The Blood Service

by Allen Ivers

  THE BLOOD SERVICE

  A Capital Adventure

  Allen A Ivers

  Copyright © 2020 by Allen A Ivers

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Illustrations and Cover by Juan Padrón.

  https://www.juanjpadron.com

  For my wife, Lyn, who encouraged me every day

  For my best friend, Evan, who acted as my equipment consultant and fight choreographer

  And for Matthew Cunningham at La Costa Canyon High School

  - My first creative writing teacher -

  Thank you for inspiring me to do this for a living

  And to all the other teachers out there

  “Do not be afraid; our fate

  Cannot be taken from us; it is a gift.”

  Dante Alighieri, Inferno

  Contents

  Orders From The Ministry

  Specifics For HR-2056

  I. Chainbreaker

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  II. Paragon

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  III. Lodestone

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Edicts From the Ministry

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Allen A Ivers

  Orders From The Ministry

  Earth Directive

  ALL REGIMENTS

  MESSAGE FOLLOWS

  RE: BORDER WORLD SKIRMISHES

  BY ORDER OF THE MINISTRY OF CIVIL DEFENSE, ALL UNITS ARE TO MUSTER TO

  OUTLANDER STATION

  FOR DEPLOYMENT TO THE FRONT

  ALL OTHER COMMAND DIRECTIVES ARE RESCINDED

  ZU GLORIAM

  Specifics For HR-2056

  MINISTRY IS AWARE OF HOSTILE NATIVE WILDLIFE IN REGION

  ARTICLE 6-58 s.2 INVOKED —

  ALL UNITS ARE TO ABANDON POSTS AND PROCEED TO RALLY WITHOUT DELAY

  ALL COLONIAL ASSETS DEEMED EXPENDABLE

  DAMAGE ESTIMATE FOLLOWS

  PROPERTY ESTIMATE: TOTAL

  MATERIAL ESTIMATE: TOTAL

  HUMAN ESTIMATE: TOTAL

  Part 1

  Chainbreaker

  1

  Riley

  Marcus Riley bore little respect for any man that cried, with distinct exceptions for patriotism and dogs. He rationalized that this instance was the former as he fought the beads of salty water betraying him up behind his eyes.

  For all the insanity of the last thirty-two hours, this moment of calm was the worst. The hustle of soldiers marching past, rucksacks on their shoulders, might have been soothing, but for the fatted transport that hummed on the launchpad, nose tilted gently skyward.

  When each man filled his seat, workers crammed every other available space with crates from the supply warehouses. Somebody in there had the unlucky jump seat with a rocket launcher in his lap.

  He dragged his feet as he trudged up the ramp, less a sailor on the gangway and more like a prisoner to the gallows. The crate in Riley's hands bore his personal effects. He rubbed his thumbs back over the studded tabs, as though he could put his commendations back on the wall, the picture of his sister back on his desk, and the server back in the rack.

  Just two days ago, everyone had been surly and disgruntled, maybe even bored. Now, Imperial citizens were shooting at each other on the far side of the galaxy — and they had called Colonel Riley and his men to come join in their nightmare.

  It’s like they forgot why he was in this particular corner of the universe in the first place. The innocent citizenry packing the streets behind him -- people he’d grown quite fond of – now hurled everything they had at his exposed back: epithets, threats, promises & tears, in that order. Just on the cusp of hating him.

  He didn’t blame them one bit. If he didn’t go, they wouldn’t have to suffer. His loyalty was going to kill them all.

  Conditioning can only do so much for a conscience.

  No amount of after-action reports could reflect what he’d seen firsthand on this forsaken dustball -- those that died on the front-lines, civilian and soldier alike, did not meet their end with glory or meaning. They died brutal deaths, screaming for their mothers, and it would take entirely too long for those voices to quiet in Riley’s memory.

  Riley had been drilled and trained to march men in the streets and enforce laws and customs; theories had been discussed and debated on how one might cull the population to a manageable size; humanity had even enslaved entire planets before turning their greedy eyes to distant stars with an unquenchable thirst for something called ‘dominion.’

  On the far side of the galaxy, two opposing forces tried to enforce their own vision. But this enemy had no such relatable design, no human relative thought -- they would butcher the colony down to the last child. They would do so because that's what they were for. Riley hadn’t seen much of the universe in his six months out of the Academy, but this had to be one of its bleaker corners.

  Riley stopped on the gangway, throwing one last glance up at the Aurora Building at the center of town. His office had been on the sixth floor of that towering complex, the structure retrofitted from the original colony ship's hull – set into the earth like a rusty knife. Riley often marveled at the engineering forethought that had to happen behind a functioning ship gliding through an unstable atmosphere just to plop down as a stable structure -- and do so reliably.

