by Tim C Taylor
Easy, dear. Nice and slow. Take some deep breaths. It will become easier, I promise.
Thank you, she said, and meant it wholeheartedly. Saraswati would never let her down. Would never misunderstand her in ways that Arun sometimes did.
He’d always been at the center of the war. The responsibility had scarred him, was close to breaking him, but he’d never known solitude like her long years alone, sent away on diplomatic missions. Now she was the mother to thousands in Nest Hortez. And as of a few minutes ago, to millions more of these innocent beings, these… unbound.
The Unbound. Yes. She would not fail them.
Nor would they disappoint her.
The scent message came up to her seat from the Imperial Mall below – something else that deserved urgent renaming – Tawfiq had been captured. They were taking her up to the temple on the far side of the pool. Others began advancing into the city, understanding that whatever evil was raising humans screams of terror must cease.
“It’s almost done,” she told Arun. “My people have caught Tawfiq. Arun? Say something.”
“Then we’ve won,” he replied, though the sorrow in his voice suggested anything but victory. “And now the consequences begin to play out. Here, in this room. Nhlappo’s arrived.”
— Chapter 51 —
Remus
Halfway up the Victory Monument
“Wait for me,” Remus called up the endless ramp.
A few seconds later, Janna trotted back down into view. She put her hands on her hips and gave him a look of exasperation. “Do I need to find myself a younger lover? Stir your bones, we’re almost at the top.”
Remus ground to a halt and pointed at the rifle slung over Janna’s shoulder. “I get to carry the mini gun on my back, not that toy you’re carrying. I don’t want to turn up breathless.”
Janna shrugged. “Why should we care? So long as your big gun gets a good field of fire, no one cares that the scaly hide of the man who’s carrying it is burnished with hot sweat. No one but me, Remus. Come on, shift your ass.”
Remus wasn’t so sure. The major who had sent them here had been evasive, as if she were acting on her own dubious initiative. And if they wanted big guns up here, they would have deployed GX-cannon. But Janna had already disappeared around the curve in the ramp and Remus ran after her.
Three more circuits of the tower later, and Remus bludgeoned into Janna’s back, sending her staggering forward into the open space at the top of the obelisk. He looked up and saw immediately why Janna had frozen on the threshold of this room.
In some ways, the scene was overstuffed with details, like the aftermath of a lengthy and exceptionally violent party. McEwan was there sitting on a Trog, and that man in his under suit with the sword was Lance Scipio. There were legionaries too from Xin’s traitor faction, although the ones they’d met on the way up acted as if they were on the same side as the Legion. The corpses of Hardits and even a Night Hummer were strewn on the floor among spent rounds and a lot of blood.
But two details burned so brightly that everything else faded into irrelevance.
Mother was here.
So was Romulus.
His brother noticed them first, eyes wide in… In what? Fear? Shame?
Remus searched inside himself for his emotions. It seemed like the right thing to do – to react in some way – but he was completely numb. And that was good. He didn’t want this to be happening. He didn’t want to be a part of whatever this was.
Janna wasn’t like that. Remus was a Marine wearing Wolf scales, but she was a Wolf through and through. She launched herself at Romulus, screaming curses.
She punched him hard, but not on a weak point of his body as she could so easily have done, but on his chest.
His brother winced but stood his ground. He hadn’t tried to block her blow.
Her shoulders shaking, Janna unclenched her fist and held her palm over the point she had struck.
The fingers trembled. Did they recall a happier time when they often enjoyed tracing the furrow down the center of that man’s chest?
She lifted her elbow slightly as if to run her hand over his breast once more, but her palm bent back and would not touch Romulus, his brother’s betrayal pushing her away with an invisible force like repulsing magnets.
Janna’s head dropped, and she stalked off to disappear into the crowded room.
Remus looked away and noticed his mother had been watching him the whole time. Field Marshal Nhlappo she was called now. Her last message had been in 2601, but it had only been in the last few years that Remus had finally come to terms with what everyone assumed was her death.
She had removed her helmet, and he saw that the face of the woman who had raised him had aged, but she looked healthy. He found he couldn’t summon happiness to see Nhlappo. Couldn’t even think of her as his mother – not yet. Romulus had numbed him too much for that.
Nhlappo gave Remus a curt nod and turned her attention back to Romulus.
She was a Marine to her very core, and as such the SA-71 in her hands was such a natural organ of her being that Remus hadn’t noticed it until he caught her hands trembling. It was a weakness that lasted only a second before she brought herself under control, but Remus had seen it and wondered what it meant.
So too had his brother.
“I am the Voice of the Resistance,” said Romulus, starting to panic, his chest heaving. “I told Shepherdess to warn Hortez. I don’t know who that is, but the Hummer said Hortez was our only hope. And I sent Tawfiq’s shuttle through the corrosion barrier to Indiya. Could have ridden it out of here myself but I stayed planetside out of duty. Duty to Earth. That’s the reason you’re here, isn’t it? Indiya worked out how to get through the barrier. Tell her the message she received was from me. Ask Squadron Leader Dock. I bet he guessed it was from me. Please.”
