by Tim C Taylor
No, I’m sure he doesn’t. But Arun and Barney have lived inside each other for so many centuries they’re practically a single personality, whereas… Oh, I get it. You’re distracting me.
Now she gets it. Don’t rule yourself out of the picture, my girl. The last time you decided Xin was a rival, you picked up your ball and walked away for two hundred years. Now stop acting like a moody teenager and make people respect you.
Springer dismissed Saraswati from the upper reaches of her mind and plugged herself back into the situation. Arun had wheeled himself over to the Jotuns who were talking animatedly amongst themselves. She hurried across to join them.
“Have you heard of teleportation tech?” Arun was asking Aelingir. “Even in rumor?”
“No. Never. Instantaneous movement – the implications are thunderous.”
“But did we move?” queried Ensign Skalzan. “Perhaps information was transmitted – as with any FTL communication – and we were recreated at our destination.”
“Unlikely,” said Aelingir. “We did not appear to emerge inside any kind of fabricator machine.”
“This compartment is an empty box,” said Springer, “with no indication of its purpose. It resembles a room in a virtual environment that has yet to be dressed with decoration, function or texture.”
“Are you saying you think we’re experiencing a guided hallucination?” said Arun. “Or that we’ve been virtualized?”
“I’m saying we don’t know drent about what’s just happened. Why don’t we take what we’re told as a working version of the truth for now?”
“Agreed,” said Arun. “But I need to know if you’ve a problem, Aelingir. Divided souls. Undead. That’s not what I want to hear in my senior command officer.”
The Jotun lifted her lips on her wicked fangs. “It is a theoretical worry,” she said. “But I don’t think it applies here. I am certain that if our bodies were still on the Hotchelpis then they perished in the inevitable crash. We are information, General McEwan. The essence of who we are — our souls if you like — is pure information — the cells of our bodies are but ephemeral particles. Whether we are virtualized, copied into recreated bodies, or the matter of our flesh has indeed been what you call teleported, then it makes no difference. I recognize my own soul. It is intact. I am me.”
“Good to hear it. If only all theological arguments were so quickly resolved.”
“General Aelingir,” said Springer. “I apologize for pushing you to adopt this ruse.”
“Apology accepted, Lissa.” The Jotun rose to her full height and gave a low growl — just a reminder of how easily the muscular alien could rip her to shreds in moments. “Don’t fail us again. It is fortunate for all our sakes that I have established such an effective rapport with your species. I could perceive the instant antipathy between you and former Colonel Lee. This is potentially very dangerous and entirely unprofessional. It’s not even as if you’ve ever met the individual before, is it?”
“No, General,” said Springer with head bowed. “I have never met Lee Xin.” She turned to Arun. “Sorry, sir. It won’t happen again.”
He gave her a long, searching look — as if he wasn’t himself guilty of being knocked wildly off course by the reappearance of that woman – but gave her a nod and a brisk smile.
“Okay, listen up, people,” he said. “Let’s not beat ourselves up for reacting when the universe suddenly changes all the rules. But now we need to focus. I need to feed the battle computer that your people, Aelingir, planted inside my head. It hungers for data. So far, all it has is speculation. Meanwhile, our people in the European Pocket are dying and Tawfiq Woomer-Calix isn’t. General Aelingir, kindly lead us out to meet our rescuers.”
The party left, Arun wheeling himself behind the Jotuns. He made no protest when Springer grabbed the handles behind his chair and began pushing him.
That’s better, said Saraswati. That’s using your brains. So long as you’re holding onto his chair, you can’t punch that treacherous bitch. Wait for your moment.
Oh, I will. I should have killed her when I had the chance at the Second Battle of Khallini. I won’t make that mistake again.
— Chapter 03 —
Arun McEwan
Aboard unknown ship
Turned out that Xin wasn’t waiting outside in the passageway. They were courteously escorted under armed guard to a conference room with chairs and a large oval table, none of which were bolted to the deck. Along the way he seized every opportunity to peer inside compartments, storage canisters and into every status viewscreen. He ran his hand over the bulkheads and felt the strange vibrations pulse through the ship, felt them through the wheels of his chair too. This wasn’t the first time he’d been on a ship that hummed that way.
