[Giftsnap] Justice
Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 5:42 pm
This'd be from Ford. I asked him the other day if he'd rather post it that me, but he told me to go ahead, so here goes.
***
Lo, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!
-Beowulf
Justice
A Post War Epic
Chapter One
New Space Order
Here's something that lots of people don't know. After the long, boring, needlessly vast ceremony where they pinned enough medals on my chest to make the seams creak, a few important people took me into a small room. There, they put a large gun to my head, and asked me quite pointedly to never open my mouth to anyone about pretty much anything. At the time, I was not afraid. I could count the number of times I had been actually afraid on two fingers. I was, and I suppose still am, a Carnage Marine. Six men and a firearm floating an inch from the back of my skull is certainly not enough to frighten me. Not after the shit that went down around Kaeleron. It helped that at the time, I was effectively immortal. I politely told them that they should try this same trick with Trego. They more politely asked me to become a general.
I thought about that for a long time. I didn’t leave the room, even after they had. I considered what they had said: Leaders were needed. Strong leaders that the people could rely upon. It makes a fair amount of sense really; I had recently been party to the saving of the galaxy, and it had been televised, after a fashion. I agreed with their sentiments. I also liked the idea of being a general – it was unusual for a Carnage Marine to actually get that sort of brass. They swore me in as one of the first generals of the New Unified Army.
*
Of all my friends, or the collection of beings I don’t quite consider enemies, the only other one to continue in the armed forces was Trego. His rank was even more impressive: Supreme Commander of the New Unified Army When it came down to it, that was the only possible move. Trego already had an innate understanding of the management of such a vast, varied force as the NUA: before his essential defection, he was an Ark Warmaster. Not even Grand Admiral Mccorl could ever have claimed to have nearly a tenth of the authority that he wielded. More than that, he was clever, dedicated and very good at his job. It was also a bad move, because Trego was not just a clever commander, he was also a clever politician. The NUA was almost certainly guaranteed success. So was Trego.
Undoubtedly, there was both quaking in the boots and much rejoicing. Especially when it became apparent that Trego was very interested in making sure that the NUA did not become the order upon which the galaxy spun. As he confided to me shortly after our induction to the new ranks of leadership, he believed it was necessary for democratic civilian government to rule. We later discovered this was a mistake, but the idea was sound. We spent a considerable amount of time eliminating parts of the old galaxy which we believed jeopardised this vision. The Office of Naval Intelligence went first, lasted longest, and bit hardest. Humanity had not nearly been as internally fragmented as the Ark, and thus ONI had gained something of a dominance which could only be called disgusting. We both knew first hand the sort of shit ONI got up to. The grand instigator was dead, of course. Jak had fed him a nuke. There was more to it though. We had to invent our own intelligence taskforce purely to most of what ONI had. Most of that is gone, of course. We have some left over. More is still out there, and every day, thousands of operatives try and get it, and try to excise the last of the demons.
With the Ark, we found that the problems weren’t so pertinent. The most effective way of dealing with the utterly myriad agencies that skulked around were to make them turn on each other. After they were done with each other, the boys and girls could sweep in, the whirlwind in their thorn tree. The legacy of the Tyrax loomed, fresh in the minds of those who were his. They, like the ONI remnants, fought. They still do: the legacy of the Tyrax looms large.
Thinking of the Tyrax always gets me. It’s not that he and I were arch-foes (though there was this cool rumble including rocket launchers at one point), but it’s just that he’s the one who took a lot away from us. He killed, directly or indirectly, a lot of people I would call my closest comrades. Morbidly, if it wasn’t for him, we all would have died anyway. That’s supposed to be ironic. Trego once said, in a very melancholic way ‘isn’t that funny’.
I’m still not laughing.
*
I didn’t see Ian for three years.
That was a mistake. Letting the NUA take up all my time had been a mistake. I had neglected the people that needed me the most. So I tried to find them, and I started with Ian. I did it personally. We had some good agents in CTI at the time, and Ian wasn’t really hiding, but I needed to take the time to do it myself. I tracked him to the place where we had last seen each other: the monument on New Cal. As I stood beneath a drooping, orange leafed tree, I watched him march straight up to the monolith, and stand before it. I had some ideas about how Dusk was doing, but there was no way he’d come here drunk. As I watched him stand ramrod straight before the basalt memorial, I felt something lift within me, like escaping plasma. He was a soldier. A good soldier.
