Indiya couldn’t let that happen. She activated the main engines. Four-g thrust.
Finfth had once proudly explained to Indiya how he thought the zero-point engine worked. If you stripped away the coolant tanks and electrical charging units, the heart of the engine was a dull black box, about two meters in cross-section and four meters long. Unless the ship was bruising the outer atmosphere of a planet, or passing through debris, the engine produced no plumes of flame or exhaust gases. In the visible spectrum there was nothing to see whatsoever.
The miracle that the unassuming black box was quietly performing was to mine minuscule variations in the quantum foam.
The deep void appeared to be empty and lifeless from the macro level of human experience, but dig down to the quantum level and it was a churning foam of random vibrations. It only appeared to be devoid of form because the maelstrom of activity exactly canceled itself out over tiny quantum timescales. The net result was – nothing. Void.
But the zero-point engine was fast enough to hook into the temporary imbalances, polarizing them to harness only those thrusting in the desired direction – directly away from the engine exhaust port.
Quantum tunneling stitched the foam together to that the engine effectively extended into a cone aft of the ship. The more acceleration required by the pilot, the larger the cone of effect provided by the engine. At Beowulf’s maximum acceleration of 18g, the engine cone extended 3000 meters.
What Finfth couldn’t even begin to explain was how the quantum tunneling stitched the cone and the ship together in a momentum continuum, which meant every push mined from the quantum fluctuation added the same momentum to the ship’s forward movement. Each nudge was infinitesimally small, but with a cone extending hundreds of meters out of the engine port, the count of these tiny asymmetries in the fabric of the universe was greater than the number of molecules on every planet in the galaxy.
The result, to the frozen corpse of Chief Petty Officer Deflector, caught inside the engine cone, was a 0.8 meter tunnel bored through her torso and upper thighs. The fleshy wall of the resulting tube flash heated enough to send her head and legs flying apart.
The effect on Themistocles was serious from the beginning. The cone extending from Beowulf’s engine punched a 0.9 meter tunnel through the ship, igniting the air around the cone instantly.
A few seconds later and Beowulf had moved far enough that the cone had widened to extend out to a third of Themistocles. What had started as a fire grew into a miniature supernova. For a few seconds, Themistocles became the brightest thing in the heavens, before swiftly cooling into a dark cloud of debris.
But by then, Beowulf was already far away.
They had won, but no one cheered.
It was time to count the bodies.
— Chapter 65 —
With the most urgent casualties already carried off to the medical stations, the wounded survivors lay in the low-g on the deck of the hangar, outnumbered by the broken corpses heaped up against the opposite bulkhead. Arun was administering field aid to a wounded spacer when Loobie’s voice came over the general ship address system, ordering himself, Xin and Springer to the CIC by order of the reserve captain.
Arun finished administering the med-patches before answering his summons, covering most of the distance using his suit to fly alone through the deployment tubes, telling Athena to take care not to knock into anyone.
He wished Xin and Springer were with him. He’d seen both alive and well since the shuttle had returned, but didn’t know where they were now.
“Stand by the main comm station,” the reserve captain ordered him when he arrived in CIC.
Arun looked around. The circular CIC deck held many thrust-hardened stations. Xin and Springer were there too, keeping a healthy distance apart, both shrugging, as clueless as him. Indiya was at one station. At least she was there in the flesh, but her mind seemed lost in shock.
Loobie was the only one to acknowledge him with confidence. From her station she beckoned him with a nod of her head, and he hurried over to stand beside her.
“Leading Spacer Lubricant,” said the reserve captain in her own voice, “open comms with Detroit.”
“Yes, sir.” Loobie adjusted a few controls. “Beowulf calling Detroit Base.”
They could all see the comm system status reported in the main viewscreen that wrapped around the circular CIC deck. Comm handshaking reported a connection to Detroit, but there was no reply.
Loobie repeated the hail.
Still nothing.
“Keep going,” urged the reserve captain.
“Why? In case every Marine in Detroit had to duck out to visit the head? There's no way they would leave the FTL comm station unattended.
