Recon- the Complete Series

by Rick Partlow

  “You are the one who dresses like one of your ‘Marines’ they call them,” he said. “There are tales of you and what you did before these,” he gestured at the DSI agents, “came to help. How did you come to be here?”

  “I was part of the force that tried to invade a year ago,” I told him honestly, not seeing any advantage to hiding the truth. “I was wounded and thought dead, so I was left behind.” I nodded towards Sophia. “She saved me and the Resistance took me in. I fought for them.”

  “You led them well,” he told me. “Better than I have led our people here, and with less.”

  “Why have you called us here, Colonel?” Sophia asked him, her face cold with barely restrained fury at the sight of him. She still harbored a hatred for the Tahni commander that didn’t care about cultural differences; to her, he was a cold-blooded murderer and war criminal who’d killed her friends.

  The body language was probably lost on the Tahni, who undoubtedly couldn’t read human nonverbal signals any better than I could read his.

  “Things are very bad,” K'tann-len-Renn-Tan said simply. If I understood the Tahni naming mannerisms at all, they would call him Renn-Tan for short, informally. “Since the dedicants were killed during the consecration ceremony…” I assumed he was talking about the raid the Intelligence operators…shit, the Glory Boys I might as well call them, had pulled a couple weeks ago. “…the warriors believe we are cursed. They say it is the Tahn-Skii’ana, what we call the Spirits of Death who come to punish the apostate, the heretics.”

  Renn-Tan fell silent for a long moment. “They think we have sinned and we will see only death, not victory. But we have no way home. The ships are gone and our communications with the Empire tell us only to hold here until relieved. There is not enough to eat, and some of the men think we should do as you do, kill the animals and eat them. Or kill the humans and eat them.”

  A cold, hard lump settled into my guts at the words and I could feel Sophia tensing up next to me.

  “Easy,” I whispered to her.

  “There have been fights,” Renn-Tan continued. His words were flat, or with an intonation that didn’t suit them, but my mind was automatically translating it into the emotions a human would have expressed when saying them. “There have been killings. I have been challenged and had to fight to keep my command. I think the only reason it hasn’t happened more is that no one else wishes the burden.” In a human, those words would have been bitter, and I heard them that way.

  “What do you want from us?” I asked, repeating Sophia’s question. Chang and Kibaki said nothing, letting us talk, perhaps letting the people Renn-Tan would see as locals be the ones to do the negotiating.

  “I understand how you humans have fought wars in your past,” he explained. “I have studied your history. Perhaps this is why I have come to think differently than the others in our military. When one of your armies is unable to fight anymore, your commander may surrender it to avoid the unnecessary deaths of his people. We do not have that concept. Were I to offer you the surrender of my troops, they would not honor it. Another would take my place and I would be killed.”

  “Then what are you offering?” I demanded, beginning to lose my patience with him.

  “I will do whatever I can without being killed to help you take this world back.” The words seem to echo through my head in a reverberation of disbelief. Chang had told me he thought this was coming, but I just hadn’t bought it.

  Now Chang did speak, in a tone that had more than a hint of “I told you so” aimed at Sophia and me. “And what do you want in return?”

  Renn-Tan sniffed several times in a row. I didn’t know for sure the significance of that, but I guessed it was him sighing, or thinking, or debating, maybe.

  “If you lose this war,” he said, “I am dead. So, I will have to assume you win. And when you win, if there are any Tahni left alive, and if you allow them the freedom to live with their own government, I wish to be part of it. I wish you to change my appearance---I know you have this ability---and give me a new identity, then put me in a position of some authority and power, and comfort, where I may live out the rest of my days in peace.”

  “I thought,” Kibaki put in, “that altering your body was contrary to the will of your god.”

  “You have a word in your language that we do not,” Renn-Tan said, and even with the cultural and species differences, I could tell his words were bleak. “The word is ‘atheist.’ I think, studying your history, and seeing what I have seen on this world, that I have become an atheist.” He made an all-inclusive gesture with his hand. “If there truly was a Spirit Emperor, He would not have allowed this.”

