overhead, banking high into the clouds and dropping in a swirl of glowing gas into the only patch of open ground big enough to accomodate the craft. The city graveyard.

  “In!” An officer shouted as the vehicle idled over the lichen covered stones. Moses, Ephesus and the rest of the newly minted soldiers streamed through the grave markers to pile into the back of the vehicle. There A sergeant pointed them to seats and checked that they were buckled in. The last man aboard was the recruiter, and as soon as he was buckled into his seat the sergeant grabbed a handle that shot belts around his forearm and he shouted to the front. Then the ground was gone and they were screaming east above the mountains, zigging and zagging as they flew a jagged line away from Carmichael and the place Moses had always called home. When he looked across the aisle Moses found it difficult not to smile at his brother’s enormous grin. The boy expected an adventure, for Moses, this was the beginning of a new responsibility.

  The hopper was a crude, cheaply produced transport vehicle. Little more than a belly with wings, it had no windows and no door on the crew compartment, so the Smokoska boys, who had never seen anything from the air except on the cube, got an exhilarating view of Marain. The mountains shoot by until they climbed over the peaks and the whole mountain range was laid out below them sand castles.

  Moses knew, from the cube and from maps Cardino had showed him in Carmichael, what their world looked like. Geologically there were technically six continents on the planet, all of them rammed together by magma currents in the ocean of molten stone Cardino said made up the core of the planet. Each of the six had their own names and features given to them by surveys done hundreds of years before. In the distance he glimpsed a brown ribbon winding through the jungle that he guessed was the Mighty River, the heart of the human settlement. That river was a mile wide for most of its length, and filled with wounderous creatures, many without any name or classification. It sat between two of the minor continents in “the buckling”, a long trench between two mountain ranges that funneled the water from all the surrounding continents into that mighty stream. Watching the river recede, Moses could guess where they were going.

  The hopper dropped as it approached its destination and performed a long banking turn that gave Moses a glimpse of the Pampas. Gently rolling hills ran out from the mountains for a few miles until they sank like roots into the immense empty expanse of the plains. The Pampas was entirely devoid of tree or boulder or mountain. From his vantage he could not even spy a stream or lake. Only grass, endless and green, swayed beneath clouds driven by the wind, marred only by the scar of what Moses guessed must be the enemy encampment, black dots beneath the blue warp of a shield dome out amongst the sea of grass. Eventually a second camp appeared in Moses’ view as the hopper touched down and the sergeant at the door yelled for them to get out.

  Moses hit the release on his buckle and clambered out with the rest of the men. He stared at the pampas, a vast emptiness that stretched in every direction around them. In his head, Moses had known this place existed. He’d seen pictures of it on the cube and knew that there were agricultural settlements somewhere on this endless plane of green, but it was different, being there. He could smell it now, he could feel the grass beneath his feet, and study the horizon. He could lift the dirt from the ground if he wanted to and feel it between his fingers. The trip here might have only lasted a few seconds, but for Moses, it was as though he’d crossed out of the small world
of his father’s homestead and its daily routine into a world without boundary or limit. Who knew what challenges waited for him beyond the grass. Perhaps one of them would send him to join the men whose graves had served as a landing pad for the hopper he had departed on. Anything was possible.

  The adrenaline came almost immediately. A shadow raced from the Marain encampment a few hundred yards away as the men piled out of the hopper onto the grass. It resolved itself as an officer riding a machine they would later learn to call a Pack Master, a modified version of the standard ground assault drones, a hulking black body with long whipcord legs, all rubberized tentacle that tore up the ground at a terrible speed. The man careened to a halt in front of them as the officer on the hopper yelled at them to get out of the way so the hopper could take off.

  “You men come with me!” The officer shouted as he wheeled back towards the camp. “We’ve got about ten seconds before enemy artillery hits this spot. You want to live, you’d better hustle!” He turned without waiting and the Packmaster galloped off as though it were made of the wind while Moses and all the rest of the second Battalion recruits raced after him as fast as they could. Behind them, the hopper lifted into the air with a scream as artillery boomed into the grass directly beneath it, a bright flash and “kaboom” was followed by a rushing wind that shot bits of grass and dirt past the men to the back of the group. More “booms” followed, some to the left and right of the column, one reaching for the space thirty yards in front of Moses until it struck something and ricocheted into the dirt eighty yards to his left with a “thump” and a blast of flame. Signs marked the designated safety zone, and the officer who’d warned them to run met them there, waiting atop the packmaster as the men staggered to a stop in front of him.

  “Well done.” The officer said to them when he had their attention. “There were bets how many you’d lose and you didn’t lose a single one. Enemy sets their guns for anywhere along the hoppers route so it takes a few seconds to dial the guns in on your actual movements. Follow orders like that the rest of your commission, and you’ll most likely live. Now you’ve seen what happens when you’re out of the dome, you’ll want to stay under it any time you’re not on deployment. That’s a suggestion, not an order, but I’d recommend you treat it as one. Lieutenant Fyker!”