It had been his first combat tour, or so he’d thought. Aboard the Human Marine Corps troopship Beowulf, supposedly en route to the frontier war with the Muryani – although in reality under the control of rebels in the imperial civil war – his battalion had been woken unexpectedly in deep space. Beowulf and sister ship Themistocles had fought with and disabled an unidentified vessel. Arun’s Indigo Squad was tasked with boarding and seizing the mysterious ship.
That the ship was there at all was far beyond strange. Starships – hell, even stars and planets – were infinitesimally small motes in the vastness of the black. Ships never chanced across each other in interstellar space.
And when they captured this ship and renamed it Bonaventure, as if doing so would make it theirs, the mysteries began to pile up.
Most mysterious of all was the human crew who called themselves Amilx. Arun had been a kid, high on adventure, but even he could tell that the Amilxi crew hadn’t wanted to be there at all, hadn’t wanted to fight. To them, this encounter was a complete FUBAR disaster.
And then one of the wounded crewmen had called him General McEwan.
They’d all laughed at the time. Arun a general? Ridiculous. The Human Marine Corps was officered exclusively by aliens, Jotuns in the case of Arun’s regiment. The idea of a human officer was so ludicrous it wasn’t even considered subversive to be joking about this man who’d called Arun a general.
And now Arun had been a general for most of his life.
Later, after Arun raised the Human Legion from the ashes of his Marine Corps battalion, another peculiarity of this ‘Amilx’ began to look less like a coincidence and more like an invitation, or possibly a warning.
AMILX. Arun McEwan. Indiya. Lee Xin.
He’d put that out of his mind when Xin had deserted him. But now they were back together again, and still Springer had no part in that name. What did it mean? Destiny was catching up with them all, and he felt sure he would soon learn the truth.
But to practical matters: was he aboard another Amilxi vessel?
The ship looked to him like it had started life as a Purify-class destroyer, one of the Littorane-designed backbones of the Legion Navy. But if he was right, then it was something very different now. For a violently warlike species, Littoranes had a strange obsession with harmony, and their design aesthetic reflected this with smooth lines that married form and function and made it look effortless – no mean feat in the endless struggle for real estate inside a warship. By contrast, this ship looked as if it had been gutted down to bare metal and then rebuilt and rebuilt again with random equipment taken from a score of different races.
And ladders. He’d discovered a lot of ladders.
Arun sometimes liked to joke bitterly that he was better off without his legs because he lived most of his life on starships where they were an unnecessary burden. But Legion starships spent 99.9% of their time in zero-g, and when they weren’t you had better be inside an acceleration station or you would be crushed to death.
Now he found himself hitching a ride on Springer’s back, as she traveled between decks, and trying not to bang his head on hatchways. Aelingir had offered to carry him in her middle limbs, but something about that seemed undignif
ied, so she settled for carrying his wheelchair between decks.
But now he was here, staring across a table at Xin, with Grace, Springer, and the Jotuns waiting for him to begin.
“Where are we?” he opened.
“Aboard the FRS New Frontier,” Xin answered. “We’re currently running dark in orbit around Venus. Now it’s your turn to explain something. I want to understand why Indiya ran away to hide around Mars leaving a Legion army behind on Earth for Tawfiq to play with.”
Before he could reply, Springer asked, “Did you use time travel to reach us?”
Xin looked startled. Then angry. “Who is this Wolf woman?” she snapped at Arun.
“Lissa is my aide,” he replied.
Xin nodded and rolled her eyes as she looked Springer over. “Figures. She’s insolent, but you always did like that. Is Janna still alive? She was your first Wolf girlfriend as I recall.”
