The Terran Mandate (20 page)

Loyalty's Pride

Captain Holt keyed the microphone on his
transmitter. "Tiger One Tiger Papa One. Message. Enforcer Battalion in
possession Strategic Target Interdiction assets, proceeding for fire on Second
Brigade." He let go of the button and watched the light flicker as the
device encrypted the message. When it flashed green, he pressed the button
again to transmit the message. The light flashed out and he waited for a
response.

He felt something bite the back of his
neck. By reflex, he reached around to slap at it, driving the shaft of the dart
even deeper into his skin. The light on his transmitter flashed yellow and then
blurred as it fell from his hand. His knees buckled and the world collapsed
into a sea of darkness.

Colonel Harris shuffled through the
scrub and rock towards Holt's body. As he crouched down to check Holt's hands,
he saw the transmitter and its flashing yellow light lying on the ground. He
let Holt's hands drop and fetched the transmitter out of the scrub. The button
continued to pulse with yellow light as he turned the device over in his hand
to study it. He grunted and turned the unit back over in his palm so he could
watch the light. After a moment, the flashing stopped and the button glowed
with a steady green, indicating the device had received and decoded a response.
Harris pressed the button.

"Tiger Papa One, Tiger One. In
response. Do not answer. Determine asset location and advise status soonest.
Out." The button's light went out.

Harris tossed the device a few inches in
the air and watched it drop back into his palm. "Huh," he said.
Looking at Holt's unconscious body, he said, "How about that?"

Major Walker and Colonel Harris stood
next to each other, looking down at Holt as is he slept in a plastic chair with
a hooded light on a pole pointed at his face. They were the only ones in the
tent and the flap was closed. The sentry of two Marines outside had
instructions not to let anyone come within a hundred feet.

Holt groaned and his head lolled. His
eyes fluttered and a hand floated up to shield them from the light. He winced
and turned from the light as he pushed himself upright in the chair. He grunted
and started to mumble, his eyes flitting between Harris and Walker.

"What the hell happened?" he
asked. He rubbed his forehead. "Major?"

Harris held out his hand. Holt's eyes
froze on the transmitter sitting in Harris's palm. Holt patted the pocket on the
left front of his field utility blouse. He unbuttoned the flap and fished for
something inside.

Harris held out his other hand to reveal
a black capsule. "By the time I'm done with you, you'll be begging me for
this."

Holt stretched his neck and yawned.
"You're an idiot."

"You have a point," Harris
said. "If I'd been doing my job, you wouldn't have lasted this long."

"That's enough," Walker said.
"Look at me, Captain Holt." He waited until Holt leveled his gaze on
his own. He took a step forward, shaking his head. "Why?"

"Because we can't win."

"Since when is that your call to
make?" Walker asked.

"Since it became the obvious truth
that nobody seems to want to admit."

Walker pulled back his hand and slammed
his palm into Holt's face. The captain's head jerked sideways, blood trickling
from the corner of his mough as he coughed.

Holt scoffed. "Doesn't change
anything. We should - "

Walker cut him off. " -have
surrendered?  Is that what you were going to say?  Let the colony work for the
Terran Guard because someday they'll remember that they're human too,
especially now that the Shoahn' are gone?  Was that it?  That after a while,
all they would remember is their fellow man and their zeal for the Godfrey
Decree would fade into history?  Is that what you were going to say?"

Wiping the corner of his mouth, Holt
said, "Yeah, something like that. If we surrender, we have a chance.
Otherwise, the day will come when they find a way to just exterminate us."
He glared at Harris. "But I guess that day is already here, isn't
it?"

"It's not about any of that,"
Walker said. He leaned over and picked up the Old Scrolls sitting in the corner
of the tent. He held the case in front of Holt with both hands and kicked the
chair with his boot, knocking Holt to the ground. He crouched down and shoved
the case in Holt's face. "It's about this!" he yelled.

Holt pushed himself away from Walker and
asked, "What's that?"

"See, that's the problem with
people like you," Walker said. "People don't know everything. People
don't need to know everything. They just need to follow orders. It's easy. It's
simple. It's what makes the Corps work."