“Indiya has been relieved of her duties,” said Nhlappo. “From what I hear, even if she does recover, it will not be a speedy or easy process.”
“Relieved?”
“Indiya has lost her mind.”
“We will establish these facts,” said McEwan. “You have crimes to answer for, but you will have your chance to do so. You will be treated fairly.”
“Fair? I didn’t ask to have my X-Boat shot from under me. I didn’t choose to be tortured, my mind trapped in a web spun by Tawfiq’s Hummers, and Janna threatened if I didn’t cooperate. Don’t speak to me of fair, McEwan. If you believe the galaxy could ever be fair, then you’re delusional.”
“And you’re a coward,” said one of Xin’s Marines. “You claim to be a secret resistance hero, but you’ll say anything to save your skin. Shall we bind your wrists and send you into the city to face the verdict of the civilians? Eh, Governor? Will they free you from your bonds, or choose a different fate for you?”
“That’s enough,” snapped McEwan. “I will permit no more talk of mob justice.”
“I believe in you,” Nhlappo told Romulus.
“You… you do?”
“I am your mother. You were not born mine. It was Marine Phaedra Tremayne who saved you from the New Order concentration camp, and it was I who raised you and your brother as truly as I raised my own son who died on Tawfiq’s orders. As your mother, my love for you is without condition.”
“Thank you, Mother.”
“I know little about this Voice of Resistance, but I hear the truth in your words.” She swallowed hard. “But others will not. You have already been tried in absentia and found guilty of treason. General McEwan says you will be given a fair hearing to establish new facts. He means what he says, but we both know you will not face justice, Romulus. You can only ever face retribution.”
“No!” Janna ran to him. She moved again to place her hand on his chest, but she was still repulsed by his aura of treachery, and she let it slump to her side.
Romulus pushed her away and stood proudly in front of his mother. “They are right to find me guilty,” he said, his voice resolu
te, prideful. He smiled, a fleeting echo of the fighter ace swagger that had once been his hallmark. He glanced at Remus. But if he had sought forgiveness in his brother’s eyes, he did not find it there.
Nhlappo looked across at Remus.
He shook his head, but he wasn’t sure what he was trying to convey. Romulus was right about one thing, though. The soldiers in this room had not suffered directly from the governor’s betrayal, but even so the hatred for this traitor seethed in the poisonous air. If Romulus stepped outside into the mall, his death would be drawn out, humiliating, and certain.
Romulus cleared his throat and spoke clearly. “Try, I beg you all, to remember the good I did before Tawfiq took me down to hell. And learn the truth of what I have done on Earth in resistance to her plans. But the deaths of thousands of innocents stain my soul beyond any hope of redemption. I await my judgement.”
“They will make an example of you,” said Nhlappo.
“No,” said McEwan. “We won’t.”
She raised her carbine.
“Nhlappo,” McEwan ordered. “Put down your weapon.”
“I love you,” she whispered to Romulus, “and I give you… absolution.”
There was no doubt in Remus’s mind that his mother would fire, but when she did – two rounds through Romulus’s heart – it felt as if the darts had pierced his own. His legs collapsed beneath him and he slumped to the floor at the same time as his brother.
“No!” Janna screamed and rushed forward to catch Romulus as he fell.
The anguish in her eyes unlocked Remus’s limbs and he too came forward.
He wasn’t the only one to spring to life. A Wolf Marine on the far side of the room roared in anger, which attracted the Trogs to form a protective arc around her. “There will be no more killing today,” she shouted. “Except one. And it ends with her. The wars are over.”
As Mother looked on as lifeless as a cold statue, Remus went to his brother.
Janna was kneeling, Romulus’s head in her lap, caressing his head. Remus straightened his brother’s legs and arms so he looked a little less crumpled.
It was all he knew to do.
— Chapter 52 —
Springer
Victory Monument
The scene behind her was so paralyzingly sad that she turned her back on it. Couldn’t deal with it now. She owed it to everyone who had fallen to end this properly. Only then could she stop and take in all that had happened. She didn’t have time to feel.
She sensed Arun and Dane’s presence behind her and could smell their absolute support.
Arun understood how she felt.
And now that the fate of planets depended on the decisions she made, she in her turn finally understood the man she loved, and all he had borne over the grinding years of the war.
Springer encouraged the sorrow to sink beneath the surface. Anger welled up in its place. Hot, energizing, and urgent.
Aelingir was linked into Tawfiq’s broadcast equipment, and was relaying to Kreippil and Marchewka in space. When Aelingir had punched through the corrosion barrier, she had only a dozen multi-use dropships to command. Springer had thought all that effort to get a corrosion-resistant craft up from Earth had been to little avail. But Aelingir’s paltry strength was because the Legion fleet had concentrated all their efforts in upgrading their space-to-ground missiles to fire through the corrosion barrier.
Janissary military installations around the world had been hit. The defenders sent reeling and then neutralized by her Unbound rising from hidden galleries deep below, an operation that had been largely peaceful.
The New Order Janissaries had not formally surrendered, but they were offering cooperation for now. So when Aelingir said the transmission relays were in place for Springer to speak to the world, it was the Janissaries who made it possible. Her words and scent would be picked up by Hardit-manufactured equipment and broadcast around the world and into near space using more Hardit equipment.
