As You Were...: A Tale From The Shattered Earth (Tales From The Shattered Earth) (2 page)

It is all bullshit.

The city’s walls were actually breached three times during the course of the siege. I truly believe if it hadn’t been for the heroic efforts of the Magic and Psychic Squads, the city would have been taken and we, the valiant New Chicago defense forces, would have been reduced to ragged groups of partisans, stalking the fields and forests like our ancestors after the shattering.

You have to remember, we didn’t have our invincible war machine that we now have to spread fear and terror across the continent. We had the primitive forerunners of our current gear, and a handful of pre-shattering war machines that’d been repaired and held in reserve for more than century. Most of the fighting was individual soldiers versus the magical horrors that’d been released against us.

We needed every edge we could get.

The siege itself lasted forty seven days.  When it was broken, the city lay in ruins and the enemy was still strong and organized. Thus we launched a counterattack.  The great General Micah Schultz lead the defense forces on the offensive. First we laid waste to the community that existed within the then revered, and semi-sacred, ruins of Chicago. I could tell you of the strange and contradictory things I saw in Chicago, of the great Mausoleum and the water tower, but those are stories that time will not allow me to tell.

After the fall of Compact forces in Chicago (what they called the Blue City for some damn reason), our forces advanced into the heartland of the Ohio Valley Compact.

It was the first time most of us had ever left the borders of the State of New Chicago. It was amazing and terrifying. For miles there would be nothing more than fields and unbroken acres of wild corn and wheat. And then, rising from the landscape like a child’s toy cast amongst the weeds, the pinnacles and plateaus of the ruins of the past would leer at us.

A friend of mine, Benny Mason, told us (with all sincerity) there was ten times the volume of debris below the surface. We laughed at him and told him he had been listening to too many stories told by the old duffers in the shanty towns of the Fringe.

Then we reached the banks of a river that was dwarfed in size only by the mighty Mississippi, in my experience. The Major told us this was the Ohio River. When we asked how come it was named the Ohio, he told us it wasn’t important for us to know these things and to shut up and start digging in.

For the next three months, my life consisted of nothing more than advance a mile, fight some damn monster or evil son of a bitch, sleep, advance another mile, and do it all over again. I could regale you with the horrors of the war, but the fact of the matter is we believed we were doing the right thing, and in the end we would triumph because our cause was just and our motivations pure.

I still believe we were doing the right thing.

Then we entered the ruins of the town of Harrow Mill, and I was reunited with Courtney. By the time we came to that loose ring of towns and villages surrounding the ancient city of Louisville, a combined company of Psychic and Magic troops had been added to our Battalion. As we neared the city, I’ll tell you the truth, we were damn happy to have them with us. The dark mage’s of the Ohio Valley Compact had been running rampant within our lines and the only weapons we had to counter them in those days (remember, kids, the first of the K-9’s were still more than half a century away from being a reality) were our own mages and mental warriors.

When the 9
th
Special Operations Company joined us, we welcomed them as brothers and sisters in arms. They were human warriors and citizens of New Chicago.  As far as we were concerned, they were saviors and friends, not monsters to be feared and hated. They had this Captain leading them, Herman Garcia was his name, and he was one of the most serious SOB’s I had ever met. That was the ironic thing… as much as we hated the Compact and its leadership, nobody hated them as much as our own wizards. It was as if they believed all the actions of the Compact were directed at them personally.

I asked Courtney about that one night.

We were lying on her overly small cot and just enjoying the glow of being together in all of the madness surrounding us. She looked at me in the dim lantern light and said, “Most people don’t like us, John.  They fear us, and the only reason they tolerate us is because we try very hard to do nothing that might seem threatening. But the Compact has decided it’s the right of wizards to rule over those who don’t have the talent. They’re making it so it may be impossible for us to return to our own lives after the war.”

I looked at her in disbelief and said, “But you’re fighting for the freedom of everyone in the City.  How can they not appreciate that mages and psychics are dying out here?”

She laughed softly (God, just the memory of her laugh is enough to cause my stomach to flutter like a child’s), “That’s why I love you, Johnny; you get right to the heart of the matter.  No bullshit from you, my love.” Then she kissed me and ended the conversation without ever giving me an answer.

A week later, I was in the hospital trying to get used to the idea that I was now almost as much a machine as a man.

Three weeks after that, Courtney was dead.

She died a hero.  I was later given the details of how she died by then Major Herman Garcia. He tried, without success, to hold back his tears. I can still say, after all of these years, she was the bravest person I’ve ever had the privilege to know. They’d overrun a Compact defensive position and were in the process of stripping it down and leveling the ground so that it could not be reclaimed. We’d been constantly moving forward and had no need, or desire for, defensive positions in the rear areas. Courtney remained behind to supervise the handling of any mystic artifacts that the unit came across.

A creature attacked the group, it’d been left behind to accomplish this task.

One of the survivors, a skinny kid name Sal, told me the beast was twelve feet tall and all hair and teeth. The soldiers opened up on it, and it seemed to shrug off their weapons fire as if it were no more than black flies in summer. Sal told me they were sure they were all going to end up in the belly of this thing when a bolt lightning crashed down from the sky and nails the bastard square in the back. Courtney came forward, muttering to herself, and another lance of electric fire slams into the creature.

Apparently the thing wasn’t stupid because before she could unleash another bolt, it leapt at her. It was only the defensive charm she’d cast that allowed her to survive as it knocked her into the dirt. They traded spells and blows for ten minutes, until reinforcements arrived and buried a high explosive rocket in the things skull.