  What hadn’t been stripped away from the vessel’s superstructure to build the initial surface modules became the colony’s administrative offices, manufactory, food & water habitat, and power grid. They were self-sustaining from the moment the rockets cut out.

  Now some five years later, the colony was a thriving metropolis all to its own, with farmlands and mining and schools and hospitals, leaving the Aurora as the seat of the local government. Mankind had turned colonization into a tidy little business, efficient and profitable, with minimal risk.

  Someone had lost money on this particular wager.

  The dry savannah had been considered a prime location for mineral mining, designated HR-2056 by the bidding corporations. The official title was Vanguard, the most solid outer reach territory the Empire had stamped out.

  The locals called it the 'Hellmouth.'

  These colonists needn’t concoct bogeymen for their children; they had but to simply watch the evening news. This bogeyman was quite real, quite vicious, and it snatched far more than ill-behaved children.

  Riley sighed, putting his crate down in the middle of the gangway. Aides and other passengers simply parted around him, no one going to question the young man's intent – he might've been the youngest person there, but the white cords on his Orbital uniform gave him all their respect.

  He clicked his crate open with his foot, relishing in that satisfying sound, before snapping it shut again. This place would have to find a way to manage without Riley and his soldiers.

  It was a death sentence, but orders were orders — he followed just as many as he gave. And
he would carry these out.

  Leaving thousands to the whims of the local animals. Their feral executioners.

  He had prayed on this, sought to conjure some wisdom his instructors had forgotten, but none came. He read the words from the Gnostic Librum: “Aspire not for the self but for the Whole; the clean and the dirty; the sinner and the saint; the neighbor and the stranger…”

  This order ran contrary to every bone in his body. This wasn’t what he had been trained to do.

  He let his eyes linger on the crowd below him, their watery eyes glittering in the mid-afternoon sun like a thousand diamonds in bright sands. A chorus of voices reaching up to his retreating form.

  Save us.

  This exodus would doom each and every one of them. For Consul and Empire. Zu gloriam.

  Those dispatch orders weren’t meant for public consumption, but it didn’t take too long for the locals to notice every soldier in every barracks packing their slate-gray duffel bags and crews scuttling about fueling the transports. Demonstrations packed the streets, having grown to the dull roar of chants that now echoed up through the city spires.

  These weren’t riots, not yet. They were pleading for their lives. The rioting would come next, as their last hope trailed up and away into the blue sky. Anyone who died in that early wave of violence should consider themselves blessed.

  The Colonial Administration -- the elected Governor and representative Statesmen -- were likely to have strong opinions on the matter, but they wouldn’t dare challenge the Consul’s orders.

  Or would they?

  Governor Christopher Dedria all but jumped the police line. It was surprising agility for the older man, a portly gentleman in his fifties, with balding hair and a second chin asserting its dominance. But desperation makes athletes of everyone. Sweat already stained the hand-stitched linen shirt and its violet filigree. That ornate rag would likely be disposed of shortly to join a pile of soiled seasonal clothes that the dilettante worked through weekly.

  Whatever voices of objection from the peace officers were drowned out by the raucous cheers – Hell, Riley almost shouted just out of surprise. It's not often an aging dog delivers a trick like that.

  "Ri-ley!” The Governor bellowed, popping the two distinct syllables. It sounded more scolding than he probably meant. "Colonel!"

  No matter. This conversation had to happen eventually.

  Riley stretched his eyes open wide, hoping to dry his eyes before this fight gathered steam. No one wanted to see their military weepy, circumstances be damned. They wanted the solace and calm of a hardened general, stoic and stone-faced no matter the odds — it was a psychopathy that was somehow comforting to the uninitiated.

  The civilians were allowed to be emotional. His instructors had belabored that point: the people are under all kinds of stress, duress. You are their balm, their shield. They can explode; you must maintain.

  The Governor opened the conversation by skipping some levels, “You’re killing us!"

  "Want to keep your voice down?" Riley asked.

  "No, I don't think I will, Colonel!" Christopher snapped, "Your men leave on those transports, and we’re all dead by the new year." For all his vitriol and spit, this was a man imploring mercy.

  It was an accurate prediction, if even a tad hopeful. Riley’s own analysts had it just under eight months. The structures would become a cosmic gravestone for the unburied, a sign for passersby to breathe soft as they sail on to safer shores.

  Tread not on this cursed land.

  Riley crossed his arms and squared up on the Governor, devoting his full attention. No more use for formalities. He was issuing this man’s fatal prognosis — come down from the mountain for just a moment, speak man to man.