He slid the Old Scrolls across the floor
towards Harris and stood up. "There are two kinds of people that fuck all
that up." He unsnapped the resin fabric flap on his holster and drew his
weapon. "Civilians," he said, pulling the slide back. "And
arrogant fucks like you."

Walker fired his weapon, filling the
tent with a loud pop. The bullet flew just past Holt's right ear, clipping the
cartilage. Holt clapped his hand over his ear and grimaced. Walker holstered
his weapon and crouched down in front of Holt. "Yeah, you know how it
works. The round goes supersonic and creates its own little shockwave which
snaps the air. And when it snaps hard like that, right next to your ear, it
hurts. And it leaves a little something behind that keeps on giving. For as
long as you live, you're going to hear that ringing in your ears. It ain't
never goin' away."

He stood up and stepped back towards the
front of the tent. "I'm done with you, Captain Holt." He jerked his
thumb at Colonel Harris. "But the S-2 here. Hell, I don't think he's even
started yet." Walker spat on the ground, turned around and walked out.

Time's Fist

Enforcer Battalion's troop carriers
scurried across the desert floor, hurling trails of billowing dust that
stretched out into the darkness and settled back to the ground, shaken from an
eternal slumber by something the land had long forgotten. The ground had seen
and felt the tremble of it all before. The sky had once watched with
uncertainty, now content that it would all come to the same pinnacle of
futility. They had survived this for more time than even a Shoahn' could count.
It was just a moment of stirring that could not keep them awake. The ground and
the sky would reach into time far beyond what the living would ever see. It was
well enough to sleep until then.

Dekker stared at the green glow of the
navigational display, willing the marker for the communications complex to
crawl down the screen. He tapped a button to zoom in on the marker and it
crawled faster, but the scale of distance contracted to swallow up the relative
speed. Time would not let go of him, but only taunt him with its rigidity. He
thought of his ancestors, who had travelled at near the speed of light only to
have time rob them of the history of those they had left behind, leaving an
infinite ocean of space across which they could only yell at the long dead. He
zoomed the display out far enough to see both the marker and the string of dots
that represented his battalion carriers moving towards it. They looked closer,
but they crawled one aching pixel at a time towards each other. Time -
immutable, onerous, indifferent; it closed around him like a fist. It gave him
infinite options, but only a few that he would be allowed to even try. The best
of them lay across an expanse, out of his reach, just like the people his
ancestors had left behind because they could not be chosen.

Time had come to this place to give him
one last chance to save something that the universe would never see again if he
let it slip from his hands. There was no justice in that, no mercy. There was
only the hope of achieving the impossible, as if it were all a maze laid out
just to see if he could get through it to preserve something that had a right
to exist but would always take the blood of men like himself. He was time's
plaything. If he could, Dekker would have slashed its throat to watch it bleed
away and leave the universe frozen in a single moment so that time could no
longer wield its infinite power without a notion of what it meant to live.

The carrier jostled as it barreled
across another gulley and leapt a few feet in the air on the far side. Lt.
Simmons, nestled into the driver's seat next to him, let out a glistening
"whoop!" as the carrier landed.

"Check your bearing marker,"
he said, noting that she had strayed two degrees off course. He leaned over to
check the large screen mounted in the console in front of her to confirm that
the bearing marker was aligned with the correct heading on the compass drawn on
the display. He tried to ignore the readout for their speed and her hand
pushing the throttle against its forward stop, both of which told him she was
driving the carrier forward as fast as she could, but would never be able to
drive it fast enough. 

Through the windshield, he saw the
lights clawing at the scrub, rocks and gullies of the desert that stretched out
beyond them and into the darkness. They rose up in a blur, all the same, as if
they were an infinite loop of nothingness that simply marked the passage of
more time. For a moment, he wondered if they were even moving through space.
The ground was all motion, but it had nothing to say about actually getting
anywhere.

Dekker found himself drawn into a trance
as he watched the blur. The fist of time seemed to let go of him and he had no
sense of then or now as seconds became minutes and then hours until, at last,
he saw the outline of the communications complex fade into view on the horizon.

