Ruined Terra (Book 11 of The Empire of Bones Saga)

by Terry Mixon

  Sean gestured for her to take a seat. “We may not have real-time data about what’s happening between us and the Imperial Palace, but we did get a pretty good map compiled while the network was up, so it’s not a total loss.”

  Kelsey took the offered seat and used her implants to link up with the computer in front of her. She had to admit there was a good bit of data about the terrain between them and the Imperial Palace.

  They’d landed northeast of a dead megacity once known as Frankfort. It was still intact, though ruined and decayed. The Imperial Palace was built over a previously existing city once known as Albany.

  Legend said that the corruption of the ruling elite in that place before the Imperial Period was so great that the people chose to raze it utterly, leaving no two stones standing together. That was the harsh judgment of history, indeed.

  If they were to go in a straight line, the journey would be somewhat more than a thousand kilometers. Unfortunately, there were several abandoned megacities between them and their destination.

  Those would be dangerous and time-consuming to deal with, so it would be best if they could simply avoid them. Since they’d be moving on foot, that was going to add at least five hundred kilometers to the trip. Probably more.

  “Do we have any good news?” Kelsey asked somewhat plaintively. “Is anything going our way?”

  Elise put her hands on Kelsey’s shoulders and started massaging the stiff muscles of her neck. “Relax. This will make it harder, but we’ll manage. Just breathe.”

  “You’re usually the optimistic one,” Sean said, leaning over the table directly in front of her. “Look at the upside. We’re still alive and able to get to where we need to be. Don’t let the scale of the march get to you. We’ve got to set small goals that add up to making it to the Imperial Palace. We’ve made it hundreds of parsecs. What’s a few thousand kilometers more?”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Kelsey said, slumping a little. “We’ve traveled across the freaking Old Empire to get to Terra, and now we’re only fifteen hundred kilometers from the Imperial Palace. That has to count for something.”

  “On the bright side,” Carl said, “you’ve been telling me I need to get more exercise. That’s positive, right?”

  “You think this sounds like an adventure?” she shot back. “I’ll bet that none of us has marched a hundred kilometers, except for the marines. This is going to be really, really difficult in ways that we can’t possibly begin to imagine. Mark my words.”

  “You’re still not looking at the bright side,” Carl said with a smile. “Pretty much everything that could go wrong, has. Everything should be easier going forward, right? What else could happen?”

  The tent flap pulled back, and Talbot stuck his head in. “Kelsey, we’ve got a problem.”

  Kelsey wanted to scream but settled for shooting Carl a hot glare. “This is your fault. How could you have even said that?”

  Without waiting for a response to her rhetorical question, she sighed, got to her feet, and walked over to her husband. “Show me.”

  2

  Talbot led his wife out of the tent and into the stygian darkness that was night on Terra. His ocular augmentation could help with that, but Terra was dark at night, especially when the moon was down.

  Major Adrian Scala was standing just a few meters away waiting for them. That officer gestured toward where the pinnaces sat. “The crash had more consequences than we thought, Colonel,” Scala said to Kelsey, his lips tight. “The impact point where Pinnace Two struck Pinnace One was right where we had our weapons stored. Frankly, I’m astonished the munitions didn’t blow up.”

  That wasn’t good news, but it still made Talbot’s lips twitch hearing the other man use Kelsey’s marine rank. Anyone less like a field-grade marine officer would be hard to imagine.

  His wife didn’t see his reaction because she was busy rubbing her face furiously with both hands. “How much of a loss are we talking about here?”

  “Just about total,” Scala said tiredly. “We planned for the possibility of serious fighting, so we brought along a lot of gear. Most of that is gone. The marines have their sidearms and a few rifles, but only limited ammunition for either. The weapons and munitions for their armor are intact, but it won’t do us much good long term. The armor won’t have the power to get us very far.”

  “I already figured that out. How far will we be able to move the armor?”

  “I’d expect we’ve probably got a couple of days of juice, and we might reach a hundred kilometers before they’re done,” Talbot said. “If we have to transport other gear, that’s going to cut the range some.”

  “That’s worse than I’d feared,” Kelsey said after staring off into the darkness for a few moments. “We’re going to have to carry what supplies we can away from here and stash them somewhere. It’s possible the AI will see something down here that it doesn’t like and nuke this area from orbit. Well, not using a nuke, but a rod from god is pretty much the same thing when you’re on the receiving end.”

  Talbot had to agree that orbital kinetic bombardment would ruin their day.

  “We’ll salvage what we can,” he said. “Frankly, I’m not certain that we’re going to need to make more than one trip. We’ll have to carry the majority of our supplies with us on our backs to the Imperial Palace, so we’ll need to lean heavily toward food and other items that will get us to where we’re going.

  “One positive is that we’ll be able to hunt along the way. This being Terra, almost everything that we run into should be edible. We’ll be careful and test, just to be sure, particularly when it comes to plants. The animals should be good to eat, though, and we’ve got enough small arms to provide for food as we move.”