The camera on the table before her emitted a scent to indicate it was recording.
Behind her, someone broke into sobs. She shut off the sound from her mind and spoke.
“There has been enough killing. There will be no murder of prisoners. There will not be lynchings on the streets. Collaborators will be brought to justice. Legion justice not mob justice. There is only one who deserves summary retribution. Let her death be an end to it.”
She unclipped the lens from the bank of equipment and pointed it out through the view port.
The monitor screen wrapped around the lens showed the image change, the focus shifted first to the reflecting pool and then a little farther on, past white stone steps to the Supreme Commander of the New Order who struggled in the cruel grip of those she had created to serve her, and who now lifted her up for all the worlds to see in front of her own statue.
Maybe the camera sensed Springer’s intention. Whatever was driving it, the image zoomed in close on Tawfiq’s face, capturing the blind upper eye and the scarred snout trembling with fear.
“Rip her apart.”
Despite the dwindling anger keeping her going, Springer couldn’t feel satisfaction at Tawfiq’s demise; she was too drained to celebrate. Nor did she feel disgust at the sickening spectacle as the Unbound grabbed her limbs and tail. The latter came away quickly, but her legs took several minutes before the many strong hands could finally detach them from her hips.
The deed was crude. It was savage. And it was the opposite of the divinity Tawfiq had been expecting.
Then the Unbound started to smash up Tawfiq’s statue.
“Leave the seat untouched,” she ordered.
When she was satisfied they had understood and were obeying, Springer slotted the lens back into its original place and returned to her stone seat.
“People of Earth, hear me. We are the descendants of the slaves whom you sold to save your skins. I personify what became of those Earth children. Altered. Manipulated. Burned, and yet forged anew. Now the children have returned, and we are not impressed. The Earth shall be home for all humans in the widest possible meaning of the term. We have fought for centuries to win our liberty from terrible slavery, and we are not going to swap that for a new servitude to the old humanity.”
She paused. The moment was hers to claim, but what she was about to say could not be unsaid.
Springer fought the urge to turn around on camera and ask Arun his advice.
That man of yours sends a message via his crude AI, said Saraswati. He says to keep going. Speak whatever’s in your heart and he will back you. He’s right, of course, but it means nothing. Even a broken McEwan will be right twice a day.
She smiled at Saraswati’s little joke. “Let the killings end with the death of Tawfiq Woomer-Calix. I declare the Liberation of Earth, the full establishment of the Human Autonomous Region, and the end of the system known as the Cull. The wars are over. Any who wish to continue them will answer to me, Phaedra Springer Tremayne, Marine, proud member of Nest Hortez, deputy ambassador of the Human Legion, and protector of the Unbound.”
She rose and unsnapped the camera again, redirecting it at the bloody scene on the far side of the reflecting pool where Tawfiq’s statue had already been tipped from its seat and had smashed into a dozen pieces.
“I am told a great human leader once sat there on that stone chair. We will replace him, and you, the people of Earth, will choose who will sit there.”
She played the camera over the mall, along those Unbound who had remained there, and over to the detachment of Legion Marines who included six-limbed Jotuns and Hardits. Then she panned across the scene of destruction behind her in the obelisk, dipping around Janna’s back to keep Romulus from view but lingering on the Trog dragoons and their human Nest siblings. “Trogs, Jotuns, Legion Hardits, my loyal Unbound, and many more people have fought against the White Knight and New Order tyrannies. Night Hummers too have made this possible and we have sworn to provide them with sanctuary, and they shall have
it here in the Solar System on the airless rock of Ceres. I hear reports of Sangurians setting up a burrow in Australia. Earth is no longer only for you. You must learn to share. That is the price I demand in recompense for selling my ancestors as slaves. It is not negotiable.”
She replaced the camera one last time and glared into its lens.
“But there are benefits to sharing this system with new friends, advisers, and allies. No more will Earth beg its masters for scraps of airless rock on which to establish worthless colonies. No more will Earth’s people do the hard work of early terraforming only to hand over colony planets to the White Knights. Humans of Earth, we give you the stars.”
She shut off the equipment and slumped into Tawfiq’s stone chair, utterly spent.
— Chapter 53 —
Arun McEwan
The Monument
Nhlappo was staring blankly at her son’s body, the weapon that had ended him still in her hand.
It was too much.
Arun moved closer to Springer, his heart still pounding with horror, disbelief, and admiration
He remembered Sergeant Gupta’s advice. When everything had turned to drent and little made sense, trust in the things that will never let you down. And Arun trusted in his love for this woman who’d snuck into his life when they were still novices, and now sat alone in that cold stone chair, her head bowed and shoulders trembling.
Even so, though he hated the poisonous taste of the words escaping his lips he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “Springer, what have you done?”
—— PART VIII ——
THE JUDGEMENT
OF
NHLAPPO
— Chapter 54 —
Springer
Temporary Legion HQ
Washington, D.C.
“I need him alive,” said Greyhart, “but he cannot remain here on Earth with you.”
