by Jay Allan
Evans took a deep breath. He was scared and sad, but anger was his strongest emotion, fueled by a deep and growing hatred for UNGov. He thought about Taylor’s men reaching Earth, rallying the people of the world, destroying those who had done this to him, to his soldiers. He didn’t know if they could do it, a few thousand men taking on a world, but he liked to believe they would prevail.
“I will give you no orders. Each of you must make your own choice…and choose well, for whatever you decide, it may be the last decision you make for yourself.”
Evans reached down to his side, pulling his pistol slowly from its holster. “Here then, is my decision. I shall never live as a slave again, never surrender my free will, never be made to serve such an evil master again.”
He looked out over the soldiers assembled before him. A murmur rippled through their ranks when he pulled out the pistol, but now they stood frozen, silent, watching their commander in terrified awe.
“Goodbye, my brothers. I have been honored to serve with you and, briefly, to command your ranks. You deserve far better than that which fate has given you.” He paused for an instant, his eyes panning across the assembled ranks one last time. “Fortune go with you wherever you go, my friends.”
He took one last breath and raised the pistol to his head. A second passed, possibly two, seeming impossibly long to the men watching their leader. Then a single shot rang out, and Major Thomas Evans fell to the ground.
The men of the Black Corps stood in stunned silence for a moment, staring at the body of their leader. Then a single shot rang out, as if in answer. And another, and another. Throughout the massed ranks, men began to fall, singly at first then in clumps, following the example of their commander, choosing death over slavery.
When it was over the air was still, and in the silent, fading twilight, 4,000 men lay dead by their own hands, a last rebellion against those who had taken their humanity and made them into slaves.
* * *
Keita stood before Taylor, trying to maintain his composure despite the panic building inside him. He was exhausted and more than a little disoriented. He couldn’t reconcile with how he’d gone from discussing Taylor’s army in the safety of UN Headquarters months before to being their prisoner. He was scared, wondering what the rebels would do with him. Years of arrogance as one of Earth’s masters wouldn’t let him believe they might seriously harm him. It didn’t occur to him that Taylor might ask himself what treatment he would get at the hands of UNGov if he had been captured. If it had, Keita’s meager control would have broken down completely.
Taylor walked toward Keita, his stride grim and purposeful. When Keita saw the expression on Taylor’s face, his heart sank, and he began to shake with fear. This was a man like none he’d ever seen before. It wasn’t the fiery heat of rage the captive saw on Taylor’s face. It was something far worse, an icy stare as cold as death itself. There was no humanity in the man approaching, no pity, no mercy. Only grim purpose. And a hatred Keita couldn’t begin to understand.
Taylor stopped about a meter from Keita and looked over his shoulder, toward a small cluster of officers. “The army will prepare to march toward the Yanvar Portal. We’re moving on as soon as possible. No more delays.” The new forces arriving on Juno would eventually pursue his people, and he wanted to be off Lorus before that happened. The Yanvar Portal was in a remote area. It would take any pursuers a long time to find it. By the time they did, Taylor and his men would be on Earth.
Taylor didn’t know if his battered group of survivors from Juno qualified as an army anymore, but he didn’t know what else to call it. The remnants of Force Juno had brought his numbers up, but the ranks of his Supersoldiers were sorely depleted. No more than a third of the Ten Thousand had survived the holocaust of Juno, but those men were as grim and deadly as any who had ever taken up arms.
“We have a job to do on Earth, and it’s past time we got there.”
“Yes, sir.” The senior officer of the group replied crisply. “With your permission, sir.” He snapped off a salute and, at Taylor’s nod, he turned and trotted off to carry out the order.
Taylor turned toward one of the guards standing next to Keita. “Escort Mr. Keita to storage hut 7. It has been prepared for him.” There was a menace in Taylor’s voice so terrifying, Keita’s legs gave out and he slumped to the ground. “He and I have much to talk about.”