My heart plummets into my stomach. Why the fuck was he a soldier? Why were any of them soldiers? I rubbed one eyebrow heavily. The Ian I knew was full of dark cynicism. Every act of violence seemed to bury him, and he would claw his way back out of it. And every time … Some men and women thrive as soldiers. Others are destroyed. Ian was, is, a survivor. Survivors are the middle: they adapt. They live. In order to stay alive, they change themselves. As I stepped from the cover of the tree, into the drizzle, I decided that it was the survivors who were tested most sorely of all.
He half turned as I approached. His face is covered in a few days stubble, his eyes are slightly sunken. I called up a memory of Ian from when I first met him, compared it to the man before me. It had only been a few years. Too much had changed. He turned his face back to the memorial. I stood by his side, and ran my eyes over the names – too many names. I don’t need to look; I know where these people lie. I know what he’s looking for.
Running a hand through damp, slicked back hair, I glanced sideways at Ian, then back to the monolith. I wondered what words would be appropriate to open with. He decided he’d beat me to the punch. “I hear you’re still with the military.”
“That’s right.” I said. Our voices were equally neutral. Ian had resigned almost immediately. I doubt his paperwork was ever properly filed; there was a lot. We had limited AI resources, and we had to make a call. Undoubtedly, this act had driven many like Ian into a state of near-destituteness. I almost smile wryly; they’re survivors, naturally.
“How do you do it?” he asked, still with his eyes locked on Sarah’s plaque. It’s a sliver of brass. She deserved more. “How can you keep working for them? It might be bigger, it might be newer, it might have more aliens in it, but it’s still the same stupid shit.”
“Because,” I replied, moving forward and going to one knee. I rubbed a name gently with a gloved thumb, removing some perceived dust. “Someone has to. Someone has to be the bad guy.” I turned my head back to look at him. He still wasn’t looking at me. There were tears streaming down his face, lost in the rain. I stood, looked along the simple stone, the simple brass, the simple act of remembrance. It’s one of many. I’ve been to them all. “For them.”
*
“This seems worrying.” Trego said, leaning back in his chair, one leg with its ludicrous number of joints propped on his desk. His reptilian eyes were focussed upon the flimsy. “The slipstreams between here and Andromeda are supposed to be blacker than black. They’re not supposed to be stolen.” He throws down the transparent sheath with no measure of disgust, only mild annoyance. He sits up straight and clicks his claws against the surface of his desk. “I imagine that hordes of agents are already scouring the galaxy. Even with the slipstream data it’s not easy to get to Andromeda, but if these bastards start messing with the Deinonj, we could have … You’re not actually listening, are you.”
“My wife is having an affair.” I said automatically.
“That’s wonderful.” Trego remarked, pointedly jabbing the flimsy and its scrolling text. “We could have a war in the making here.”
“I think she’s having two.”
“And I think that I really don’t care. Focus please.”
“And the thing is, I’m having an affair too. And she knows.”
Trego tossed up his arms, and flung his eyes to the roof of his office. He stood and leant over his enormous desk; even though his side was buried several feet into the floor, in order to equalise his height with his smaller liaisons, he loomed. “I’m failing to see how your marital problems have any relevance right now. You’ve walked into my office with some of the worst news since I discovered that they’ve stopped making crumpets. It might not sound like much, but a couple of gigs of information has gone missing, and it’s actually a galactic crisis.” He reached over and clamped my head with one big hand. He gave a slow twist and had me looking at him. “I’ll give you the number of a good marriage counsellor, if you like, but keep your eyes on the prize here.”
I shook my head free of the Supreme Commander’s grasp and rubbed a temple. “Keep my eyes on the prize. Sorry.” I stuck a finger on the flimsy and dragged it to my side. I already knew the contents, and they were worrying. Since the Ark dissolved after the war, the Deinonj hadn’t really been heard of in the Milky Way. Occasionally there were rumours, but never anything more, which was a blessing. At best, we were hoping for some sort of peaceable, arms length relationship. At most, we could hope for them to totally ignore us. No one was actually sure, but we had a vague idea that we were bigger. No one was delusional enough to think that mattered.
In all honesty, very few had any idea of what individual Deinonj were like, let alone the whole of their mysterious race. Not even Kehksol could tell of anything useful, and he’d been around as long as they had. We didn’t know if they could be provoked. We decided to err on the side of caution. If you can’t get to Andromeda, you can’t interact with the Mysterious Pandimensional Threat From Beyond. The simple plans were best. And now we didn’t even have that.