  He turned to face Kelsey. “I’m not going to lie. This is going to be hard. We’ll be traveling light, and that means only taking what we absolutely have to. If you’ve never been on a long march—which I’m wagering almost no one outside the regular marines have—you’ll have to be exceptionally picky about what you bring. A couple of extra ounces may not seem like a lot, until you have to pack it for fifteen kilometers. Or a hundred and fifty kilometers. Or ten times that.”

  “I second that,” Scala said with a nod. “This is going to be particularly difficult for the scientists. They have no muscle for this, but they’re going to have to come with us anyway, bringing whatever equipment they absolutely must have.

  “Everyone is going to have to pull their share of the load. You’re going to get a lot of complaints, and there’s going to be plenty of cranky people.”

  “Wonderful,” Kelsey said as she stared up into the sky. “Getting to Terra was supposed to solve most of our problems, not create a whole new set of them. Why is it that nothing goes as planned? Why can’t something be easy? Did I offend the gods in some way?”

  Talbot chuckled and put his hand on his wife’s shoulder, pulling her into a hug. “You’re doing everything right, Kelsey. That crash was not your fault. Circumstances sometimes conspire to put us in a bad place, but you’ve proven time and again that you can get us back out.

  “This time is just going to be a little more… intense. Accept that the march isn’t going to go as planned and that we’re going to run into problems along the way. Probably some serious ones. At least we have the ability to scout all the way to the Imperial Palace with the drone network that the admiral seeded. That’s a plus.”

  Kelsey made a show of rubbing her eyes. “Yeah, about that… It turns out that the System Lord sent the destruct signal into the drone network. It’s gone. All we have is the data we collected before that. We won’t be getting any real-time updates unless we bring drones of our own. Yet one more thing to haul along.”

  That was going to complicate matters, Talbot admitted. Still, his troops were used to carrying their required gear, and now that he was a Marine Raider, he could haul a lot more than he had before. He wasn’t sure how that was going to work out over a long march, but thi
s was going to be an interesting experience.

  “Cheer up,” he finally said. “We’ve overcome worse, and we’ll beat this too. If we run into somebody along the way, we’ll have enough weapons to take care of ourselves. Don’t let this overwhelm you. Just stand up straight and take care of the problems as they happen. Improvise and overcome.”

  He checked his internal chronometer. They had roughly six hours until dawn.

  “Adrian and I will continue going through the equipment we can salvage and get things sorted out. The marines will be beat by the time we’re done, so we’re going to have to catch a little sleep before we head out. Plan on us being ready by noon.

  “You need to get some sleep, too. Once we start moving, we won’t stop for more than eating and sleeping until we reach the Imperial Palace.”

  No matter how long that took.

  Julia—she was still struggling to remember to use that name for herself—sat in a dark tent next to Olivia West and watched Scott Roche as he slept on the cot the marines had set up for him.

  She’d stunned him before all the madness, so that he couldn’t take her place on the mission to fool the AI about their escape from orbit down to Terra. He was going to be supremely pissed about that when he finally woke up.

  “I met your version of me,” she said softly to the other woman. “Just for a little bit after we got down on the surface. After we crashed. She’s… intimidating.”

  “You don’t need to be frightened of her,” Olivia said, shaking her head slightly. “Seriously, she’s you. Parts of her story are different, but as a person, she’s you.”

  It didn’t feel that way to Julia. Here in a universe that wasn’t hers, she felt like an outsider, even after she’d made the jump across dimensions. And now she’d met this universe’s version of herself, and she was like one of those damned action vid heroes.

  The woman had singlehandedly crash-landed a pinnace with no engines. There was no way that she could have done the same. No, even if she’d known how to pilot one, she’d have frozen up or screwed up and they’d all have died. What did this woman do? Pull off a damned miracle.

  “I know,” she finally said. “That still doesn’t make it any easier. She’s always so confident, so in command of the situation. We’d barely gotten the hatch open and she was shouting orders, getting people doing things that needed to be done.

  “It was shocking. She’s a lot more assertive than I am. I’m a church mouse by comparison. Give me something to research, and I’m happy. Put me in charge of people in a crisis? Not so much. I understand that I’m the crown princess of the New Terran Empire, but that doesn’t mean I’m well suited for something like that.”

  Olivia chuckled and reached out to squeeze her arm. “Don’t mistake Kelsey for something she’s not, Julia. What you’re seeing is a couple of years’ worth of hard experience. Under the same stimuli, given the same time to grow into the role, you’d do the same.

  “In fact, I think you’ve already started. Would you have had the courage to stand up to Commander Roche otherwise? I mean, you did stun him, after all.”

  Julia sighed. “He’s going to be so mad about that. And you’re probably right. Before all of this happened, I’d have deferred to everything he said. But if I’d let him go on this mission, I’m sure that both he and Mertz would be dead now.”

  She held up a hand to forestall any defensive response. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that Mertz is very capable. He just needed a little extra help to make his plan work. I’m just not convinced that Scott would’ve been able to provide that, no offense to him.”

  “Provide what?” Scott said as he reached up to rub his face. “Holy hell, my head is killing me.” He blinked up at her for a moment, and then his eyes widened. “Did you stun me?”