  Chang and Kibaki shared a look that was as uninterpretable as any Tahni.

  “I can make guarantees in the name of the Commonwealth government,” Chang explained. “I am sure they would be agreeable to the arrangement. But the requirements for your part of the bargain would have to come from the military,” he pointed at me. “And this deal would have to be approved by the civilian government of this planet.” He shifted his gesture to indicate Sophia.

  Three sets of eyes settled on Sophia and I, only two of them human.

  I swallowed hard. But this was something I’d gone over with Chang and Kibaki before the meeting, just in case.

  “We’ll need you to help us take out the orbital defense systems,” I told the Tahni.

  “I can’t,” he insisted, hands and shoulders making some gesture I didn’t recognize but I assumed indicated negation. “They are crewed at all times and security is high. If I were seen to be tampering with them at all, I would be killed by my rivals immediately.”

  Chang had anticipated that, and so had Kel and Cowboy.

  “Then we’ll need you to disable the security sensors at the fusion reactor,” I said. “We’ll go in and shut off the power, but we need you to make sure your assault shuttles and battlesuits are tied up elsewhere, and that the alarm systems are down.”

  “I can sabotage the security systems,” Renn-Tan confirmed. “And I can make sure that all the shuttles are offline, if you tell me a day and a time. I can’t control the response of the High Guard. Their Captain is my chief rival and he guards them jealously.”

  “That’ll have to do,” I decided. “We’ll have to set up a way to relay the day and time to you. That is,” I looked to Sophie, “if you’re willing to approve this deal.”

  She stared at the Tahni commander with eyes like the targeting sights of a missile, jaw clenching before she managed to speak.

  “I’ll be honest with you, Colonel, I would just as soon kill you now and take our chances with your replacement.” Her voice was colder than the freezing rain outside. “But people I trust tell me this is the quickest way to end this thing. So, on behalf of the civilian leadership of the Demeter Resistance, I am willing to accept this deal. On one condition.”

  I glanced at her sharply and so did the two DSI agents. This hadn’t been part of the script.

  “What might that be?” Chang wondered, something less than pleasant in his tone, though the bland look on his face didn’t change.

  “Any of our people left alive in those cages you put up in the Central Square have to be handed over to us immediately,” she said. “And I don’t care how big of a problem that is for you, or how much doubt it casts on your leadership. Find an excuse and do it, or the deal’s off.”

  Chang looked like he wanted to say something, to object to it, but I shook my head.

  “I think,” I interjected, “as the representative of the Commonwealth military here, I’m going to have to go along with this condition from the civilian government.”

  The Tahni stared at the two of us for a moment and didn’t speak.

  “It will be done.” Another pause. “I may need to have them taken out of the city on the pretext that they are to be executed at the edge of your forest, so that your drones may see it. I will give you the time at the exchange where I am given instructions abo
ut your attack on the reactor. Then, you may kill the token force I send with them, and take your people back with you.”

  He spoke so matter-of-factly about having his own troops killed. It sent a shudder through me, despite the intellectual knowledge that he wouldn’t think about it the way we did and he would be showing it differently even if he did. It was just too damn…inhuman. It was easy to look at bilateral symmetry and a similar eye structure and forget that the Tahni were more different from us than we were from chimpanzees.

  “Well,” Chang said, filling in the awkward silence, “now that we have the agreement finalized, let’s iron out the details of how we’re to contact each other…”

  ***

  I stared down at the bodies of the eight Tahni soldiers, feeling nothing for them. They’d been sacrificial lambs led to the slaughter, and I cared less for them than their commander had. They’d marched out the main gate, leading the prisoners they’d intended to execute with the casual stride of any soldier sent to perform a tiresome duty and wanting to get it over with.