“Well,” I tried, fanning myself. “It’s not all bad.”
*
Truth be told, we were just being careful. We didn’t want the Andromeda Slipstreams becoming common knowledge. There weren’t many known, which was reasonable, given that there just weren’t many. Slipstreams crisscross galaxies, connecting star after star after star. In system, tributaries bleed off like wisps of gas, allowing rapid transport across interplanetary distances. However, between the galaxies it’s different. Someone once told me that the intergalactic streams between here and Andromeda weren’t just rare, they were different, and hard to travel. They also had positions you could conceivably guard.
And yet, despite knowing that your average ship could make it, and despite knowing there were NUA units guarding the Andromeda Slipstream Points, I couldn’t sleep. My wife was snoring gently into the crook of my arm. Once upon a time, she might not have been able to sleep as well. These days Elisa wasn’t a part of the armed forces, and instead pursued a more profitable existence using my salary to play the stock market from home. In a way, I was happy about this. Being the General’s Wife was simultaneously safer and more dangerous than actually being in the NUA. Either way, we had silently decided that our daughter needed someone at home with her apart from the Alastors. Amelia might have loved the towering drones like she would a dog, but they were no substitute.
I reach over and stroke the hair around her ears gently, before slowly rolling and engulfing her body in my arms. She wriggles against me, as though trying to push closer to my body. I place my nose in her hair. As I inhale her scent with each breath, my heart rate drops, and my worries trickle away. We might be exceedingly unfaithful, but we are also in love. We both know that the other has shared a bed with another, recently even, but we also know that this doesn’t actually matter. We’ll never actually admit to the affairs, of course, that would be strange. Yet we’ll never leave. I don’t love her less. I know she doesn’t either.
Strange, yeah. I think tomorrow I’ll ask her about more children.
*
Quick Johnny D’oro lashed out with his left. It thumped into the pad on my hand. Like a snake, he struck fast, and fluid. I don’t really need to offer him any advice as we move slowly back and forth in our faux battle. He begins the repetition again, and mid-move I slapped inside his guard and drive my right pad up. His head jerks back, and his arm wraps around mine. It’s a smooth move, but he hasn’t got the leverage and footing to beat me in a contest of strength. I put him on his back.
“That was slick.” I said, helping him to his feet. I stood practically a foot taller than him. “Even if you need more leverage. I might be bigger and stronger, but that’s not really important.” Before he could open his mouth to speak, I launched out a strike which he handily dodged, bouncing a few steps back. “Look for the opportunities. No one’s flawless.”
Forcing him back, I took a moment to pull off the pads. We sauntered about each other, watching each other closely. Johnny pulled up his dukes and stepped forward, launching out a flurry of blows. My hands weaved against his, deflecting, allowing my elbow to spike forward. Johnny’s forearm crunched against the blow, and with a kick he drove me back. “Hood,” he said, warily dancing on his heels. Like a blur, he tossed out a roundhouse that had me on the back foot. “Do you think we’ve got anything over the Ark after New Cal?”
“Do you?” I asked, my fists moving like pistons. He caught an outstretched arm and hauled me to the ground. Now that was slick.
Standing over me, Cesar pursed his lips. I cocked an eyebrow and he finally shook his head. “No. We don’t.”
*
Humanity was always going to loose. The Ark was just too big, too powerful. I mean, Christ, the whole polity was named after a roving artificial planetoid the size of Mars. We could try all we like, but winning wasn’t exactly an option. We could pull victories of course, but the whole thing? The ‘war’ was already loss. When it came down to it, it was less a war and more a political manoeuvre on the part of entities within the Ark. The total extinction of humanity would be nothing more than a clever ruse for some to move up in the world of the Ark. I mean wow.
And once it’s all over, where does humanity stand? Right at the top baby. We went in a sure-fire loose, and we came out with a thousand times the clout we ever had before. We might not be the most prolific of species, or the strongest, but the new government ended up with more humans in power than any other species. I don’t know how that happened. And we’re heading up up up! Nobody can stop us now, because we’re a part of everybody. Tensions are high of course, lots of us don’t like each other, but what does that matter? Get in the way and you get stepped on, at which point you get the lovely opportunity to go drown in the mud.
