by Ben Weaver
“Whatever happened to her could’ve been beyond the capabilities of this being or these caves,” said Dina. “Maybe there are rules we just don’t understand.”
Jarrett pulled out his K-bar and held it tightly in one hand, the blade jutting from the bottom of his fist and balanced over his heart. “Let’s see what happens if I do this.” He reared back.
I froze, wanted to shout for him to stop as Dina and Clarion suddenly screamed.
“Just kidding,” he said to our joint swearing. “I nearly cried cutting my finger back there.” He winked and shuffled off toward the unmapped tunnel.
“If your brother didn’t have such a nice ass, I’d kick it for him,” Clarion said.
We de-skinned, and for about another half hour we hustled through the mystery tunnel, following a sinuous route and listening to Jarrett bemoan the fact that he couldn’t take a long-range scan to reveal the tunnel’s terminus. The natural conduit stretched well beyond our lights. We did know from our last skin-up that we were heading back toward the academy and had descended about nine hundred and fifty meters into the ground. We had probably already alerted the authorities, but just in case we hadn’t, we wouldn’t skin again. The icy air made us long for those warm coats of energy.
At one point the tunnel dropped off into a chamber about twenty meters below. Jarrett took one look at it and announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have us a bivvy.”
“We’re stopping?” I asked incredulously.
“The ladies look tired. So we’re stopping. You want to go on, that’s fine with me.”
I threw my hands in the air. “Fine. There’s probably a team in here searching for us, but we’ll stop.”
Jarrett was first into the chamber, and he teased us as we rappelled toward him. I was last down the line, and my damned piton blew loose from the fissure I had chosen. Why I continued to have no luck with climbing I didn’t know, but at least Clarion was there to spot my fall and guide me through the first rebound. Still, I hit the floor a second time and came to a tumbling halt. Jarrett applauded. I cursed.
After we ate, I made two unsuccessful attempts to strike up conversation with Dina and Clarion. Trouble was, we had hiked so much that both were too exhausted to do anything but sleep.
For several hours I just watched Dina and invented new reasons to hate Paul Beauregard. Somewhere far off, the wind bellowed, and sometime later I fell asleep, since Jarrett had volunteered to take the first watch.
I wish I could say that I dreamed that night, that I reached some kind of epiphany in the cave, that the spirits of Racinians visited me and exposed the military’s treachery. But the world had been set to pause until Jarrett shook me awake. He backhanded tears from his cheeks as he told me that I had slept seven hours and that it was time to leave.
“What’s wrong?”
“Everything. Come on.”
Looking as groggy as a pair of first years who had slept in a cave, Dina and Clarion gathered their packs and fell in with us, Dina muttering, “Let us find something. Please let us find something.”
But we would do no more than travel through the endless tunnel for five more hours until a blinding shaft of light carved its way toward us. Jarrett hustled for the light, and the discrete hum of an airjeep grew louder as we followed him and neared the exit.
We emerged on a bluff opposite old Whore Face. The tunnel had led us all the way back within South Point’s perimeter. I had never noticed the tunnel’s entrance because it lay behind a wide lip of rock that concealed it from view unless you came at it from the exact angle in an airjeep. You couldn’t see it from the riverbed below.
“Get away from the entrance,” Jarrett ordered. “We don’t want them to know where it is.”
We hustled along the bluff, seeing that it followed a rocky path down toward the riverbed. I continually scanned the sky for that airjeep, but I guess I had mistaken the hum. A boomerang-shaped C-129 Guard Corps Transport on final approach toward South Point’s small spaceport cut a white ribbon overhead. We all knew that the next shuttle wouldn’t arrive for nearly a month, so the presence of that aircraft took most of us aback. Jarrett seemed unfazed.
By the time we reached the riverbed, an airjeep did finally arrive, piloted by Pope himself, with Gorbatova strapped into the co-pilot’s seat. We snapped to as the sergeant slid out and seemed to grow a meter taller as he brought his glare toward us.
“Sir, I’m sorry, sir, but the mission was unsuccessful,” Jarrett said.