He tapped his headset. "Enforcer
all stations, Enforcer Six Actual. Listen up. We're ETA five minutes. Get ready
to circle the wagons. Company commanders disperse in a three sector circular
perimeter. Set up your tactical signaling - we're going to EMCON charlie.
Actual out." They had been through it all before. The battles, drills and
rehearsals up until that point would have to be enough. They knew what he
wanted and he had to trust them to make it happen without him; he wouldn't have
time. The fist closed in around him again. The past was gone. The present flew
out of his hands. All he had left was if only. If only he had dug deeper. If
only he had been there when Jommy had to run. If only he had followed orders at
the Highlands. If only. He shook his head and pounded his fist on his leg,
forcing his mind to stop. "Enough," he growled at himself.

An orange glow flooded the desert floor
as the sun peeked up behind the dunes beyond the complex. Dekker leaned back
and inhaled sharply as his chest tightened. The day that could be the last day
had announced its arrival. The day that would either be the end of it all or a
new beginning for them all was here: a minion of time, a master of their fate.

The carrier's frame creaked and the
brakes squealed as Simmons eased the throttle back and braked the carrier to a
halt. Dust flew up from behind them and settled onto the ground in front of the
carrier. Dekker took another breath and opened his hatch. He stepped onto the
ground and stretched, coaxing the blood in his muscles to start churning again
so that he could move without looking too much like the old man that he felt
like inside.

The complex looked like it had died. The
corners of the resin walls of all three buildings were rounded and streaked
with grooves from years of wind and grit. Piles of sand sloped into every
corner and along the walls, making the buildings look half buried. The gate
leading to the patch of open ground between the three buildings was half way
open, drooping away from the top hinge that had broken off. Dekker paced around
to the side of the building on the left. The solar panel array jutting from the
wall faced the sky like a black flower petal. The casing for the motors that
cranked the panels to face the sun was cracked, the innards encased in grit and
debris. He paced around the back of the building in the rear, which served as
the heart of the communications center and on to the third building on the
right side of the compound.

His heart sank as rounded the corner to
the rear of the third building. The boom holding the solar panel array was
sheared at the base where it was once attached to the wall and the panels lay
half buried in sand. They glistened in the rising sun, unable to convey the
flow of electrons seeping from their innards to the complex's power system. He
knelt down to feel the surface of the panels as they warmed under the sun's
glow. Behind him, troop carriers were easing into position to set up security.
He looked over his shoulder as his Marines dismounted, sergeants yelling and
pointing as they scurried to survey the terrain, plant lane stakes and dig
trenches where they would look out onto the world from behind the sites of
their rifles.

One of the sergeants saw him and
saluted. Dekker stood up and saluted back. They stood for a moment, looking at
each other with eyes that knew. They knew that whatever fighting was left would
be lost. They knew that they would go down jabbing a knife into the enemy's
guts anyway. Dekker realized something in that moment, something he had almost
forgotten. They were the ones who stood and fell for the sake of those who
could not stand for themselves. They were the ones who died because somebody
had a duty to die and shout out to the universe that there was still somebody
worth dying for - even if those for whom they did so were already gone.

They had come here to defend. They had
come here to fight. They had come here to die. None of that was the truth
though. The truth reached out to him from thousands of years and battles fought
for everything forgettable. Out of it all, there was only one thing they could
never forget. They had come here to keep the one thing that would fall only
with the last breath of the last warrior. They had come here to keep the faith.
They were the last of their kind. They were Marines.

Dekker snapped his hand down and the
sergeant turned back to his Marines, yelling and pointing.

Sergeant Preston stepped around the
corner and approached the broken solar array. He let out a low whistle.
"That could be a problem, sir," he said.

"Can we fix it?" Dekker asked.
Preston leaned in to inspect the casing where the boom had once been attached.
A splay of copper cables ran from the innards of the broken boom into the
frozen casing of the motor. Preston fished a gray box from a cargo pocket and
unwrapped its black cables. He attached the clamp at the end of the cables to
the copper wiring and watched the meter.