This is Union. We had such hopes for it, but it really didn’t go so well.
So much has happened, and all of it seems to lead to the same place. It’s hard to keep track of it all. The war ended, and we were left to put the pieces back together. And yet, someone was trying to pry them apart. It wasn’t the end of the play, it was a whole new act, and I was back playing my new role. Only this time, I was short all the people I needed. Johnny. Sarah. Ian.
Jak.
It doesn’t matter how many ships or men the NUA has, and that I have command over. That’s not nearly as comforting as having a fellow Storm Commando at your back. Nothing is.
*
I remember standing over Megan Rickson as she lay unconscious, one among so many aboard the Nightfall. Of all the surviving of Jak’s Raptor’s, she was the one I knew best. I killed the other one. It wasn’t actually my fault, but there you go. Rickson was extremely lucky to be alive. She had been a part of the fighter assault force that had attempted to take down the Tyrax’s black hole catalyst Annihilation Bomb. She was hit, yet managed to eject. Unconscious for most of the battle. I knew she’d feel guilty about that, irrational though it was. I was hoping, standing there, that what guilt she felt would only be minor. Yeah, well, people hope for a lot of stupid things. I remember standing there until she finally awoke.
I knelt by her, and as she blinked her eyes clear, as she focussed on me, I could see her fear. She tried to swallow, and her hand latched onto mine as I slipped it towards her. “Who …” she began in a small voice, before she faltered. I squeezed.
“Major Blake is still alive.” I said, and she crushed her eyes shut, bit her bottom lip. The fingers in mine were shaking. I told myself that I would have to go and find Pierce Blake and get him aboard the Nightfall. I might have fought across space with Rickson, but I was not a Raptor. “Sarah is gone.” Rickson’s teeth fastened into her flesh. “And so is Jak.”
I reached over and used my thumb to wipe away the blood trickling from her lip. Her head lolled to one side, to stare off in the opposite direction.
*
The war ended and humanity survived, prospered and now thrives. But the war destroyed too many. Many of my friends, not enough of my enemies, and even myself. It can never be allowed to happen again. This is the duty that I have: keeping the peace. I want to say ‘whatever the cost’, but another man once did that. He believed he was protecting humanity. We call him a traitor, and vilify him as such.
If I am to be remembered, do I really want that memory to be one of treachery?
***
Lo, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!
-Beowulf
Justice
A Post War Epic
Chapter One
New Space Order
Here's something that lots of people don't know. After the long, boring, needlessly vast ceremony where they pinned enough medals on my chest to make the seams creak, a few important people took me into a small room. There, they put a large gun to my head, and asked me quite pointedly to never open my mouth to anyone about pretty much anything. At the time, I was not afraid. I could count the number of times I had been actually afraid on two fingers. I was, and I suppose still am, a Carnage Marine. Six men and a firearm floating an inch from the back of my skull is certainly not enough to frighten me. Not after the shit that went down around Kaeleron. It helped that at the time, I was effectively immortal. I politely told them that they should try this same trick with Trego. They more politely asked me to become a general.
I thought about that for a long time. I didn’t leave the room, even after they had. I considered what they had said: Leaders were needed. Strong leaders that the people could rely upon. It makes a fair amount of sense really; I had recently been party to the saving of the galaxy, and it had been televised, after a fashion. I agreed with their sentiments. I also liked the idea of being a general – it was unusual for a Carnage Marine to actually get that sort of brass. They swore me in as one of the first generals of the New Unified Army.
*
Of all my friends, or the collection of beings I don’t quite consider enemies, the only other one to continue in the armed forces was Trego. His rank was even more impressive: Supreme Commander of the New Unified Army When it came down to it, that was the only possible move. Trego already had an innate understanding of the management of such a vast, varied force as the NUA: before his essential defection, he was an Ark Warmaster. Not even Grand Admiral Mccorl could ever have claimed to have nearly a tenth of the authority that he wielded. More than that, he was clever, dedicated and very good at his job. It was also a bad move, because Trego was not just a clever commander, he was also a clever politician. The NUA was almost certainly guaranteed success. So was Trego.