Taylor watched the guards drag Keita’s limp and cowering form toward the hut, but he wasn’t really seeing it. Taylor couldn’t see anything but Tony Black, one instant the cheerful, smiling image of his friend, the next his imagining of the dead and bloodied face of his second in command, lying unretrieved and unburied on the battlefield. Whatever was left of Taylor’s humanity, of his ability to grant an enemy mercy, had died in that bloodsoaked mud with his friend.
He turned and walked grimly toward the storage hut. He had a lot to discuss with Keita.
* * *
Taylor walked slowly away from the hut, wiping his hands on a small cloth, once bright white, now almost completely covered in red. It was blood mostly, but other fluids too. Keita’s interrogation had not been an easy one, but Taylor was sure he’d gotten everything the prisoner knew. It was all there now, stored in the eidetic memory UNGov’s scientists had implanted in his brain. Names, locations, vital government installations, force strengths…everything. It really had been foolish, Taylor thought, for UNGov to allow a member of the Secretariat to fall into his grasp. He couldn’t even begin to assign a value to the information he’d gotten from Keita.
The UN Secretary had talked, almost from the start, but Taylor had been forced to press harder to get the truly classified data. There were others Keita was afraid of too, and Taylor had to work his way through that before the dam burst, and the prisoner hemorrhaged truly sensitive information. By the time Taylor put a bullet in Keita’s head, it was nothing but a mercy, a thank-you for the tremendous intelligence Taylor would now use in the quest to bring down UNGov.
He gave a passing thought to the brutality he’d just employed, the soulless expediency with which he’d tormented his prisoner. He tried to imagine his younger self, what he would have thought. But he quickly put it aside. That boy had been a fool, a child with no idea how dark the universe truly is. Still, Taylor had interrogated Keita alone. He would allow himself to become a monster to see the Crusade achieve victory, but he wouldn’t ask any of his men to tread down that path with him. Those nightmares would be his and his alone.
He’d done what he had to do, and there was no use whimpering about it. He had work ahead, so much work. They’d won the battle on Juno…or at least they’d escaped from it. He had no idea what Evans and the remnants of the Black Corps had done. He had some suspicions, but they were too dark, too terrible to think about. He hated himself for hoping they made the choice he thought they had. It was horrifying, but it also meant there was no chance he would have to face them again, that more of his men would die. The holocaust on Juno had been enough.
He didn’t have time for such musings. There was still a long way to go. And whenever he felt his resolve weakening or pity creeping into his soul, there was the image of Tony Black, his friend, his brother, alone, lying dead on the cold ground.
The battle for Earth would be next, and it would be like nothing Taylor’s people could imagine. His army had left almost 70% of its strength dead in the sands of Juno, thousands of loyal soldiers, dedicated fighters…friends. He didn’t begin to know how he could destroy UNGov with what was left. But he knew he would try, his men would try…and if they didn’t succeed, none of them would survive. They owed nothing less to the thousands who had died on Juno, giving their lives so the fight could continue.
He knew victory on Earth would only be the start, that the Darkness was coming, and man had to be ready to face it. He still bore that burden alone, the only human being who knew what was coming. There was a limit to what men could endure, and his soldiers had enough to carry.
He stopped a
nd turned to look back toward the Juno Portal. “Well, my friend, we are on our way back to Earth, as we planned when this all began back on Gehenna.
He had a picture in his mind, Tony Black the day he’d reported for duty fresh out of the Portal. He’d been a cocky little shit, plucked straight from the streets of the Philly Metrozone. Taylor had been a newly promoted sergeant, eager to prove he had what it took to whip new recruits into shape. They’d clashed at first, but it wasn’t long before they’d become fast friends. For more than ten years, they’d marched together, fought together, ate together, pulled each other through the hell of Erastus. Taylor knew he would never have survived so long in Gehenna without Tony Black.
“Goodbye, my friend.” Taylor’s voice was soft, mournful. “I will drink that toast to you standing in the wreckage of UNGov HQ.”