The damage was already done though.  Courtney lived another two hours, but in the end she was too badly hurt and passed on. They awarded her the New Chicago medal of valor, and when they erected the memorial arch and pedestals of the fallen, her name was on it with every other hero of the conflict.

I finished up the war in the City like the rest of the old and injured. I helped man the battlements erected around New Chicago. These would serve as the foundations of the new walls now surrounding the city. After the war, I stayed in the army for another twenty seven years and achieved the rank of Command Sergeant Major. I watched as the Republic of New Chicago became the nucleus of the Heartland Empire, and we went from a democracy to a dictatorship. The mages were sent away from New Chicago.  They weren’t killed or imprisoned as they would be now.  Instead they were given a stipend and sent away to begin a new life. The psychic citizens were allowed to stay, but they were relegated to the status of third class citizens, a status that was only officially repealed in the last fifteen years.

I remained in the military all through this. I had no family to speak of.  My brother had married and now had a sprawling family of his own. They tried to include me in their happiness, but I always resisted, being the family curmudgeon to the end, I suppose. But in the end I was included, and I consider my nieces and nephews the most important things in my life, even though we are now sundered. They remain living in the fortress city that was once my home, and I choose to exist here in the Fringe.  We still keep in touch, and they know their Uncle John would do anything for them.

Once every week  when I was inside the city and not on maneuvers somewhere with what I still called the “New Army,” I went to the Arch and left flowers for the only woman I had ever truly loved. Then it happened. One day when I arrived, I realized things were changed, but I could not identify what had changed.
I walked over to the Arch.  It towered over my head and was covered in plaques and surrounded by pedestals holding even more plaques.  On them were the names of the fallen. The Arch was in the center of a circular park, and great means had been taken to keep the area quiet and undeveloped. It was universally agreed that it was the most tranquil area in the city

I went to the pedestal containing the plaque with Courtney’s name on it. I froze; the pedestal looked the same and the plaque was the same burnt copper color that it had always been. But it wasn’t the same plaque. Courtney’s name had been removed and as near as I could tell so had three others, all of them mages who had died in the war. I raced around the monument and searched for the twenty or so other names I knew of mages who’d died and they were all gone, erased as if they had never existed.

I left the park with my mind in a state of vertigo.  If it were possible to get motion sickness in your brain as opposed to your stomach, it would come very near to describing how I felt at that moment. I didn’t say anything at first.  By this time, the city was already on the road to becoming the secretive police state it is now.  I just waited, longer than I should have, to see if any announcements would be made or if anyone else would raise a stink.

Nobody did.

It occurred to me there were probably few people left who remembered there used to be magic wielding citizens of New Chicago. It was as if the powers that be were attempting to rewrite the history of the city. Of course, that was exactly what they were trying to do, and they succeeded.

I wish I could say I raised a fuss, or agitated for change, or did anything to rectify what I saw as a grievous wrong. I didn’t; I just seethed. They’d taken Courtney’s, and hundreds of other’s legacies away from them and thereby casted them into the roles of unnatural and perverted monsters. So what did I do to protest all of this? I’ll tell you what I did, I retired.

The day I mustered out of the Heartland Army was the last day I set foot inside the city of New Chicago. I’d already found a place in one of the Fringe communities and I was able to move all of my meager possessions in one trip.

Moving to the Fringe should have cost me my citizenship in the Heartland Empire, but the way the retirement clause in the military contract reads, it allows soldiers with thirty plus years to retire and keep all their benefits, even if they leave the Empire provided they do not enlist with an enemy power.

The first few years were uneventful. I knew I was being watched, both by the Intelligence Service and the various factions at play within the Fringe. I really didn’t care.  I was content to sit in the combination bar/brothel that’d become my new home, to drink and tell war stories to the folks that were interested.

The only thing that disturbed me was the high numbers of non-humans in the Fringe. I expected them to have their numbers in the shanty towns around the city, but I was shocked to see how openly they moved about. But they left me alone and soon they became just another piece of the background.

Roy Lynch gave me a purpose for the golden years of my life. The same Roy Lynch that was married to Amanda, the charming woman who I know carries a torch for me and can never understand why I feel so guilty for wanting to return the feeling. Courtney may be gone, but I can never, it seems, soothe the ache in my heart from her loss.

It was a cool Spring evening, eleven years ago, when I was perched comfortably on my favorite bar stool when we all heard a commotion outside. Most of the younger people raced over to the windows to see what was going on.  It was a rare day in the Fringe when some fool or another wasn’t raising a ruckus.

“Hey John, come check this out; this is wild, brother,” another army vet by the name of Brett Phillips called to me. At forty one, Brett had served well after the last Great War with the Ohio Valley Compact.

I sighed, “This had better be good, kid,” I called out as my bionics whirred audibly when I rose from the seat.

There was a girl running down the street and two Legionaries (God, I hate that title) were chasing her down. Her eyes were the size of saucers as she desperately scanned the road, looking for a place to hide. She turned; she must have heard the soldiers closing, and began to mutter. Lightning lanced from the clear sky and fried the road around the soldiers. Their armor smoked as they hit the ground, obviously still alive writhing on the ground.

I still to this day don’t know what made me do it. Was it that she had the same shade of red hair that Courtney had? Or was it that she was so obviously terrified and needed help? I couldn’t say that any one of these things motivated me to act, but in retrospect I think it was that I was simply tired of sitting on the sidelines while bad things kept happening to people that didn’t deserve it.

I sprinted to the front door, faster than I believed my legs were capable of propelling me, and rushed outside. The smell of burnt ozone overwhelmed the usual stink of the open sewers of the Fringe, and I remember thinking it smelled like the battlefields along the Ohio River so long ago.