Arun kept his thoughts to himself, and was glad he did a few moments later when a reply came through.
“Beowulf? This is Detroit,” came a human voice. “What’s your status? Over.”
They all looked to the reserve captain for her reply.
“I’m exhausted,” she said to Arun. “That’s why I summoned you, McEwan. To speak for us.”
Arun felt weak, his limbs shook. Was this fear, or my destiny taking me over?
“Beowulf retaken after mutiny,” he said, his voice firming with each word he spoke. “Themistocles destroyed. We are currently on course back to Tranquility System.”
“Thank Horden’s frakking danglies. Sorry…” The Marine in Detroit paused. “Oh, I believe you. You’d hardly lie. It’s all gone to drent here. System defense flotillas came out for the rebels, blasted Tranquility’s surface. A plague has wiped out every Jotun. The rebel Marine spearhead was small but backed by overwhelming Hardit numbers. Millions of the ugly monkeys. Beta City is taken. We’re still holding out at Detroit.”
“Sir, we’re six months away from you.”
“Sir? Sir! Have you been breathing thruster fumes? I’m just a frakking dirtball corporal. Sorry, err… sergeant? But, that doesn’t mean it’s hopeless. The warships and rebel Marines have gone out-system, towing the warboats with them. Six months? Yes! Now we know you’re coming… we’ve something to hold out for. Now that we’re only facing the Hardits, just one battalion of Marines could make a real difference.”
Arun said nothing. He couldn’t summon the will.
“What’s your strength?” asked Detroit.
How many? Arun felt cold. They were still counting survivors. Some would never fight again. Some had supported the rebels. His plan had been to remove the rebel leaders and force the rest of the Marines to see reason. Not to slaughter them all.
“I repeat, what is your strength, Beowulf?”
“We’ve 68 effectives.” Arun’s guess was good enough. Whether 68 or 78 wouldn’t make the slightest difference in the end.
A long silence came over the comm system. “Did I hear that right? You’re twice squad size? Is that all?”
Anger strengthened Arun’s backbone. That lizard in Detroit was laughing at his comrades. “Corporal,” he said acidly, “we are one enhanced squad, and not just any squad. We’re Indigo Squad.”
The corporal laughed. A harsh and hesitant sound that soon grew manic. “You’ve got spirit, pal. I’ll give you that. Shame you’ve nothing to back that up.”
“Even so, corporal, Indigo Squad has been through a lot and survived against impossible odds. We’re coming home. Like it or not.”
“Frakk! You’re not even an NCO are you? How old are you, kid?”
“Eighteen.”
“Figures.” The corporal gave a resigned sigh. “Have a good journey, son.” His dull voice declared that he’d already lost interest. “I’ll be waiting in hell. I expect I’ll meet you there soon after you get back to Tranquility.”
“Corporal, can you tell me current enemy deployment? Corporal? Corporal?”
“It’s no good, McEwan,” said Loobie, “Detroit has cut the connection.”
“Well, McEwan?” said the reserve captain, sounding weak as if all the care
s of the universe weighed upon her shoulders. “Do we still go to Tranquility System?”
Why was the Jotun asking him? Arun had to fight from asking her that.
“Yes, sir,” he said, as calmly as he could.
“Very well,” replied the reserve captain. “Indiya, set course for Tranquility. I hope you live up to your promise, McEwan. You’ve six months to plan a reconquest of a planet with 68 Marines plus whatever help I can provide from my ship and crew. Can you do it?”
Arun didn’t hesitate. “That won’t be a problem, sir.”
A part of him even believed his own words. After all, as Springer kept telling him, he had a destiny to fulfill.
— Epilogue —
“We need Marine officers,” argued Hecht.
“So you keep saying, corporal,” said Arun. “We’ve no more Jotuns other than the reserve captain and she’s Navy.”
“She is also a little old to be running around in a gravity well shooting at things,” said the old Jotun.