“We went through a lot of trouble for you, Private. Don’t tell me the mission was unsuccessful.”
“Sir, I’m sorry, sir. I did cut my finger, and it did heal in a very short time, sir. We met an old woman who might’ve been a cadet; we weren’t sure. We lost her. She might be dead. If there’s anything else there, we missed it.”
“And that’s it?”
“Sir, that’s it, sir.”
Pope’s cheeks flushed as he exchanged a look with the squad corporal. “Ms. Gorbatova and I broke the code. We lied to buy you time. We did that for nothing?”
“Sir, can I VDO now, sir?”
“No.”
“But sir, you promised that if I—”
“What’s going on?” I shifted between them.
“Mr. St. Andrew, I assume your brother hasn’t mentioned the fact that we’re already at war with the alliances?”
“No, sir, he has not, sir.”
“And I assume he hasn’t told you that your option to VDO is no longer valid during wartime?”
“No, sir, he has not, sir.”
“Well, ladies and gentlemen, there it is. And in about two hours, our beloved regimental commander is going to recall everyone from R&R, then assemble the entire regiment to make the announcement. If the Guard Corps is hiding anything, we’re gonna find out the hard way. And you, Jarrett St. Andrew, will be with us.”
Jarrett’s eyes burned. “Sir, no, sir!”
“You’ll do what they say, Private. Otherwise when they get through with you, you won’t even remember wanting to VDO. Understand?”
My brother swore and turned his back.
“All right. Everybody into the jeep. And if you’re the praying sort, then go ahead—because at this time tomorrow, we’ll all be on line to be conditioned, cerebroed, then shipped off to war.”
PART 2
Quantum Bonds
7
On cool summer nights, when the moons are full and the tide is low and lapping quietly at the shore, when I’ve found numb relief in a bottle of expensive bourbon and lounge on a chair with my feet dug deeply into the sand, then, and only then, can I consider those days from the time we learned of war until the time we left Exeter.
General Julia J. Marxi, South Point’s commandant, tawted out on the C-129 Guard Corps Transport, bound for Rexi-Calhoon’s Columbia Colony, where she would attend an emergency meeting of the new Colonial Alliance’s congress.
The regimental commander, Colonel Michael James Bryant, assumed control of the regiment and, as Pope had predicted, ordered all fifteen hundred of us to report to admin’s primary assembly hall, an act that already foreshadowed the importance of what he had to say since we infrequently convened as an entire regiment.
I had only seen Bryant from afar, and my seat in the third row next to my stone-faced brother afforded me a clear view of the South Point alumnus who, despite his remarkable reputation, appeared remarkably nondescript. I had half expected to find him a sinewy tank of a middle-aged man, squarely built and well scrubbed, a walking advertisement for the cadre. But Bryant appeared more an academic than an athlete, surprisingly rawboned, even somewhat under-nourished. He wore his sandy hair slightly longer than most of us, and his lips seemed too small and permanently in conflict with his smile. He wrung his hands at least ten times before mounting the dais and silencing the murmurs by his mere presence. We rose, snapped to, and waited for his release. As we returned to our seats, I glanced down the row. A tear slipped from Dina’s eye.
“Ladies and gentlemen, on March seventeenth, twenty-three-oh-one, at nine A.M. Colonial Standard Time, the Colonial Congress of the new Seventeen System Alliance issued to Sol’s Eastern and Western Alliances a formal declaration of war.”
Absolute silence in the hall.
“We regret not being able to issue this statement to you sooner, but the commandant felt that premature announcements would be more harmful than helpful. We had all hoped that by now hostilities would have ended. Unfortunately, the situation on Mars kindled the other conflicts. I have the unenviable duty to inform you that on Tau Ceti Eleven, a contingent of Colonial Wardens took on an Eastern Alliance regiment at Shefas. Intel indicates that of the approximately two thousand personnel, only fourteen managed to withdraw and escape. The others were not taken as POWs. They were massacred.”
Bryant’s words stunned me. He seemed in favor of the new colo government, but the Seventeen was part of the Eastern and Western Alliances, and those kinds of sentiments were no less than treacherous.
