The Stars Came Back

by Rolf Nelson

  They watch the action going on all across the field. Another company runs by, every man carrying a five kilo weight in each hand and a small backpack. It’s not a very tidy formation. A big, powerfully built guy is struggling, stumbles, hops a few steps, drops his weights, then gingerly puts his foot down as the rest of the company goes by. He staggers and limps a few steps, wincing. They watch, shaking their heads in silent disappointment as his expression tells them he knows he just twisted his ankle and he’s not going.

  Lag: Time will tell if that was an unlucky break, or a lucky one.

  Allonia walks up next to them and watches the guys competing for a moment.

  Allonia: Managed to get another twenty-two massage and physical therapists, and five more chiropractors.

  Helton: You sure we’ll need that many? Already some on board.

  Harbin looks sideways at him with a slightly annoyed expression.

  Harbin: Pushing hard for three months will beat up a lot of bodies, even young ones like these. Figure five percent a day get some minor injury: back, shoulders, elbows, ankles, ribs, necks, pulls, strains, minor tears, all the rest. That’s over a hundred a day, with maybe a week to fix, so once we’re rolling they’ll be treating five hundred little things a day. Massage and PT helps tremendously with recovery, so we can push harder, go the extra distance. A good team of those folks will make everything else go much more smoothly. We’ll lose fewer. We can hit the ground in peak condition at full strength. They aren’t a luxury under these conditions. If we could train all these guys, then select the best twenty-five hundred at the end, that’s one thing. But we have to pick, then train and retain them all to make this work.

  Helton: Right, as always… I think the self-styled Mahdi is in for a bit of a surprise in a couple of weeks.

  FADE TO BLACK

  Training

  FADE IN

  INT - DAY - Tajemnica middeck passageway, near a stairwell

  Helton, looking tired, walks heavily down the stairs and clumps down the passageway headed for the galley. He pauses and looks through a window into the cargo bay where two formations with about a hundred men are doing drills wearing armor and carrying shields. The formations face one another as shield walls layered four ranks deep, and they are practicing pushing forward against the other, while the other side falls back together on command. Shove, counter shove, advance, fall back, bugle call, change direction, do it again. Heard through the open windows are the crashing of metal and flesh, a grunting of men struggling to breathe and keep going, corrections and encouragement from the experienced soldiers. Another short bugle call and they both fall back a few steps to rest in place. Kwon steps up next to him to watch.

  Kwon: Damn grav cycling is hard on these old bones.

  Helton: Not easy on my younger bones either. But the air cycling bugs me more.

  Kwon: You working out with them at all?

  Helton: (Nodding) But those guys make me feel old fast.

  Kwon: Not surprising. They’ve been hard at it over a month.

  Helton: Harbin laid out the plan with Taj. Very scientific, playing with physiology in very precise ways, increasing gravity, then pulling back a bit, then increasing further, cycling oh-two levels and air density based on activity levels to build red-blood cell counts, alternating cardio and strength training, upper and lower body, core muscles, calisthenics and drills like this. Builds a body fast.

  Kwon: Feels like shit.

  Helton grunts in agreement.

  Helton: With your food and a last minute carb-loading, by the time we hit Dustbowl these guys will feel like they’re flying even when wearing armor in that low gravity. Be able to last a long time.

  Kwon: I heard the main training the Mahdi’s followers do is praying, fasting, and self-flagellation.

  Helton: Pick your leaders, live with the direction they choose.

  Kwon: Or die with it.

  DISSOLVE TO

  INT - DAY - A smallish former lounge

  A group of twenty recruits stand in two lines. They wear high-tech helmets that cover their eyes with a visor. They carry shields with some extra doodads clipped on around the edges, and short practice spears. Projected on the walls is a CGI enemy horde, some in armor, some with weapons, some not, some male, some female. The view is as though it were from the line of recruits. The recruits stand in close formation, and as they flick their spears out the hit location is shown on the screen as they take out one target after another. A very high tech battle simulation. Suddenly the scene freezes, and a trainer calls out.