  “I’m sorry, Christopher, but they need every gun hand they can get.”

  “Oh, I’m sure!” He spat, “One pretender hopping onto her pretend throne on some dark rock — and while you’re out defending the honor of a sixteen-year-old boy, fifty-two thousand of your people…” The Governor lingered on that designation, “...will be cut to ribbons!”

  That boy.

  Riley bristled at the term, tilting his head. Maybe it was Riley's full and dark beard or the ramp making him appear that much taller, but the Governor seemed to forget that Riley himself was a mere nineteen.

  “That boy is your Consul General,” Riley hissed, trying to lower the Governor’s boiling temper by denying that fire any room to breathe. He may have a colony of fearful screaming voices at his back, but Riley had an Empire to protect. “And I’ll thank you to speak of him with respect.”

  The Governor paused, swallowing hard, nervous. Had he gone too far and damned his people?

  Riley smiled then, amiable and warm, “And we train our sixteen-year-old boys very well.”

  The Governor squared his shoulders, rolling the kinks out of his creaking neck, “There has to be a compromise.”

  Steel toed boots approached from up the gangway, ringing off the titanium alloy floor. A commanding baritone shot through the noise of the crowd, “Any compromise would defy direct orders.”

  Lieutenant Ilern Holmst marched up to them, crisp and precise, folder tucked under one arm and rucksack over his shoulder. He might as well have stepped right off the Academy floor.

  Two years of deployment and he hadn’t lost a single step, nor grown cynical of his mission. His crew cut stained his pristine dome with a blanket of brown, so thin and fine it appeared painted on — revealing the surgical scars betraying his many implants etched onto his neck and hairline. His small frame and lean build packaged him as a coiled spring, a single muscle fiber from end to end, with visible veins popping from his biceps.

  Riley could probably take his blood pressure from eyesight.

  He was the cookie-cutter example of a soldier. A champion of deterrent by calculated escalation. Not the voice Riley needed right now.

  “A compromise that would save lives, Lieutenant,” the Governor countered back, not to be bullied. Not today. There was no more ground for him to give. They were quite literally standing at the harbor.

  Holmst slid past the Governor like he was any other piece of landscape, presenting his folder to Riley. “Full roster, medical deferments tabbed.

  “They’ll have priority for Sol circulation.”

  The Governor exploded, “The orders are wrong, and you know it!”

  Holmst turned around, setting his icy reptile eyes on to the Governor. Riley found his own glare tracking on to target as well. Even the crowd seemed to hush at that pronouncement.

  No one knew what would happen next. By Colonial Code, they would be within their rights to place cold steel into the Governor’s chest cavity -- a kindness given other Judicial options.

  But outburst or not, the Governor’s life expectancy was short. Why wouldn’t he throw out the rulebook if there were even the slightest of chances?

  The man had tried deference; he had tried throwing fire; now to try hurling some blasphemy.

  “Orders from the Dunsweir,” Ilern snarled, “are not ‘wrong’, Governor.”

  “Blessed be his steps,” the governor intoned, call and response, “for his road his long.” It almost sounded mocking, because it absolutely was.

  Riley had been considering the math on this all morning. His detachment included over a thousand Imperial Regulars and a platoon of officers from Orbital Strike Command. They would likely make little impact on the course of the intergalactic conflict -- the regiments in Sol were several million strong, and the locus of the fighting was nine jump points away.

  Half of the war would be done before Riley arrived. He’d spend his entire deployment ferreting out enclaves of routed merchants who bowed toward the wrong person. The Governor’s words were treasonous and heretical, but they weren't wrong.

  Riley sat down on his crate. “Make your case, Governor."

  Holmst stiffened, but the discipline etched into his bones locked him in place. His very marrow prevented him fro
m objecting with the Governor’s same brand of recklessness. He may as well have; that small motion bore out all the same intention.

  The Governor tented his hands as he tried to phrase his pitch. It would’ve been more accurate to say he was on his knees, “You don’t need to leave immediately. Let me draft up a militia, and you train them for a week, two at the most.”

  “They’d be an undisciplined mob with firearms,” Riley dismissed it, “It’d be like setting fire to the town as we pull out of dock.”

  “A month then?” The Governor asked, shivers shooting up his spine like he could feel a blade’s edge kissing the back of his neck, dragging along the stiffened hairs with a metallic hiss.

  Riley shook his head. He wouldn’t ask the real question, the impossible ask.

  He needed Riley to become a co-conspirator.

  “We’re wasting time,” Holmst chided.

  “I think the ships will wait for us, Lieutenant. Do you have a proposal?” Riley quizzed his aide de camp, “Or do you fail to see the problem we’re faced with?”