Victory on Terra

by Terry Mixon

  “Are you feeling okay?” Mertz asked, his tone concerned.

  It shamed her a little when she found herself again questioning his sincerity, even though she knew better. This version of Jared Mertz wasn’t the Bastard from her universe, but she still couldn’t get past how much he looked and sounded like the man who’d killed her father.

  That made perfect sense, since the two were identical in a physical sense. She’d seen how willing this version of Jared Mertz was to make sacrifices for his people, how much the loss of every single one of them tore at his soul.

  She knew he wasn’t a monster, but that didn’t make it any easier for her to treat him differently. The habits of a lifetime were hard to overcome in just a few months. She was trying, but she wasn’t certain that she’d ever fully succeed.

  “I’m fine,” she said curtly. “Now stop wasting time. We don’t know how much of it we have left.”

  Without allowing time for him to respond, she took off down the tunnel at a slow jog. That would allow her time to become accustomed to her augmentation again. Her balance felt odd, and she knew that it would adjust itself.

  Sadly, her artificial eye was still dead. That was irritating, but she’d work with the partial blindness. It had been far more bewildering when she’d lost her real eye, so this was a lot less disorienting.

  The dark tunnel suddenly became lit as her ocular augmentation in her natural eye began peering into it. Everything was shades of grey and somewhat indistinct. Not because of distance, but from imprecision in the data she was getting back from her surroundings. Her implants were compensating for the gaps in data by extrapolating everything she saw. It was kind of eerie.

  She’d have thought that after so many years, the thought of those machines inside her head would stop bothering her, but the violation never got any easier to live with. It was like rape, only worse. Counseling helped, but she still had a long way to go.

  Somehow, her doppelgänger had adjusted and embraced what had happened to her. Julia thought that was most likely because the other woman hadn’t fallen completely under the domination of the implants in her head. She hadn’t become a Pale One. Her Jared Mertz had rescued her before that horrible fate had befallen her.

  She supposed that there was nothing like being an unwilling passenger in your own body as it fought for its life against others, killing and maiming, to twist one’s soul like it had done her.

  Those thoughts consumed her until she passed Talbot and Beauchamp on their way back to the others. The man gave her a cheery wave but said nothing.

  Her doppelgänger had fallen in love with the man and married him. Personally, she didn’t see the attraction. Their tastes had somehow varied quite a bit over the last few years. Julia didn’t want a warrior in her life, not like that. Someone like Carl Owlet would suit her tastes much better.

  She finally saw her doppelgänger ahead, slowed, and made sure that the other woman was aware that she was coming. Kelsey had the honed reflexes of a trained warrior, and Julia absolutely did not want to trigger any kind of surprise in the woman.

  Kelsey turned to face her as she came to a stop. “How are you feeling?”

  Julia shrugged. “I’m torn. I hate the implants and augmentation, but we need them to survive this mess. It feels like I’m addicted to them, like they’re some kind of drug. That’s really hard for me to take.”

  “I’d tell you that it gets easier with time, but I’m not sure that’s exactly right. It does get easier to deal with the hardware but not the kind of baggage that yours have brought along for the ride. I didn’t suffer like you did, so it’s easier for me to accept what they’ve done to me. How they’ve changed me.

  “I know I’ve said this before, but I’m sorry about what the AIs did to you. It was a horrible, horrible thing, and it makes me feel guilty that I avoided the worst of it and that you didn’t.”

  Somehow, the other woman always knew the right thing to say. It was like she could see into Julia’s soul. She supposed that was literally true.

  “What do we do now?” Julia asked, putting the uncomfortable conversation behind her.

  “You have a decision to make,” an unfamiliar voice said from farther up the tunnel.

  In the blink of an eye, Julia had her bow in her hand and an arrow aimed up the tunnel. But there was no one to shoot. No one showed up in her enhanced vision.

  Kelsey also had a bow out and took a step forward. “Who’s there? Show yourself.”

  There was the rumble of stone grinding against stone. It came from far closer than Julia would’ve expected.

  Barely twenty meters in front of them, part of the wall slid back from the tunnel and then to the side. From the opening stepped a man dressed in armor similar to that worn by the horde but not identical. His had bits of chain mail woven into it.

  He was a young man, large, fit, and strong looking. His face was impassive as it considered them.

  “My name is Jebediah, and you are trespassers in the city of Frankfort,” he said coolly. “I call upon you to surrender. Do so or perish.”

  Kelsey observed the man for a moment and then turned her auditory augmentation up to the highest setting that it could go to. Now with the wall open, she could hear the breathing of others behind it. That noise would’ve been too soft for her to hear with the plug closed.

  That was a clever hiding place, one where they could safely observe the tunnel. It was just her bad luck that Talbot and Beauchamp stopped almost directly in front of it.

  She only had a few moments to make a decision, and that choice was going to dictate how they proceeded. If she rejected the man’s offer to surrender, they would be committed to a fight to the death against an unknown number of people. People that apparently knew exactly where they were.