  Squad Leader: Rayes! What’s the best target?

  Rayes, a guy in the second rank, speaks up and points with his spear.

  Rayes: That guy, right in front.

  Squad Leader: He’s almost completely covered, only an eye-slot shot. What about that guy taking a swing off to your right?

  Rayes: Oh, yeah. Totally open. Missed him.

  Squad Leader: That’s what I thought. Can’t go missing the easy kills like that. Rack up the easy ones, save yourself for the hard ones. You only get one mistake when it’s real. All right, then, ready?

  The troops shift slightly back into ready positions, and the action on the walls picks up again. Three guys lance the target the squad leader made note of. It pauses again.

  Squad Leader: Why all three of you? Better three than none, but he’s got great exposure only to Rayes. Tompson, that lady to your left is a better shot, and Matsui, the guy in front of Rayes is easier than crossing over to poach Rayes’ target. Be a team, guys. It’s the final score that counts, not individual totals. Again. Eyes open.

  The simulation backs up and starts again, this time the three make better target choices, spear and recover quickly, then carry on.

  DISSOLVE TO

  INT - NIGHT - Dimly lit cargo bay of Tajemnica

  About two hundred recruits, soldiers, and some of the crew are practicing slow, steady stretching exercises. Most of them are clad in little more than shorts. It looks like a combination of tai chi, yoga, and martial arts. The motions are smooth, solid, as much to calm as stretch, relax, and practice unarmed blocks and attacks. Not a hard workout, but something to do at the end of the day after a hard workout. The man leading the exercises looks like one of the older 13th Mountain Shield soldiers: wiry, muscular, scarred, obviously tough. Allonia, Bipasha, Quiritis and Quinn look a little out of place amid the masses of male muscle, but no one seems to care as they focus on the moves and follow the teacher.

  Expectations

  DISSOLVE TO

  INT - DAY - Borealis main dining room

  The large and once elegantly appointed room is now a training hall, with formations of armored men doing maneuver drills, blunted training spears stabbing in and out like so many scorpion stingers. The men are in close formation, armored shins and feet visible below the overlapping shields, helmet eye slits barely detectable above. No skin is visible. The helms are smoothly rounded with narrow vision slots and many small breathing holes. They are wheeling to the left under the watchful eyes of Lag and Harbin, who stand to the side in similar armor. There is a short bugle call, and the formation runs forward five paces in lockstep, then stop. Another short bugle call and they fall back slowly, one careful step at a time. More bugle notes and they stop retreating, shove their shields forward hard, step forward and shove again, step, shove, step, shove. Harbin picks up the bugle from his hip, blows a quick call, then another. Every man in the entire formation turns in place, runs back ten paces, abruptly stops, turns, and braces with the in-front-again row dropping their shields all the way to the ground, and the next rank putting their shields up to overlap them and make a solid wall that conceals everyone behind. From behind the wall, running around the ends, come the back five ranks on each side to stretch the wall longer while the two-high wall stands solid and braced, only spears visible above it like a wicked, flickering picket fence.

  Lag and Harbin look on and nod. Harbin blows another short bugle call of five no
tes, and the line freezes, and then he blows another, different one. Drifting up from the ranks comes an expression of confusion.

  Confused Recruit: -the hell?!

  Centurion: (Bellowing from the back) HOLD THE LINE!

  Harbin blows another call, and the line visibly relaxes a bit.

  Lag: Shields down, take five!

  All the shields lower, men stand and stretch or otherwise quietly relax and breathe. A few of them pull out water bottles from carriers in fanny packs and take a drink, putting them away easily and without fuss or looking while Lag talks. The armor shows patches of fine chain mail, but no skin except where helms are removed. They are very well protected and can move freely and easily.