Homefront
Book III
It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.
— Douglas MacArthur
Part One
Return
Chapter 1
From the Journal of Jake Taylor:
I sit here writing this on the eve of our return. Soon we will go through the Portal, step from the steaming jungles of Ghasara, and onto the frozen steppes of Siberia. It is an undiscovered Portal on Earth, or at least it appears to be, and though we will emerge in a deserted wasteland far from our objectives, we shall have time to bring our forces through unopposed. Then the war for Earth will begin.
Earth. My home. Home to all of us. And yet now, to my mind, barely the fading sinews of a dream almost faded from remembrance. We have spent years in hell, my soldiers and I, the lives we once knew sacrificed on the pyre of aggrandizement and power for the corrupt politicians who rule Earth. I know where I was born, where I lived before I was sent to Erastus. But I’m not sure I even have a home anymore. Looking at a whole world is one thing, but the thought of walking through the New Hampshire woods and back to that house, so full of memories of childhood and family, is terrifying. I don’t know what has become of my family, if they are still there—or indeed, still alive—but the thought of truly going home terrifies me more than any battle. I left a boy, gentle in nature and bookish, and I return a warrior, a killer, part machine and so far from that mild-mannered kid I must remind myself that he was indeed once me. What will they think of me? Will they know me? Will they fear me?
But there is more of concern than my own possible homecoming. We have much to reckon with, the men of UN Force Erastus, and the other soldiers who have rallied to our cause. For years we fought an unjust war, feeding our own brethren into the fires even as we slaughtered thousands of the Machines, the disrespectful name we created for the Tegeri’s genetically engineered allies. We cursed the Tegeri, called them murderers, aggressors, and yet it was we who filled those roles, and though the soldiers of Earth sent to war were lied to and deceived, it is yet our hands awash with the blood of the innocent. I shall carry that to my grave, the fading, partial recollections of the Machines I killed, the stench of death on the battlefield, the feeling in my stomach when I first learned the truth…all of it.
I have sworn vengeance on those who caused this tragedy—all of us have—and we shall have it, or none of us will survive. We shall spill the blood of our enemies, watch as the life slips from their eyes and they breathe their last painful, gasping breaths. And we shall never cease, not until all responsible are dead, and all who aided them and are stained with their guilt.
Our ranks have swelled, and we now number almost 60,000, a vastly greater force than escaped the terrible battle on Juno against the Black Corps. My officers have used the Tegeri knowledge of the Portal network to travel to other embattled worlds, to seek out the commanders of each Earth force, to rally our brothers to our side. And on each planet, as they told the Earth soldiers the terrible truth, the Tegeri and their Machine allies disengaged and began to withdraw through the Portals. Whether the warriors on those worlds joined us or not, their wars were over. They would lose no more men to the ravages of battle. They would slaughter no more of the Machines, the creatures they had reviled but who were only defending themselves.
Not all believed us. Our story is a difficult one to accept, and these men had spent years fighting the Machines, watching their own friends and comrades die at the hands of the Tegeri’s manufactured soldiers. The hatred spawned on the battlefield grips deeply, and it takes long to fade. Still, thousands flocked to our banners, swelling our ranks.
Now it is almost time. Time for our return. Time to take the war to our true enemies, and bring this nightmare to its final conclusion. There is just one more battle. One more front.
Homefront.
“We’re at 50% strength, sir. I need evac now…our medic got hit and I’ve got six seriously wounded.” Lieutenant Lyle Webster was crouched behind a rock outcropping. His platoon had been on the line for three straight days of nonstop combat, and only twenty-one of the forty-three men who’d marched out of Firebase Sigma with him were still standing. His six wounded were lying in a row, in the most protected spot he could find, and Private Haas was doing his best to keep them alive, despite his complete lack of medical training or equipment.
“I’ll get a bird out there as soon as I can, Lieutenant. We’ve got units in the same shape all along the line, so you might be on your own a while.”