“Within the next hour I’ll be uploading a detailed report to your tablets. I’ll supply you with everything I can within clearance. Now, for those of you unfamiliar with her, I’d like to introduce Ms. Mary Brooks, chief of the Colonial Alliance Security Council.”
I hadn’t noticed the smartly dressed woman seated in the front row until she climbed gracefully onto the dais. Dark-haired and about thirty-five, Ms. Brooks chaired a council of colonial senators who, along with military representatives, advised the new Colonial Congress on security and military matters. More important, the council was instrumental in approving and overseeing military policy and served as the colonial president’s principal arm for negotiating with the Terran Alliances. Although Ms. Brooks wasn’t part of the military, when she spoke, the brass listened. She scrutinized us a moment, then nodded to Bryant. “Thank you, Colonel. Ladies and gentlemen, first let me express my sincere sympathy for you and your families. Know that our thoughts and prayers are with you. I’ve come all the way from Columbia Colony, where, as you know, the Colonial Congress has convened to meet with the Seventeen’s generals and plot our next move. I say our next move because I must inform you that General Yllar Juvhixa has, along with her advisory committee, decreed that the Corps no longer serves the Eastern and Western Alliances but now operates under the auspices of the new Colonial Alliance. The Seventeen, has, in effect, seceded from the Terran Alliances and is no longer part of the Western and Eastern Alliance Navy.”
Rumors of colonial secession had been circulating for most of our lives, and most of us had shrugged them off. We had often discussed in the mess that the colonies could never take on the alliances and win. But it had happened. And they would try. We would try.
“What does this mean to you?” Ms. Brooks went on. “It means you have a decision to make. You may remain here, where you’ll be immediately conditioned, then commissioned and assigned to a combat unit. With Racinian conditioning, you’ll be qualified to lead raw recruits into battle. I’m not mincing words here. Those recruits will be raw. Or, you may choose to leave. Three transports will arrive at nineteen hundred tomorrow. They’ll take you to the Terran Alliances’ Kapteyn Beta Outpost. To be honest, we have no idea what’ll happen to you once you reach that ring station. You might return to the Terran Alliance military, or they might hold you as a POW. They might kill you. In any case, the commandant wants you to have the option to fight with us or leave. We know we’re asking you to break the code to join the colonial cause, but it’s the only way to defend our systems. If you can’t do that, by all means, go. Now, I plan on being here until late tomorrow, and I urge any of you who wish to speak with me to come to admin. Thank you.”
I was in shock, my life turned upside down in the course of a three-minute speech.
“Anybody who gets on those transports is dead,” Jarrett said.
“No,” I argued. “They won’t do that. We’re too valuable.”
“Were you listening? They massacred the Wardens, and those people are a hell of lot more valuable than we are. The alliances want to demoralize us as quickly as possible. Killing a whole lot of young sons and daughters is exactly what they’ll do.” His expression grew long. “Shit. There goes another ticket out of here. But I’ll tell you this much: I won’t let them condition me.”
“All right, South Point Regiment,” Bryant said. “All R&R activities have been cancelled. We’ll set condition Fire Marx One, full alert. Check with your COs for your watch stations and times. You’ll also be receiving your individual conditioning schedules. They’ll tell you where and when to report. We’ll get off as many communiqués as we can, and if you’d like your messages to be part of the master chip tawted out, make your requests ASAP. Once again, check your tablets for that update. And may your God or Gods be with you all. Dismissed.”
I rose, but so many cadets flooded the aisles behind me that it would take several minutes to exit. A familiar face materialized in the crowd and shouldered his way forward. “Mr. St. Andrew,” Paul Beauregard called. “Thought I saw you down here.”
“Hard to miss me,” I said bitterly, tapping my birthmark.
“They just sent word. My father was among those fourteen who made it.” Beauregard’s gaze found Dina, and he nearly trampled me to get to her.
I started into the aisle, then looked back for my brother. He had already gone.