Undoubtedly, there was both quaking in the boots and much rejoicing. Especially when it became apparent that Trego was very interested in making sure that the NUA did not become the order upon which the galaxy spun. As he confided to me shortly after our induction to the new ranks of leadership, he believed it was necessary for democratic civilian government to rule. We later discovered this was a mistake, but the idea was sound. We spent a considerable amount of time eliminating parts of the old galaxy which we believed jeopardised this vision. The Office of Naval Intelligence went first, lasted longest, and bit hardest. Humanity had not nearly been as internally fragmented as the Ark, and thus ONI had gained something of a dominance which could only be called disgusting. We both knew first hand the sort of shit ONI got up to. The grand instigator was dead, of course. Jak had fed him a nuke. There was more to it though. We had to invent our own intelligence taskforce purely to most of what ONI had. Most of that is gone, of course. We have some left over. More is still out there, and every day, thousands of operatives try and get it, and try to excise the last of the demons.
With the Ark, we found that the problems weren’t so pertinent. The most effective way of dealing with the utterly myriad agencies that skulked around were to make them turn on each other. After they were done with each other, the boys and girls could sweep in, the whirlwind in their thorn tree. The legacy of the Tyrax loomed, fresh in the minds of those who were his. They, like the ONI remnants, fought. They still do: the legacy of the Tyrax looms large.
Thinking of the Tyrax always gets me. It’s not that he and I were arch-foes (though there was this cool rumble including rocket launchers at one point), but it’s just that he’s the one who took a lot away from us. He killed, directly or indirectly, a lot of people I would call my closest comrades. Morbidly, if it wasn’t for him, we all would have died anyway. That’s supposed to be ironic. Trego once said, in a very melancholic way ‘isn’t that funny’.
I’m still not laughing.
*
I didn’t see Ian for three years.
That was a mistake. Letting the NUA take up all my time had been a mistake. I had neglected the people that needed me the most. So I tried to find them, and I started with Ian. I did it personally. We had some good agents in CTI at the time, and Ian wasn’t really hiding, but I needed to take the time to do it myself. I tracked him to the place where we had last seen each other: the monument on New Cal. As I stood beneath a drooping, orange leafed tree, I watched him march straight up to the monolith, and stand before it. I had some ideas about how Dusk was doing, but there was no way he’d come here drunk. As I watched him stand ramrod straight before the basalt memorial, I felt something lift within me, like escaping plasma. He was a soldier. A good soldier.
My heart plummets into my stomach. Why the fuck was he a soldier? Why were any of them soldiers? I rubbed one eyebrow heavily. The Ian I knew was full of dark cynicism. Every act of violence seemed to bury him, and he would claw his way back out of it. And every time … Some men and women thrive as soldiers. Others are destroyed. Ian was, is, a survivor. Survivors are the middle: they adapt. They live. In order to stay alive, they change themselves. As I stepped from the cover of the tree, into the drizzle, I decided that it was the survivors who were tested most sorely of all.
He half turned as I approached. His face is covered in a few days stubble, his eyes are slightly sunken. I called up a memory of Ian from when I first met him, compared it to the man before me. It had only been a few years. Too much had changed. He turned his face back to the memorial. I stood by his side, and ran my eyes over the names – too many names. I don’t need to look; I know where these people lie. I know what he’s looking for.
Running a hand through damp, slicked back hair, I glanced sideways at Ian, then back to the monolith. I wondered what words would be appropriate to open with. He decided he’d beat me to the punch. “I hear you’re still with the military.”
“That’s right.” I said. Our voices were equally neutral. Ian had resigned almost immediately. I doubt his paperwork was ever properly filed; there was a lot. We had limited AI resources, and we had to make a call. Undoubtedly, this act had driven many like Ian into a state of near-destituteness. I almost smile wryly; they’re survivors, naturally.
“How do you do it?” he asked, still with his eyes locked on Sarah’s plaque. It’s a sliver of brass. She deserved more. “How can you keep working for them? It might be bigger, it might be newer, it might have more aliens in it, but it’s still the same stupid shit.”
“Because,” I replied, moving forward and going to one knee. I rubbed a name gently with a gloved thumb, removing some perceived dust. “Someone has to. Someone has to be the bad guy.” I turned my head back to look at him. He still wasn’t looking at me. There were tears streaming down his face, lost in the rain. I stood, looked along the simple stone, the simple brass, the simple act of remembrance. It’s one of many. I’ve been to them all. “For them.”