Arun leaned over to put a reassuring hand on Springer’s thigh. He felt her muscles lose a little of their drawstring tension. “Last I heard,” he replied, “Janna was serving with the 7th Armored Claw, part of the defense of the Calais bastion and being pounded into dust by New Order theater artillery.” He paused, wondering what had prompted him to lie when the truth was that, as far as he knew, Janna was on Holy Retribution, about the safest location in the Solar System. “She’s probably dead now. Every second we waste time, that is more likely to be the case.” Arun lifted his hands in an entreaty. “Please. Lissa is an integral part of my command team. My personal relationship with her is irrelevant to the war and none of your damned business. Now answer the frakking question.”
“Yes, we have.”
And there it was. Time travel. Ever since the Bonaventure he’d believed deep down that the mysteries hinted at by that ship would one day catch up with him. And now that they had, it was almost an anti-climax. He noticed that neither Springer nor the Jotuns looked surprised by Xin’s answer.
“Then you are Amilx?” he asked.
Xin looked thoughtful. “That remains to be seen. My working theory – we are on the path to becoming the Amilx.”
“What about General McEwan?” asked Springer. “Does he become part of this Amilx? The usual interpretation of the name as an acronym suggests that he will.”
Xin glared. “That’s none of your business.”
“This is no time to be playing games,” Arun shot back.
Xin turned fury on Arun, her eyes burning like the nuclear fire her strike armies had unleashed on the imperial capital. “I have never played games! It was me who kept your traveling circus you called the Human Legion on the road. It was me who came back here to rescue your sorry ass, and me who is about to save the Legion yet again.”
“With the teleport?” asked Aelingir. “Can you teleport us back to our Legion ships?”
“Maybe,” said Xin. “Maybe not.”
“What kind of an answer is that?” said Arun. “If you can, then you are also capable of teleporting a strike team directly into the vital areas of any Legion ship. We’d be helpless. Were you hoping we wouldn’t think that through?”
“The President means that we do not know,” said Grace. “There’s only been a single case where we’ve teleported onto another ship, and that was to rescue you from your shuttle. But your craft was crude, and we waited until your hull was practically unshielded before I ported on board.”
“You…” Arun felt his eyes bulge. “You were a test subject?”
Grace raised a teasing eyebrow, exactly as her mother used to. “It worked, didn’t it? Sure it was a risk, but it was the only way to get you out alive.”
Arun rounded on the Xin. “You used our own daughter as a frakking test subject? She could have been atomized. What were you thinking of?”
It was Xin’s turn to raise a teasing eyebrow in a perfect mirror of her daughter. “I was thinking of you, actually, Twinkle Eyes. Grace has inherited your penchant for insanity that you choose to call risk-taking. She also has your capacity for taking outrageous gambles and then seeing them come off successfully – usually. I suggest you learn to accept her as she is, just as I did… with both of you.”
Springer bristled.
“Oh, keep your scales on, Wolf girl. Grown-ups are talking now.” Xin rose smoothly to her feet. “Calm down everyone and shut the frakk up.” She winked at Arun. “Especially you. Let me explain everything my way.”
— Chapter 04 —
President Lee
Aboard FRS New Frontier
Xin paced, trying to calm down but finding herself relishing the look on Arun’s face. “Yes,” she told him as she walked. “It’s artificial gravity. And, no, I don’t feel like sharing that technology today.”
So many strong feelings were swirling within her that they were blending into a fiery mix that was overwhelming her capacity to distinguish between them. She was hopeful, furious, deliriously happy to see Arun, and barely able to stop herself from ordering the carbine-armed Marines waiting behind her to open fire and give him the execution he thoroughly deserved.
Only one emotion rang clear as a bell. This Wolf woman, Lissa – Xin loathed her on sight. In fact, the feeling was so strong that she halted and looked within herself to try to understand why.
It wasn’t jealousy of his current lover; Xin was absolutely sure of that. Xin hadn’t expected or wanted Arun to remain celibate. It had seemed impossible, after all, that either would ever see the other. In fact, in moments of quiet reflection, she had prayed that Arun and Indiya had found comfort, solace, even a little happiness in each other. Neither was emotionally strong enough on their own, and she knew only too well that it was hellishly difficult to develop meaningful friendships with other people when you were a historical figure in command of millions of souls. In her entire life, she had only ever made a single friend that meant a damn, and he was sitting on the other side of her table.