  Lag: Listen up! They will try to mess with your heads. Eventually they will get one of our bugles and blow some shit on it trying to get you to make a mistake. If it doesn’t sound nice and sharp like you normally hear, it’s not us, and your best bet is to keep doing what you are doing and wait for a real command so you can go as a unit and take it away from them. We might lose them all; that’s why we also practice with voice commands. On the field, confusion will be high. You can’t go too far wrong by standing in the shield wall killing whatever is in front of you. If they do something unexpected, kill what’s in front of you or just a bit to one side, free your weapon, and get ready for the next one.

  He points to a young man in the second rank.

  Lag: You! What do you do if you see an old man in a loincloth charging at you with a knife?

  Recruit1: Kill him, free my weapon, get ready for the next one!

  Lag: Good! If you see an eight-foot-tall guy, looking like a Greek god, swinging a huge ax?

  Recruit2: (Vigorously) Kill him, free my weapon, look for the next one!

  Harbin: What if one of them is holding a knife to the throat of an old lady and look like they are threatening to kill her if you don’t stop?

  There is an uncomfortable silence for a moment. Then a guy from the front rank speaks up.

  Recruit3: You kill him, free your weapon, and look for the next one.

  Lag: Almost. The next one is the supposed hostage. It’s a ruse. Kill them both.

  Harbin: You! (Pointing to another) What if it’s a beautiful young woman, stark naked with no weapons and really big tits, screaming “SAVE ME!”?

  There is some scattered nervous laughter, the recruit’s eyes show surprise, and he stutters for a moment.

  Lag: Kill her, free your weapon, get ready for the next one.

  Those that had taken their helmets off look uncertain.

  Lag: That hot babe or little old lady “hostage” pretends to stumble, picks up a blade from the ground, opens your femoral artery. You are just as dead as if a ten feet tall troll with a war-club mashed you into mush! These are FANATICS! The field of battle is far from a city, on a messed up planet, so the ONLY people there other than us are there FOR him! Any of them gets a hand on you, ties you up, it creates an opening for one of them WITH a weapon. They will exploit your care for your fellow humans against you! First they’ll send their strongest young men. When those die on your spear, they’ll change it up trying to mess with your mind, send old men, cripples, naked young women. Life in this world means nothing to them, he only talks about the afterlife! That’s why he recruits the weak: claiming their reward is in the afterlife so he can manipulate them. He uses their fanaticism to make them think of us as decadent and soft, because to them mere flesh and breathing means nothing. Some in front of you might be mental cases, some smart attackers, some able-bodied, some crippled, maybe even prisoners, but you can’t afford the luxury of sorting them out. They will outnumber us twenty-to-one, thirty-to-one, maybe fifty-to-one. NO MATTER WHAT or WHO is in front of you… Kill them. Free your blade. Be ready for the next one. If you are not on the front line, make sure the bodies on the ground are dead bodies, no fakers who can lay there, take a fallen blade, and hamstring you with it. The hobnails on your boots are there to use! They will have no mercy, not even any humanity as we know it. If he wins, no matter how many he loses in the process, then humanity loses, because more fanatics will flock to the banner of his twisted message, and the carnage will spread further off-world. They MUST be destroyed IN DETAIL, to the last man and woman, there, on that field. We will ask for a surrender, but do not expect it. Murum aries attigit. Not nice, but necessary.

  The recruits are still tired and sweaty but no longer breathing hard. Their faces have taken on a serious, somber look. Some of them are looking down, or uncertainly at each other.

  Lag: You are here because they think nothing of killing your wives, or sisters, or family if they do not convert to their sect or submit as second-class people to their law. He is the one that targets women and children. He is the one that finally offered, after thousands of suicide bombings and assassinations, to stand and fight. That is their message: convert, submit, or die. We here simply treating them to the same standard. Leave us alone, or die. No better. No worse. You can pray for forgiveness after you live through it, if you think you need to. Now, helms on, shields up, and let’s try that maneuver again!

  They all get their gear back in place, amid a collective tired groan. Harbin and Lag put their helms on and head for the line, too.

  FADE TO BLACK

  News

  FADE IN

  EXT - NIGHT - Deep Space

  Three ships hang in the darkness, a supply ship snuggled between Tajemnica and Borealis, with a backdrop of stars and the blazing Milky Way.