Once again uncertainty rippled through the assembly of Marine NCOs, selected Navy crew, and Arun, all of whom had been summoned to meet in the captain’s cabin, a title that felt uncomfortable with the only Jotun on board insisting she would not take the mantle of captain.
To be consulted by a Navy officer was so far out of the Marines’ experience of harmonious protocol that the humans kept clamming up, instinctively waiting for an officer to speak on their behalf. But the reserve captain wasn’t willing to take that role.
“We’ll have to promote someone from Indigo Squad,” said Arun tentatively, checking for a reaction from the reserve captain. She gave none. “Sergeant Gupta is our senior NCO, or are you angling to be the one to set that precedent, Hecht?”
“Lieutenant Commander Wotun has already set that precedent,” said Gupta. “Ensign Fraser McEwan was once a good friend and loyal comrade of mine.”
“Yeah, and look at how well his promotion worked out!” said Hecht. “He’d only been an officer a few seconds before his brother shot him dead.”
“Let’s not fixate on my brother,” said Arun. “The ship’s crew has had human officers for years.”
“Yeah, right,” sneered Hecht. “Don’t make me laugh. Do you know what the Jotuns call this vessel?” He bowed at the reserve captain. “No disrespect intended to you or your crew, sir, but Beowulf is a cardboard ship. It’s there to puff up the fleet to look bigger than it really is. The White Knights don’t even regard it as a proper warship.”
The Jotun did not deny Hecht’s assertion about cardboard ships. They all knew it was true.
“How the frakk do you know so much about how the White Knights think?” said Majanita. “Come to think of, there’s been a lot of strange activity in your rack of late, Hecht. Have you been engaging in alien research?”
Arun raised his voice above the laughter. “Beowulf might not be a ship of the line, but it is a fully functioning starship and we humans have shown ourselves capable officers. Why won’t you accept human Marine officers?”
“That’s enough, Marine,” snapped Lance Sergeant Brandt, who’d kept quiet until then. “The captain asked for you to be present, and I respect that, but you will remember your rank.”
Arun looked across at Gupta who looked angry but said nothing. “Yes, lance sergeant,” Arun replied.
“I prefer to hear him speak,” said Sergeant Nhlappo, the shaven-headed veteran’s eyes dissecting him. “I detest you, McEwan, but that is partly because your brain follows unorthodox tracks. I want to hear your thoughts, if only so I can use them against you.”
“Be quiet, all of you!” The reserve captain spoke through synthetic thought-to-speech. Arun wondered why. Indiya had said the ancient Jotun was relying more on her speech synthesizer as she drew down her final reserves of energy, that she was so exhausted Indiya feared that her long life had only days remaining.
Those were Indiya’s words, but Arun was getting to know the ship-rat girl and reckoned she was lying.
A more likely explanation was that the ancient Jotun had spirit in her yet, and was playing the humans to force them to take ownership of their plight.
“If we are to act decisively, we need leadership, goals, organization, retraining,” said the reserve captain. “We’ve argued enough. Does anyone deny my paramount authority here?”
She laid her ears flat against her skull and rammed her stare into the face of each person there. Under that ferocious scrutiny, all backed down and looked away.
“Very well. I shall commission one of you to take on officer rank, to lead not merely the Marines on this vessel, but any survivors we encounter in Tranquility System or beyond. As you said, Gupta, there has already been an Ensign McEwan. I think we need to do much better than that. Congratulations on your promotion, Major Arun McEwan.”
Arun watched the shock spreading across the onlooking faces like a deadly virus. The strange thing was that he didn’t share their surprise. He noticed Xin nodding at him and the sight warmed his heart… until he realized she was nodding at him to lift his jaw up from the deck and get the hell on with it.
“Thank you, reserve captain,” said Arun. “It is an honor and privilege to serve. I hope to–” He stopped when he saw the Jotun’s flicking ears and beginning of a deep rumble. The reserve captain’s meaning was clear: cut the bullshit. “We can run through the deep void,” Arun said hurriedly, “using the cryo pods to eke out our lives for centuries of pointless existence. Let’s rule that out right now. It’s cowardice. No Marine would ever consider such a course and I know none of you do so. I see two real options: to retake our home, which is about six months’ flight away, or to push on to our original objective at Wolf-3, about 36 years distant. Before I make my decision, I want to give you this opportunity to suggest a further course of action that hasn’t yet occurred to me.”