So why did Lissa make her feel like a cat with its fur on end?
That the two were lovers was obvious from the moment she’d seen them, but how had they forged a connection so deep that their lives seemed to have fused? For two people to embed in each other so deeply took years, and Arun simply hadn’t had long enough.
Lissa didn’t make sense, and Xin didn’t trust people she didn’t understand.
She noticed that Arun had been signaling for his team to keep silent and wait for her to collect her thoughts. He hadn’t forgotten how she operated.
He looked shriveled. Pain had etched lines across his face. He looked like a hideous statue transfigured in perpetual agony. She longed to rest her hand on his brow and sooth away Arun’s hurt… and to don an armored gauntlet and smash his face to pulp for forcing her to leave him.
Again! Xin’s gaze found itself resting on Lissa. Again, Xin wrenched it away to study Arun and his senior Jotun officer.
There was a little more white in Aelingir’s fur, and a firmer set to her jaw. The way she kept her mid-arms out broadcast her distrust of Xin to anyone with the slightest understanding of Jotuns.
Aelingir’s support, or at least neutrality, could prove essential to Xin’s plans, so she took pains to show neither weakness nor disrespect toward the Jotun general. She winced. What had she been thinking of when she insulted the general earlier?
Show no weakness, she told herself. Seize the moment with all six limbs. That’s what they taught us.
She stopped pacing and leaned over the table at Arun. “We left behind the smoldering battlefields of the imperial homeworld,” she said. “And we left you, Arun, still pledging fealty to the White Knight Emperor like a feudal vassal lord paying homage to their monarch in return for granting the power of life, death, and taxation over land and subjects.”
“Your opinion is already known to me,” Aelingir told her. “The wounds you inflicted still fester within the spirits of many of my warriors.”
Xin gave Aelingir a deep bow. “My apologies, General. What I had meant to say was this – when we
had the Emperor at our feet, we disagreed on policy, but not on our aims. When I left with my followers, we still sought freedom for our races, never doubting that you were fighting for the same end. But for us that freedom had to come through strength, not compromise and negotiation.
“We traveled beyond the frontier. Outside of the Trans-Species Union we would establish a haven that would become a staging post, a test bed, a place of power and renewal from which we would grow until we would return and free all races from their bondage. Far Reach, we named this place. The best minds and ideas would hothouse in a cycle of innovation that would suck in the best from all around. No longer would we suffer the stultifying conservatism of the White Knights, nor the limits of the Hardits’ xenophobia, although we count Hardits amongst our number. The Human Legion became a rallying cry to scores of suppressed peoples. A symbol of hope and rebellion. It still is, Arun, but Far Reach will become its focal point. For the Legion’s heart to beat over the centuries, it requires a home, a center. It can’t be the ruins of Detroit on Tranquility-4, or this shattered Earth where our human ancestors first walked. It will be Far Reach.”
“That’s a pile of drent and we all know it,” said Lissa. “In the first place, we already have Khallini, and if you’re looking for symbolism, Khallini is where the Legion chose to stand and fight as an alliance of many races against heavy odds, while this Far Reach is a drentball outcast planet that you ran away to.”
“It is symbolic to us,” warned Xin.
“And secondly, you can’t have made it to this planet anyway. You haven’t had enough time to do all this. The distances are too vast.”
“How did you get here?” Arun asked.
“And who helped you?” added Aelingir. “The Night Hummers?”
Xin had to stifle a laugh because the thought of the Hummers made the general’s fur tremble with anxiety. Arun probably still considered Jotuns to be inscrutable aliens; she could read them like a book. “I don’t trust the Hummers either,” she told Aelingir. “We were aided by a third party, a faction I believe to be deadly rivals to the Hummers.”