That’s just great, Webster thought grimly, glancing back at his makeshift aid station and completely unqualified medic. “Yes, sir,” he replied simply. There was no point in arguing. He knew Major Tomms would do whatever he could for his soldiers. “Sir, we’re running low on ammo too…”
“Logistics are backed up now too, Webster.” A pause. “I’ll see if I can get you something in the next couple hours. Can you hold until then?”
Webster swallowed hard. The answer to that question depended on a lot of things, not the least of which was what the Machines did next. “Yes, sir. We’ll hold.” Webster wasn’t sure bravado was much of a substitute for reality, but it was all he had right now. Besides, if his men didn’t hold they’d get run over by the Tegeri. Their position was strong, but the ground behind was wide open—a perfect killing ground for pursuing a broken force.
Webster had no idea what had prompted the all-out attack orders from UNGov. The war on Samar had been proceeding satisfactorily, with progress almost a year ahead of schedule. But the new offensive threw all of that out of whack. Casualties were through the roof, and as far as Webster knew, no reinforcements had been sent in months. It felt like an act of desperation, but why? Nothing happening on Samar certainly. So what?
“Rizzo, I want you to move to the left. Grab a good spot with decent cover. Just in case they decide to hit us.” The Machines had been standing on the defensive all along the line, retiring from one covered position to the next, yielding ground but taking a terrible toll from the attackers in return. But Webster wasn’t going to get careless. The enemy had to know how battered his people were. If they chose to counterattack now, he was far from sure his savaged platoon could hold. He damned sure wanted his only surviving sniper ready for them.
“Got it, Lieutenant. Maybe up on that small ridge.” Rizzo pointed upward to a jagged line of rock about fifty yards north.
Webster nodded. “Looks good to me, but it’s your call. Just be ready in case those bastards decide to come at us.”
“Yes, sir.” Rizzo grabbed the heavy sniper’s rifle from where he’d leaned it against a rock, and he slipped around the nearest outcropping, crouching low and heading for the spot he’d chosen.
Webster slid down and sat behind the rock, reaching behind him into his pack. His hands rooted around for a few seconds and came out with a small nutrition bar. He hated the things…they were dry and mealy, and they tasted like shit. But it was all he had left, and even with his stomach twisted in knots, he was too hungry to ignore it any longer. He knew the thing would sit in his gut like a rock, but he couldn’t afford to let his energy levels slip. Not no
w. He tore off the wrapping and took a small bite, making a face as he began to chew.
“Lieutenant, we’ve got activity along the enemy line!” It was Barofsky, the scout, on the comlink. His voice was pitched with excitement. Webster had sent him forward to reconnoiter along a narrow defile that offered cover at least halfway to the enemy position.
Webster shoved the rest of the food bar into one of his pockets, and reached out for his rifle, spinning around and looking cautiously over the rock. The enemy line was at extreme range, but that didn’t mean a bullet couldn’t find your forehead if you got careless.
He expected to see Machines climbing out of their cover and moving toward his line, and his body tensed, reacting to thoughts of incoming enemy shells that might begin falling any second. But nothing was coming his way. He reached down to his belt and pulled up his scanning goggles, setting them for Mag 10 and slipping them on his head.
The Machines were retreating! At least that’s damned sure what it looked like.
He tapped the com unit on his shoulder, flipping it to the battalion command line. “Major, the…”
“The Machines are retreating,” Tomms replied before Webster could finish. “I know, Lieutenant…we’re getting reports of the same thing all across the line.”
Webster felt his stomach clench slightly, half expecting the major to order his people to attack immediately. But exhausted, low on ammunition, and with half a dozen wounded comrades to worry about, an attack was the last thing his people needed. And if his soldiers went forward and it wasn’t a real retreat…if it was a ruse…
“I want your people to stay put until further notice, Lieutenant,” Tomms said over the com. “At least until we can figure out what’s going on.”