  Julia nodded. “I did, and I’m sorry. Doctor Stone said you’re going to be fine.”

  “With the way my head is pounding, I’m not certain that I agree.”

  With an obvious effort of will, Scott levered himself up to a seated position and then groaned. “My head feels like it’s about to fall off. Why the hell did you do that, Highness?”

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Because you weren’t the right person for the mission, and you wouldn’t let me do what had to be done. I just short-circuited the argument. It’s all over now.”

  Olivia stood and headed for the tent flap. “On that note, I should probably go check in with Sean. Why don’t you two work out your issues in the privacy of your own tent, and I’ll catch you later? Good to see you up, Commander Roche.”

  With that, Julia’s new friend strode out of the tent and left them alone.

  “I’m sorry, Scott,” Julia said softly. “I really hate that I’m responsible for your pain, but it was necessary. If you’d gone, both Mertz and you would be dead right now. I’ll give you all the details about what happened later, but his plan went sideways and only my augmentation allowed us to escape.”

  Her friend took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay. I’ll accept that. I’ll even do you the personal favor of not pressing charges. After all, it would look really bad for a Fleet officer to bring assault charges against the heir to the Imperial Throne.”

  She smiled. “That would be awkward. Seriously, Scott, I didn’t want you to die.”

  He looked at her face for a few moments and then reached out and took her hand in his. “Highness, it’s my job to die if it means that you get to live. That’s just the way it is. You’re more important than I am.”

  “Bullshit!” she spat out, her anger suddenly blazing hot. “I’m not more important than anyone.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to politely disagree.”

  The two of them stared at each other for a few seconds before she looked away, her rage suddenly gone, making her feel empty. “I met the other version of me. She’s kind of scary.”

  “Scary in what way?” Scott asked as he leaned forward. “Did she threaten you?”

  Julia smiled at his suddenly aggressive posture. “No. She couldn’t have been nicer. In fact, even after crashing the pinnace, I’d say that she was downright chipper.”

  Scott opened his mouth to say something and then closed it again before narrowing his eyes. “She crashed a pinnace. Would that happen to have been the same pinnace that you were on?”

  “Yeah. Mertz is being treated for a concussion, but he survived. In fact, everybody survived. Well, other than the second pinnace, that is. I’m afraid she crashed hers into the other one and now we’re basically going to have to walk to the Imperial Palace.”

  Scott stared at her for a moment and then laughed.

  “It’s not funny,” Julia said with a scowl. “I didn’t exactly bring hiking boots.”

  Her friend laughed even harder. “Oh, Highness, I know that I’m going to pay for this, but I can’t wait to see you hiking. How far are we talking about?”

  She shrugged slightly. “A thousand kilometers? Maybe more. I don’t really know.”

  That shut him up. He sighed as he put his head back down into his hands.

  “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said after a minute. “Nothing we do is ever easy. Why should this situation be any different?”

  Julia stood and held out a hand to him. “Come on. Let’s go get Doctor Stone to give you a look. I’ll bet she can give you a shot to make that headache go away. Then we can get some food into you, while I explain why you need to call me Julia from now on. After that, we can try to get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a long day.”

  3

  Jared woke to a light touch on his shoulder and found Lily Stone hovering over him. That brought back the memory of the mad escape from orbit and the destruction of his most recent command, the rechristened Rebel Empire destroyer they’d called Athena.

  That was two ships with the same name that he’d lost. He certainly hoped they weren’t coming out of his pay.

  He’d woken sometime after Kelsey had cra
shed her pinnace and been briefed about their current status, over Lily’s grumbling objections, so he wasn’t as hyper this time.

  Jared sat up, swung his legs over the side of the cot, and rubbed his face. “What time is it?”

  “Roughly an hour before dawn,” the doctor said, brandishing a small penlight. “I need to do one final check of your eyes, and then I’ll cut you loose. This is probably going to hurt a bit.”

  She flashed the light into one of his eyes and then flicked it away. She did that several times on each side to see how his pupils reacted. The light hurt, but not as much as he’d expected.

  “I’d rather be up and about, but I do still have some pain,” he said. “Is that going to be a problem?”

  “Your head is probably going to ache for a few days. I’ve taken care of the worst of your symptoms, but without a full regen, you’re still going to be dealing with a few aftereffects.

  “You’re cleared for light duty, including hiking. No heavy loads until I say so. Keep in mind that you’re the commanding officer and can delegate. I expect you to do so as much as possible.”

  “Yes, Doctor,” he said with a smile. “As if Elise would let me overexert myself.”

  He looked over at the cot his wife had been using earlier. It was empty. “Where did she get off to?”

  “I sent her to get something to eat while I did the final checks. We’ll need to do the same, as I understand that we’re all going to be busy today. Kelsey issued orders that we’re moving out by noon. I suspect we’d be leaving after breakfast if the marines didn’t need some rest.”

  That made sense. If the marines had been recovering what they could from the crashed pinnaces all night, they wouldn’t be in shape to march come dawn. He was certain that they could do it, if need be, but noon was good enough.