"This one's dead," he said.
"The array isn't generating any current. It could be the cabling or the
panels themselves, but it would take a while to tear into it."

"What about the other one?"
Dekker asked, staring at the ground.

"Oh, the other one's fine. It can't
track, but its delivering juice."

"Will it be enough?"

Preston unclamped the meter and started
wrapping its cables around their spool. "No way to know until we fire
things up."

"Well, let's get on it, then,"
Dekker said, standing up.

As they walked across the central
compound towards the communications building in the rear, Dekker stopped short.
Lt. Simmons was kneeling next to Shahn'Dra in the far corner. Even from several
feet away, he could see the girl shaking. "You go on in," he said to
Preston.

"Aye, sir."

As Preston opened the hatch to the communications
building, Dekker crouched down next to Shahn'dra. She looked at him, the
leather creases in her face drawn tight and pale. The look didn't bother him as
much as the fact that she couldn't hide it. "What is it?" he asked.

Clinging to Simmons's collar, Shahn'dra
reached out with her other hand and clutched at Dekker. Her eyes were dilated
and a shiver ran through her despite the morning heat that was already making
Dekker sweat. "You must put me to sleep," she said.

"You are allowed to protect yourself,"
Simmons said. Dekker glanced at the top of Shahn'dra's head - her antennae were
flat against her scalp, unmoving.

Shahn'dra's eyes darted away and she
gasped. "No."

"I don't understand," Dekker
said.

"He is looking for me,"
Shahn'dra said, her voice coming from somewhere else. "He must not see
me."

Dekker put his hand over hers as she
clawed at his chest. "Lieutenant," he said, "mount a recce
patrol and screen for the Second Brigade."

Simmons eyed him for a moment and then
nodded. "Aye aye, sir." She lifted Shahn'dra's hand from her collar
and placed it in the girl's lap. "I'll be back," she said.

Shahn'dra's gaze followed Simmons as she
headed back to her carrier. Whipping her head back to Dekker, she said,
"He must not see me. I cannot hide much longer. He may already know. You
must put me to sleep."

Dekker took both of her hands in his and
said, "No. Stand up."

Shahn'dra struggled to her feet, her
body quivering. Her eyes darted away again and she shuddered.

"Look at me," Dekker said. Her
eyes continued to wander as another shudder racked her body. "Look at
me!" he shouted in his best drill instructor voice. Her eyes locked on
his.

"This is not the day to hide.
Today, we stand up. You tell that sonofabitch you're here. Tell him you're not
hiding anymore. Fight him. Fight." He grabbed her shoulders and squeezed
hard.

Shahn'dra shook her head. "I must
not. He will find us."

Dekker shook her hard enough to make her
head snap forward. "I said fight."

"Then you must promise me."

Dekker furrowed his brow. "Promise
what?"

"You must promise me that when it
is time, you will do what must be done." He stared at her as another
shudder ran through her body. He started to ask, but she was already there.
"You will know," she said, "when it is time."

Her eyes started to cloud over, another
tick of the clock that told him he had to decide while he still could. "I
promise," he said, easing his hands away from her shoulders.

Shahn'dra stood up. She reached towards
the sky, stretching her arms as far as she could. She padded to the center of
the compound as another quiver ran through her body. She closed her eyes and
unfurled her antennae. Dekker stumbled back until his back touched the wall as
she stretched her arms out over the ground. She tilted her head up, letting her
antennae unfurl to their full length and weave to a beat that only she could
hear. They intertwined and curled around each other and back again as a shimmer
bloomed out from her. Dekker's ears started ringing and then a ripple of light
shot out across the compound and across the sky to the horizon. For a moment
that lingered and stretched to the end of time, he felt himself floating in
nothingness as her aura washed over him.

Before it had even begun, the moment was
gone. She stared at him from across the compound, reminding him that he had
made a promise.

She fell to the ground in a heap and the
air became still. He ran up to her and lifted her head off the ground. He felt
the warmth of her breath from her snout, drawing in and out like waves sliding
up on a beach. He pressed her neck, feeling the pulse of blood beneath is
fingertips.