Back at our billet, Pope told us that we would be confined for the next six hours, after which we would be issued QQ90 particle rifles, a variant on the conventional slugshooter with a tiny, synchrotron particle accelerator used to propel the ammo. While a fully powered skin could repel the slug, twenty or thirty strikes to the same zone would weaken the shield and allow a bullet through. Problem was, none of us had received advance rifle training (reserved for second years), just the introductory courses that Pope and Gorbatova had rushed us through in the last few weeks.
So, with minimal training, we would stand outside our billet for a six-hour watch, after which we would be relieved by the Seventy-ninth.
All ten of us lay on our gelracks, and I guessed that the others were like me, working out their futures in silence. I thought we’d be talking furiously, but the shock had finally settled in.
Paul Beauregard rose and crossed at the end of billet, his face hard, gaze unflinching. “The articles of the Code of Conduct are no longer valid. We’re not Alliance citizens anymore. We’re colonists, and that’s where our loyalties should lie. We’ve been exploited for long enough. Maybe history is repeating itself here, but if it doesn’t, then our families are doomed. I want to know right now who will stand with me.”
Dina left her gelrack and shifted behind Beauregard, as did Jarrett and Halitov. It took but another few seconds for Clarion to join my brother.
I figured that Agi Narendra, who believed that his uncle had been killed by Alliance Marines, would rise and add himself to the group. But he shifted to the opposite end of the billet, drawing a murmur from his friend, Too Yat-sen. “Hey, I’m not a traitor,” Narendra said under Beauregard’s accusing gaze. “But they’ve already killed most of my family. I can’t let ’em take me.”
“That’s your reason?” asked Beauregard.
“You people are going to lose.”
“We people?”
“A lot of us wanted to come here because we knew service in the Corps would give us a better life than one on our homeworlds. If we join the Seventeen, then we’re back where we started. Maybe even worse. Isn’t that right, Scott?”
I shuddered as he dumped the argument on me.
“Do you agree with him?” Beauregard asked.
“I don’t know. I thought that coming here would give me another chance. The whole idea was to escape colo life.” My cheek flinched.
“Scott, come on,” Jarrett said impatiently.
Mario Obote, Too Yat-sen, and Joey Haltiwanger now stood beside Narendra. My breath grew shallow. “Joey?”
He averted h
is gaze. “If I’m going to fight, I want to fight on a winning team.”
“We’re colonists,” Beauregard said. “That’s our heritage. That’s who we are. You can’t escape that.”
“I think we can,” said Narendra.
“What is this?” hollered Pope as he burst into the billet, a tablet tucked under his arm. Since I was the only one not in a group, Pope set his crosshairs over me. “Mr. St. Andrew? Explain.”
“Sir, we were just having a conversation, sir.”
Pope eyed Beauregard’s crew, then Narendra’s. “Picked your sides already, huh? Thought it would take a little longer. For anyone who cares, Staff Sergeant Rodriguez and, to my great dismay, Squad Corporal Gorbatova have elected to ship out and return to the Terran Alliances. Guess you, Mr. Narendra, along with Mr. Yat-sen, Mr. Obote, and Mr. Haltiwanger will be joining them. I’m remaining with the Seventeen.”
“Sir, I hope there aren’t any hard feelings, sir. It’s just—”
Pope cut off Narendra with snorting laughter. “No hard feelings, Private? This is a fuckin’ war. I want you scumbags out of my sight. Report to admin right now. You’ll remain there in First Battalion’s custody until those transports arrive. Move out!” A ball of energy seemed to swell inside Pope, stiffening his joints and turning his cheeks crimson as he watched them file out.
I wanted to call after Joey, but what do you say to a friend who, in a heartbeat, has chosen to become your enemy?
“And what about you, Mr. St. Andrew?” Pope asked. “Are you with us? Or against us?”
“Sir, do I have to tell you right now, sir?”
“As irony would have it, you do. I came in here to take that vote.” He slid out his tablet, ran a finger across the illuminated display. “They’ve stepped up the conditioning schedule. Those who are with us are going within the hour.”
Jarrett flinched.
“Sir, if I go, do you think I’ll really be ready? They’re throwing away four years of assimilation time. How can they just condition us and send us off, sir?”