  They weren’t wearing armor and they’d only been armed with their equivalent of handguns, because the three hundred odd men, women and children they’d been guarding had been far too weak to run or fight. Some had been too weak to walk, and those had been put on motorized push-carts.

  They were skeletons, scarecrows, tottering and swaying and flapping in the wind in ragged clothes, covered in filth and sores. They stared at our people with dead eyes, flinching away when anyone tried to touch them. The children were the worst. Not too many had survived this long, and the ones who had seemed feral and suspicious.

  I saw Sophia crying as she watched them being led away into the forest, away from the clearing where we’d ambushed the escort. I slipped an arm around her shoulder.

  “We got some out alive,” I said. “It’s more than we thought we could do.”

  She snarled as she hauled back and kicked the head of one of the Tahni corpses, sending the body rolling down the slight hill, leaving a trail of blood behind it.

  “We’re letting him get away with it,” she said. “The commander. He should be one of these fucking bodies, Munroe.”

  “Yeah, he should,” I agreed. “But life doesn’t always give you what should be. You know that.” We all did, by now.

  “He told the truth about this,” Sophia said, wiping a hand across her eyes and following the group onto the trail through the trees. “So maybe he’s telling the truth about the other thing, about helping us take down the reactor.”

  “That’s the idea,” I agreed. I unconsciously scanned the area again as we went deeper into the forest. Kel and Cowboy were out there, somewhere, keeping a watch to make sure it wasn’t all an elaborate trap, hanging over our shoulders like guardian angels. “The operation should kick off in a couple weeks.” We could have done it sooner, but Chang and Kibaki had to contact the Fleet to make sure they moved in on the picket ships in cislunar space before they could give the Tahni orbital support.

  “When it does,” she said, glancing at me, “it will be over, here. You’ll have to leave, won’t you?”

  I didn’t answer immediately. I honestly hadn’t thought about it ending; it had seemed like it never would, like I would die here. And now, suddenly, there was just one more battle to fight.

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “They’ll ship me back to Inferno, back to my unit.” What was left of it, anyway.

  “And I’ll never see you again,” she murmured, eyes straight ahead.

  “I’ll be back in the war,” I said. “Your war will be over. It could be months, even years before I could come back.”

  The words seemed like a sentence being handed down, and I was as uncomfortable hearing them as I was saying them.

  “Let’s think about it after we live through the next two weeks.” Her words weren’t harsh, but she picked up her pace a step and left me behind.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I stood at the center of the semicircle of men and women and reflected that even after all this, I hated public speaking. There were only a hundred of them, and it seemed like less in the yawning cavern of the half-built amphitheater. We figured it was as good a place as any to stage from, since Renn-Tan’s enemies hadn’t tracked him here, and he’d make sure no one else was looking. But that sea of faces, only about half of whom I could put a name to, all looked at me like I knew what I was doing, and that scared the shit out of me, still.

  Sophia was off to the side, hands clasped behind her back, supporting but not needing the briefing since she’d helped to formulate the plan. Her face was impassive, but she’d been unusually quiet these last few days. I hadn’t pushed it; I figured the odds were, anything I said would just make things worse.

  “The plan’s simple,” I told them, gesturing at the diagram projected onto the sheet of plastic hung up from a frame Sophia and I had jury-rigged out of water pipes. The tablet projecting it was propped up on the same empty spool Chang and Kibaki had used as a chair the first time we were here. Daylight creeped in from the open door, but it was still shadowed enough inside the dome to make the projection clear and visible.

  “It’s very time-sensitive, but the execution is simple. The fusion reactor is here,” I jabbed at a finger at the outline of a domed building highlighted in red on the diagram, “two kilometers outside town, with a coolant system fed by a canal dug from the river. It feeds the defense laser,” I pointed to another circular outline just off to the left about a kilometer, “through underground power cables. That laser has to be disabled by No-Later-Than 0830 hours local time tonight or the Fleet ships coming in to seize orbital and cislunar space will be destroyed by it.