  On the other hand, if she surrendered, then they’d once again be prisoners of people that might very well want to torture information out of them and then execute them. Maybe they wouldn’t use immolation like the horde, but death was still death.

  Was there a third option? There was no way to go back, even if they could get past the horde. The tunnel had been thoroughly and utterly collapsed behind them. They were trapped against a place with no exits.

  Or maybe they weren’t. There was always the possibility that even while this man was talking to her, others were waiting behind similar hidden doors and observing the rest of her party. If she rejected their offer, they might come swarming out and kill everyone in sight.

  With a sigh, she set her bow on the ground slowly. “We surrender. I’m going to have to tell the rest so that they don’t resist, but I’m not going to fight you.”

  For a moment, she thought Julia wasn’t going to follow her lead, but the other woman closed her eyes and then set her bow on the ground as well, raising her hands above her head.

  “You have chosen wisely,” the man said. He gestured, and men came boiling out of the hiding place behind the wall. There were dozens of them.

  Even with her augmentation, though she could have taken them in a straight-up fight, it was entirely possible that they could’ve maimed or even killed her in the fighting. Primitive weapons didn’t necessarily mean that they weren’t a threat.

  The men quickly and efficiently stripped her of all her weapons and then bound her hands behind her back. It amused her that she could snap those bonds with just a moment’s effort, but that was something that she wasn’t going to reveal to them unless she had to. If things went badly, she still wanted that ace up her sleeve so that they could escape, given the opportunity.

  Julia raised an eyebrow at her and submitted as well. She said nothing openly but sent a message through her implants.

  Are you really going to surrender to them?

  I don’t see that we have any choice. If they’ve got another group waiting back where the rest are, they could kill everyone. I’m not going to take that chance. I’ve talked my way out of worse situations, and until we know that these people aren’t as bruta
l as the horde, we’re going to give them the benefit of the doubt.

  Her doppelgänger made a slight shrug to indicate that she would follow along.

  Once she was thoroughly trussed up, Jebediah stepped over and scrutinized her. “You wear horde armor, but you’re not of the horde. Where do you come from?”

  “A planet far from here,” she said, looking up at the large man. “You wouldn’t know the name of it. It wasn’t very well known even before the rebellion. What are your intentions toward us?”

  “I’ll take you to my father. He rules this city and will make the ultimate decision about your fate, but the fact that you have surrendered means that you will not be executed. Allow me to congratulate you on your cool thinking and wise decision-making skills.”

  “Save your congratulations until I find out whether or not this really ends up being a good decision or not,” she said grimly. “I might just have thrown us out of the frying pan into the fire.”

  The man inclined his head slightly. “My father finds himself curious as to your story and how you managed to cause so much damage to the horde city. If you tell a good tale, he’ll likely show you some mercy.”

  “You mean he might let us go?”

  The man shook his head. “No intruder is ever allowed to leave Frankfort. Yet there are different levels of duty that you may be required to serve, and your cooperation and storytelling skills may influence my father in making that decision. Consider that well before you speak too harshly to him. Or me.

  “Now, take me to your companions. So long as they also surrender peacefully, no one needs to be harmed today.”

  Kelsey allowed the man to take her arm and guide her back down the tunnel toward where the rest were waiting. Even though she had an extended-range com built into her augmentation, only Carl had a matching set. She wouldn’t be able to warn the others about what was coming.

  Hopefully, Jared would see the logic in what she was doing and stop the rest from putting up a fight. If they didn’t have cool heads, there might still be a slaughter today. If need be, she’d snap her bonds and fight with everything she had, but she was praying that cooler heads prevailed.

  4

  Carl felt nervous. Doctor Stone had insisted that she go through surgery after Talbot, and that meant that someone with very skilled hands had to perform the work.

  That meant it had to be him. His scientific duties often required him to do extremely delicate work, and while he’d never performed surgery, he felt confident that the techniques he used would carry across well.

  At least he certainly hoped so.

  Once the doctor was out, he very carefully removed the sliver of bone from her skull and set it onto a sterile pad. He then reset her implants before using surgical glue to put the sliver of bone back into place and seal it up. Once that was done, he ran the regenerator over the incision until it looked well healed. He then removed the somatic stimulator, and her eyes opened.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked softly.

  “Good,” she said. “My implants are online, and I can even interface with my medical equipment. Excellent work, Doctor Owlet. Congratulations on your first major surgery.

  “Swap places. You’re next, so show me one last time how the equipment generates the charge.”

  “I’ll stick with my PhD, thanks,” he said dryly. “I prefer less blood and brains when working.”

  He lay down and went to sleep as soon as she fitted the somatic stimulator. It only seemed like a moment later when his eyes blinked open.

  Rather than say anything, he quickly checked his implants and found them operational once more. That was an incredible relief because he’d grown used to the things over the years and had so much research and information archived inside them.

  The additions that he’d made to his hardware also allowed him to work on Imperial equipment much more easily than would be possible without them.

  There was a message waiting for him, marked as extremely urgent. It was from Kelsey. She’d sent it seconds after his implants had come back to life.