  CUT TO

  INT - NIGHT - Tajemnica cargo hold

  A bucket brigade of young men are tossing boxes and bags of food along the passageway from the center airlock, along the cargo bay, and into a C-Deck storage area or upstairs to the galley area. As they come in the side passageway, Kwon points one way or another for it to be tossed as the “corner man” catches it and holds the label for him to read and point. It’s moving right along. Off to the side, absently watching process, Lag, Helton and Ahmed (slender, 20s, mustache, dark-skinned, modern light armor, armed) stand talking.

  Ahmed: You would not believe the shit storm kicking up out there! All the pols were trying to ignore this asshole, just wishing he and his challenge would go away, then you disappear with a starliner, the 13th Shields appears on New Texas recruiting an army, then you all vanish again! Everyone’s in full freak-out. Pols talking out all five sides of their mouth trying to cover their asses every time a news story flashes a rumor, no one is buying any of it, bookies are laying odds so many different ways you can place bets on how people are betting people will bet. No one knows who is paying you, and pointing fingers every which way. The Prime Minister of New Spain got deposed over it for some reason.

  Lag: (Incredulous) New Spain? Bizarre. Never worked for or against him.

  Ahmed: I know. A few planets are loading up liners with volunteers and shipping their dregs over to dump them, making them your problem, and one liner got hijacked by his supporters and is headed that way to join in the fight, but the word is they had no armor or weapons. Reports are a carrier fleet is headed that way, but nobody really knows anything. All sorts of wild shit about this ship and how you left Tau Piper with the Borealis and your crew being genetically engineered. People all over are waking up and wondering what the Hell’s happening?! I tell you, the chaos out there is just… beautiful!

  Helton: Never let it be said you live a boring life, Colonel.

  Lag: Likewise. If a bunch more untrained riffraff get dropped, don’t think it really changes anything. A carrier fleet, though…

  Ahmed: I don’t know what your plans are, but it’s looking more and more like whatever you have is all there will be. The pols don’t want their citizens involved to avoid blow-back if you fail.

  Lag: Not surprising. There were a hundred city-states in Greece, but only Plataea sent anyone to help Athens fight the Persians at Marathon. No one wanted to piss off Darius and his gigantic army. In fact, that’s why the name was chosen when
the planet was founded. Not having to deal with a bunch of supposedly helpful amateurs actually simplifies some things. An army of properly trained allies would be a different matter.

  Ahmed: So what is your plan?

  Lag: Win.

  Ahmed: (Humorously sarcastic) No shit?

  Lag: Still working out the details. Frontal assault always has its appeal. A fleet to fight through might complicate things, though.

  Ahmed: Especially if there’s a flock of civvy ships in the area. Should pick up a compliance monitor to check your stuff, too, before you land.

  Lag: Grab a couple of them, then get back here with any new information you can confirm. Two or three for the Borealis, one for here. If we can check in transit then hit the system hot, it’ll make life easier. Just remember to grab those that know the contract is only for what goes on once we hit the ground, not getting there.

  Ahmed: Can do. Anything else, other than move more food in a day than most people order in a week? How are you doing that, anyway? You’ve loaded supplies twice in less than a day, local time.

  Helton: (Deadpan) Our army of genetically engineered mountain trolls are hungry. Really hungry.

  Ahmed looks at Helton, not sure if he’s joking. Lag bursts out laughing and claps him on the shoulder, tears almost rolling from his eyes.

  Lag: No, no, no. No trolls. Just a useful confluence of swirls, Sokolov drive tweaks, and piggy-backing the Borealis that give us much greater than normal time dilation than we’d normally get when flying loops. It’ll be going away soon. Just making the most of it while it lasts. Ask the pilot if you want details.

  Ahmed looks relieved and laughs at himself a bit too.

  Ahmed: Should have guessed. Is she the one with, uh…

  He moves his hands indicating nice curves and large breasts.

  Helton: (Deadpan) No, that’s Allonia, my wife.