  “We can’t reach the cables, because they’re buried too deep, and we can’t get to the laser itself because it’s guarded and secured too well, and under the watch and control of the rivals and enemies of the Tahni Commander. So, we have to take out the laser’s power source, the fusion reactor. We can’t just blow the coolant lines either, because that could cause contamination and make the whole city unlivable for years till it gets cleaned up. We have to get inside and use the manual overrides to flush the reaction chamber.” I didn’t tell them that Chang and Kibaki were getting in place even now to prepare to blow those coolant lines if our mission failed. One way or another, the Fleet was going to take this place, even if the biggest city was a radioactive wasteland.

  I looked around at them, meeting a hundred stares, feeling naked and horribly exposed without my helmet as a shield.

  “The irony is not lost on me,” I said, with my best attempt at dry wit, “that this is the same mission that wound up a huge cluster-fuck a year ago, and stranded me here with you good people.”

  A wave of chuckles at that, as I’d intended. I tried to work some moisture into my mouth so I wouldn’t sound as scared as I felt.

  “This time, we have the benefit of inside help, plus time spent on the ground and the last two weeks of rehearsals and preparation.” Which might or might not make up for the fact that they had no formal military training and were working with salvaged, jury-rigged gear. “Our job is to clear the way for Kel and Cowboy.” I waved casually to where the two of them stood leaning against the far wall, watching silently. Cowboy nodded almost imperceptibly in return. “They need to get inside and get to the reactor controls before the Tahni realize what’s happening and call in orbital fire support, which means we have to be the ones to take out the platoon of Shock-Troops guarding the place.

  “You all know what you’re supposed to do,” I said. “What I’m telling you now is why. This is the battle that’s going to take back your home. This is the battle you’ve been waiting for these last two years, the one that’s going to end it all.” I took in a deep breath and met their gaze, searching out Victor and Kurt and Annalise and Diamante and Ortiz and all the others I’d led on one mission or another. I found myself staring at Carl Braun. He’d begged to be let in on this mission, the last, big battle, and Sophia h
ad agreed to take him with her unit. I hoped we didn’t regret it.

  “By this time tomorrow, if you all do your jobs, your part of this war will be won, and you can start rebuilding what the Tahni have destroyed. I just wanted to say to you all that, no matter what happens tonight, it’s been an honor to fight beside you.”

  I expected the usual breakdown into a buzz of individual conversations when I finished, but instead, everyone was quiet. Then Sophia stepped up beside the crowd and stood straight.

  “Company, a-ten-shun!” she barked, and I blinked as all of them came to some semblance of attention. “Pre-sent arms!”

  And as one, they saluted. The form was sloppy; they would all have been dropped for about a million push-ups by my DI’s at boot camp. But I had to swallow the lump in my throat before I came to attention and returned the salute, holding it for a long moment before I released it. Sophia was smiling as she lowered her hand and barked out, “Order arms!”

  She had to have practiced this with them and I wondered when they’d had the chance. I suddenly realized I had no idea what to say next, but Sophia rescued me.

  “Get into your teams,” she told them. “Go over your duties and your leader’s duties one more time, then check your gear. We move out in two hours.”

  As they dispersed to their separate staging areas inside the dome, I bent to retrieve the tablet, taking the opportunity to surreptitiously wipe at my eyes. When I stood, Sophia was beside me, leaning up to kiss me.

  “They’re your people now, Munroe,” she told me, fingers stroking my cheek. “And so am I.”

  “And afterwards?” I asked her, surprised at her shift in mood.

  “We’ll worry about afterwards when there’s an afterwards,” she said, shrugging. “I don’t want to waste now being mad about later.”

  I pulled her into me and held her for a moment, even though I could barely feel her through my armor.

  “I love you,” I said softly into her hair. I don’t know if I meant to say it, or if it just slipped out, but I discovered that I didn’t really care. I didn’t regret it.