*
“This seems worrying.” Trego said, leaning back in his chair, one leg with its ludicrous number of joints propped on his desk. His reptilian eyes were focussed upon the flimsy. “The slipstreams between here and Andromeda are supposed to be blacker than black. They’re not supposed to be stolen.” He throws down the transparent sheath with no measure of disgust, only mild annoyance. He sits up straight and clicks his claws against the surface of his desk. “I imagine that hordes of agents are already scouring the galaxy. Even with the slipstream data it’s not easy to get to Andromeda, but if these bastards start messing with the Deinonj, we could have … You’re not actually listening, are you.”
“My wife is having an affair.” I said automatically.
“That’s wonderful.” Trego remarked, pointedly jabbing the flimsy and its scrolling text. “We could have a war in the making here.”
“I think she’s having two.”
“And I think that I really don’t care. Focus please.”
“And the thing is, I’m having an affair too. And she knows.”
Trego tossed up his arms, and flung his eyes to the roof of his office. He stood and leant over his enormous desk; even though his side was buried several feet into the floor, in order to equalise his height with his smaller liaisons, he loomed. “I’m failing to see how your marital problems have any relevance right now. You’ve walked into my office with some of the worst news since I discovered that they’ve stopped making crumpets. It might not sound like much, but a couple of gigs of information has gone missing, and it’s actually a galactic crisis.” He reached over and clamped my head with one big hand. He gave a slow twist and had me looking at him. “I’ll give you the number of a good marriage counsellor, if you like, but keep your eyes on the prize here.”
I shook my head free of the Supreme Commander’s grasp and rubbed a temple. “Keep my eyes on the prize. Sorry.” I stuck a finger on the flimsy and dragged it to my side. I already knew the contents, and they were worrying. Since the Ark dissolved after the war, the Deinonj hadn’t really been heard of in the Milky Way. Occasionally there were rumours, but never anything more, which was a blessing. At best, we were hoping for some sort of peaceable, arms length relationship. At most, we could hope for them to totally ignore us. No one was actually sure, but we had a vague idea that we were bigger. No one was delusional enough to think that mattered.
In all honesty, very few had any idea of what individual Deinonj were like, let alone the whole of their mysterious race. Not even Kehksol could tell of anything useful, and he’d been around as long as they had. We didn’t know if they could be provoked. We decided to err on the side of caution. If you can’t get to Andromeda, you can’t interact with the Mysterious Pandimensional Threat From Beyond. The simple plans were best. And now we didn’t even have that.
“Well,” I tried, fanning myself. “It’s not all bad.”
*
Truth be told, we were just being careful. We didn’t want the Andromeda Slipstreams becoming common knowledge. There weren’t many known, which was reasonable, given that there just weren’t many. Slipstreams crisscross galaxies, connecting star after star after star. In system, tributaries bleed off like wisps of gas, allowing rapid transport across interplanetary distances. However, between the galaxies it’s different. Someone once told me that the intergalactic streams between here and Andromeda weren’t just rare, they were different, and hard to travel. They also had positions you could conceivably guard.
And yet, despite knowing that your average ship could make it, and despite knowing there were NUA units guarding the Andromeda Slipstream Points, I couldn’t sleep. My wife was snoring gently into the crook of my arm. Once upon a time, she might not have been able to sleep as well. These days Elisa wasn’t a part of the armed forces, and instead pursued a more profitable existence using my salary to play the stock market from home. In a way, I was happy about this. Being the General’s Wife was simultaneously safer and more dangerous than actually being in the NUA. Either way, we had silently decided that our daughter needed someone at home with her apart from the Alastors. Amelia might have loved the towering drones like she would a dog, but they were no substitute.
I reach over and stroke the hair around her ears gently, before slowly rolling and engulfing her body in my arms. She wriggles against me, as though trying to push closer to my body. I place my nose in her hair. As I inhale her scent with each breath, my heart rate drops, and my worries trickle away. We might be exceedingly unfaithful, but we are also in love. We both know that the other has shared a bed with another, recently even, but we also know that this doesn’t actually matter. We’ll never actually admit to the affairs, of course, that would be strange. Yet we’ll never leave. I don’t love her less. I know she doesn’t either.
Strange, yeah. I think tomorrow I’ll ask her about more children.
*
Quick Johnny D’oro lashed out with his left. It thumped into the pad on my hand. Like a snake, he struck fast, and fluid. I don’t really need to offer him any advice as we move slowly back and forth in our faux battle. He begins the repetition again, and mid-move I slapped inside his guard and drive my right pad up. His head jerks back, and his arm wraps around mine. It’s a smooth move, but he hasn’t got the leverage and footing to beat me in a contest of strength. I put him on his back.