  She’d had to have been continuously checking to see if he was receiving to do that, and that probably meant it wasn’t good news. He played the message.

  Julia and I were ambushed, and I decided the best course of action was to surrender. It’s the city residents. We’re coming down the tunnel, but I’m slow-walking them. Get all the surgeries done that you can because they’ll almost certainly confiscate the equipment. Tell Jared we need to surrender without resisting.

  “We have a problem,” he said even as he acknowledged the message. “Kelsey and Julia have been captured by the residents and are on their way back. She’s moving slowly but says we have to surrender once they arrive. She said that if we can’t get everyone’s implants online before they get here, they’re almost certainly going to confiscate our equipment.”

  The doctor abruptly gestured for Admiral Mertz to lie down. “Time permitting, we’ll move on to Lieutenant Laird and the remaining two of the three amigos next.”

  The three amigos were himself, Ralph Holstead, and Austin Darrah. Together, the three of them had overlapping scientific, computer, and technological skills that could potentially work miracles on any equipment that they found.

  Carl wished that they could get everybody’s implants back online, but with time working against them, there was only so much they could do.

  Once Admiral Mertz was done, they moved on to Lieutenant Laird and got her back online. While she didn’t have Raider augmentation, she was a trained marine, and that would undoubtedly prove useful going forward.

  Ralph Holstead and Austin Darrah were next and quickly done. That left four people remaining: Commodore Meyer, Commander Cannon, Elise Orison, and Olivia West.

  “No one make any hasty movement,” Kelsey said from up the tunnel. “If you have a weapon in your hand, put it aside. Stand still and raise your hands over your heads.”

  Carl raised his hands. Since he had no weapons worth mentioning, he left them in the sheaths. No doubt the enemy would strip them from him.

  A few moments later, a group of men pushed Kelsey into the torchlight. When they ascertained that no one was holding a weapon, they came forward in pairs and bound everyone’s hands behind their backs. Once that was done, they stripped away every single weapon that they possessed.

  Once again, they were prisoners. Hopefully, these new people wouldn’t be as bad as the horde. He supposed he’d find out. It wasn’t exactly as if they had a choice in the matter.

  As Talbot surrendered, he took a good look at their captors. They were dressed like the horde fighters but didn’t seem inclined to cause casual pain like the plain’s dwellers.

  His questioning at the hands of the crazy woman at the camp where Julia had rescued them came to mind. She’d had her men beat him and threatened to use a hot iron to brand him while telling him how she’d torture and kill everyone while he watched. She’d taken great pleasure in telling him so.

  These people didn’t seem to have the same worldview, and that was better than nothing.

  There was no sign that they had any higher technology on them. No flechette pistols, no plasma weapons, and no stunners. They were seemingly just as primitive as the horde or Captain Beauchamp’s people.

  Once his hands were bound behind him, he allowed them to herd him together with the rest. He did manage to work his way over to his wife. He looked at the man standing next to her.

  “She’s my wife. May I speak to her?”

  The man considered his words and then nodded. “Speak loudly enough that I may overhear. I have no interest in your personal business. My only concern is to make certain that you are not attempting to escape.”

  If he’d wanted to speak in a way that they couldn’t hear, he’d have used his implants. He didn’t have her long-range com, but his internal unit was good for a dozen meters without amplification.

  This conversation was as much for their captors’ benefit as it
was for his own. If they were going to survive this, they needed their captors to see them as people. People that had something to offer when the time came and weren’t the kind of threat that they needed to do anything strenuous to restrain.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “They offered me a chance to surrender before they presented themselves, so I didn’t overreact,” she said. “Not that I suspect they would’ve taken me as much of a threat in any case.”

  “That’s only because they don’t know you as well as I do,” he said with a slight smile.

  Having said that, he didn’t try to maintain his appearance of humor. Their situation was still grave, even if he didn’t think it was immediately dangerous.

  The man in charge had them bound together by a single rope and led them down the tunnel. Some of the others picked up all of the gear that he and his people had transported so far and brought it behind them. No doubt some of it would cause raised eyebrows and prompt pointed questions.

  Operational technology would have to be scarce in a place like this. Still, living with even nonfunctional technology all around would make it obvious to them what kind of things he and his friends had in their packs.

  He started to say something else to Kelsey, but she shook her head. “Just let it be, Talbot. We’ll find out soon enough what they’ve got to say. I’m tired. It seems like we’ve been running for days. Maybe once they lock us up, I can take a nice long nap.”

  He had to admit that sounded good. The last week had involved a lot of hard riding and very little sleep. If they had a chance to eat and rest, that would be helpful.

  The group moved along in silence for a while, and then he saw the opening in the wall ahead of them. He had no idea how he’d missed seeing something like that. It was inside the range of the torches that he’d leaned against the walls.

  He eyed the door as they went through it and into the unknown portion behind the tunnel wall. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make a segment of wall on tracks that fit very tightly into the hole like a plug in a bottle. There must’ve been a seam, but without his enhanced ocular augmentation, he’d missed it.