The Marine NCOs looked at each other uncertainly. Taking questions from Arun was easier than doing so from the Navy Jotun, but they still weren’t used to being consulted. Arun saw no weakness in consulting a selection of intelligent and experienced individuals before arriving at his decisions. By contrast, the ship’s crew were clearly used to this approach and tentatively began throwing up ideas. None of them were argued for passionately, it was more as if the crew felt the choices should be properly considered before being dismissed.
Arun resolved to learn from these ship-rats. They might be physically puny but they had much to teach the Marines.
Journeying to Earth, to the nearest neutral planet, contacting the White Knight homeworld: these lukewarm alternatives were quickly blasted away. With the FTL comm link to the fleet flagship either down or not being answered, Arun felt their only real crumb of advantage was that no one knew Beowulf had remained loyal. If the fleet at Tranquility had thrown their lot in with the rebels so quickly, there was a good chance that all they would find at Wolf-3 was another rebel fleet waiting to blast them into atoms.
“My mind is made up,” said Arun. “We return to Tranquility and fight, if… if…” The blood drained from his face. Here he was prancing around making decisions, and he hadn’t yet consulted the reserve captain.
“Major,” said the reserve captain’s synthetic voice, “the remnants of my crew can get you there – if you provide me with new recruits – but when we arrive, it will be your Marines who will fight. You also have the largest command. For both those reasons, I defer strategic command to you. What are your strategic objectives once we have retaken Tranquility?”
Xin winked at him, as if he hadn’t already realized the Jotun was feeding him his line.
And it wasn’t just any line. What Arun said next might be quoted in histories for thousands of years to come.
No pressure then. He cleared his throat and addressed the assembly. “The time for running is over. Hiding our human potential from White Knight eyes is at an end. I declare my liberation. I am no longer a slave.” He pointed at Hecht. “You–” he pointed at his former instructor. “Y
ou, Sergeant Nhlappo, all of you – even the reserve captain – you are slaves no longer.”
He looked into the faces of his comrades and saw expressions of support that were respectful but fragile, as if frozen onto their faces with liquid nitrogen. Only the slightest knock would shatter their backing into a thousand fragments.
Xin looked horrified.
So they needed more encouragement. Arun suddenly knew exactly what to say. “We are caught in a civil war, people. You must have asked yourselves whose side are we on. I say we are on our side. In the chaos of civil war, sometimes a small disciplined force can be in the right place at the right time, transforming itself from an irrelevance into a key player.”
Arun gestured at Sergeant Gupta. “We have precedent. A human precedent. Those of us in Indigo Squad who were in 8th Depot Battalion, Charlie Company Blue and Gold Squads have heard this before from Sergeant Gupta.”
Gupta gave the barest of nods.
“We invoke the spirit of the Czech Legion who, centuries ago, were stranded in the upheaval of the Russian Civil War on Earth. To signify that, we will take their name as an inspiration. Henceforth we are no longer the Human Marine Corps nor the Free Corps of the rebels.”
He paused, holding the assembly in the palm of his hand.
“We are the Human Legion.”
Hecht looked daggers. Nhlappo managed somehow to look sullen and impressed at the same time. A few amongst the ship’s crew rolled their eyes in dismay and most of the remainder were stony faced. But more and more of the other Marines looked at each other with rising excitement on their faces. Heartbeat by heartbeat, belief and pride blossomed. Faces flushed with the possibility of what they could achieve together.
The Marines on Beowulf were few in number but they could absorb stragglers from the civil war and grow. Nothing was impossible because they were Marines. Marines of the Human Legion.
They started to believe.
This was it! This was the moment when the human race took a different course. All those prophecies and hidden watches others had made over Arun. They had all led to this moment.
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