“That was slick.” I said, helping him to his feet. I stood practically a foot taller than him. “Even if you need more leverage. I might be bigger and stronger, but that’s not really important.” Before he could open his mouth to speak, I launched out a strike which he handily dodged, bouncing a few steps back. “Look for the opportunities. No one’s flawless.”
Forcing him back, I took a moment to pull off the pads. We sauntered about each other, watching each other closely. Johnny pulled up his dukes and stepped forward, launching out a flurry of blows. My hands weaved against his, deflecting, allowing my elbow to spike forward. Johnny’s forearm crunched against the blow, and with a kick he drove me back. “Hood,” he said, warily dancing on his heels. Like a blur, he tossed out a roundhouse that had me on the back foot. “Do you think we’ve got anything over the Ark after New Cal?”
“Do you?” I asked, my fists moving like pistons. He caught an outstretched arm and hauled me to the ground. Now that was slick.
Standing over me, Cesar pursed his lips. I cocked an eyebrow and he finally shook his head. “No. We don’t.”
*
Humanity was always going to loose. The Ark was just too big, too powerful. I mean, Christ, the whole polity was named after a roving artificial planetoid the size of Mars. We could try all we like, but winning wasn’t exactly an option. We could pull victories of course, but the whole thing? The ‘war’ was already loss. When it came down to it, it was less a war and more a political manoeuvre on the part of entities within the Ark. The total extinction of humanity would be nothing more than a clever ruse for some to move up in the world of the Ark. I mean wow.
And once it’s all over, where does humanity stand? Right at the top baby. We went in a sure-fire loose, and we came out with a thousand times the clout we ever had before. We might not be the most prolific of species, or the strongest, but the new government ended up with more humans in power than any other species. I don’t know how that happened. And we’re heading up up up! Nobody can stop us now, because we’re a part of everybody. Tensions are high of course, lots of us don’t like each other, but what does that matter? Get in the way and you get stepped on, at which point you get the lovely opportunity to go drown in the mud.
This is Union. We had such hopes for it, but it really didn’t go so well.
So much has happened, and all of it seems to lead to the same place. It’s hard to keep track of it all. The war ended, and we were left to put the pieces back together. And yet, someone was trying to pry them apart. It wasn’t the end of the play, it was a whole new act, and I was back playing my new role. Only this time, I was short all the people I needed. Johnny. Sarah. Ian.
Jak.
It doesn’t matter how many ships or men the NUA has, and that I have command over. That’s not nearly as comforting as having a fellow Storm Commando at your back. Nothing is.
*
I remember standing over Megan Rickson as she lay unconscious, one among so many aboard the Nightfall. Of all the surviving of Jak’s Raptor’s, she was the one I knew best. I killed the other one. It wasn’t actually my fault, but there you go. Rickson was extremely lucky to be alive. She had been a part of the fighter assault force that had attempted to take down the Tyrax’s black hole catalyst Annihilation Bomb. She was hit, yet managed to eject. Unconscious for most of the battle. I knew she’d feel guilty about that, irrational though it was. I was hoping, standing there, that what guilt she felt would only be minor. Yeah, well, people hope for a lot of stupid things. I remember standing there until she finally awoke.
I knelt by her, and as she blinked her eyes clear, as she focussed on me, I could see her fear. She tried to swallow, and her hand latched onto mine as I slipped it towards her. “Who …” she began in a small voice, before she faltered. I squeezed.
“Major Blake is still alive.” I said, and she crushed her eyes shut, bit her bottom lip. The fingers in mine were shaking. I told myself that I would have to go and find Pierce Blake and get him aboard the Nightfall. I might have fought across space with Rickson, but I was not a Raptor. “Sarah is gone.” Rickson’s teeth fastened into her flesh. “And so is Jak.”
I reached over and used my thumb to wipe away the blood trickling from her lip. Her head lolled to one side, to stare off in the opposite direction.
*
The war ended and humanity survived, prospered and now thrives. But the war destroyed too many. Many of my friends, not enough of my enemies, and even myself. It can never be allowed to happen again. This is the duty that I have: keeping the peace. I want to say ‘whatever the cost’, but another man once did that. He believed he was protecting humanity. We call him a traitor, and vilify him as such.
If I am to be remembered, do I really want that memory to be one of treachery?