by G. H. Holmes
The admiral pinched his lips.
"You'll travel between the galaxies, Cherry. I promise. But not now. It would be a dereliction of duty if I'd let you go."
"But I'm sure Mr. Harrow wants me to go."
"Did you talk to him?"
"Yes," Cherry said.
"When?"
"Yesterday when I woke up after I came down."
"Charity, that's old news."
"He said he wanted to see me again before he left."
"He did?" This was peculiar, von Schwarz thought. Ben had not mentioned that. "You sure?"
""Please let me go, Uncle Dan."
The admiral sighed and shook his head. "I love you, child. That means I'm not going to put you in harm's way by sending you off to a dangerous place like Kasaganaan. It was bad enough to lose your mother and your father those many years ago. They were on a mission, too, remember? I'm not going to send you into the unknown."
"But—"
"That's all, Charity," the admiral cut her off.
Chapter 9
The sun was beating down and it was getting hot in the hangar where the five hundred members of the MARDET scheduled to go to Kasa were milling about. They stood in groups; some of the lower ranks were sitting cross legged on the concrete floor. They all waited for the briefing to begin—and for Him to appear.
Officers and enlisted men talked among themselves about the mysterious general that was to lead them on this mission. Most of them had never heard of one General Ben Harrow before. They all had heard of the ghost in Harrow's Dale, however. Now they were discussing the obvious: was this the same man? Had he survived the attack on his person? Had he risen from the dead?
Lieutenant Halvorsen and Corporal Kumar had returned from their audience with Admiral von Schwarz and had said it didn't matter. This Harrow was an all-right guy.
But how should they know?
Finally the door behind the platform opened and a small group of officers in dress uniforms filed onto the stage. When they did, all soldiers in the big hall got up, ordered their uniforms, arrayed themselves and stood at attention. Everybody's eyes were searching for the unknown face of General Harrow.
They found him easily.
He wasn't any taller than the rest of the brass on the platform nor differed his uniform much, but all sensed a command presence that even outshone that of Admiral von Schwarz. He wore no hat. Even though there were gray streaks in his brown hair and his temples were white, he didn't seem to be a day older than thirty years of age.
There was not a peep from the MARDET soldiers, but an excited murmur went through the blue-clad Gemina 1 bridge crew lining the wall. They had seen Ben a few days earlier in space and he looked different today.
The MARDET wasn't indifferent, though.
Wow, Marine Lieutenant Stella Halvorsen couldn't keep from thinking before she'd reined herself in again.
Further back in the crowd stood Corporal Shanti Kumar. Her eyes widened and she swallowed. Her brown face shone.
"This is the youngest brigadier I've ever seen," Marine Captain Joel Anderson of Aleph Company whispered to Captain Wakka Wakka out of the corner of his mouth.
"Bonaparte was a brigadier at twenty-four," Wakka whispered back, "and a dictator at thirty." The leader of Berlin Company stared straight ahead.
"I'm twenty-six," Anderson murmured. "I want promoted, too."
"Not holdin' my breath," Wakka Wakka replied.
Captain Pere Gruzka of Chaos company stood behind them and said nothing.
General Harrow stood behind Admiral von Schwarz, who scanned the crowd.
"Good morning, MARDET!" the admiral said.
"Sir! Good morning, Sir," the MARDET shouted in unison. Their voices made the hangar to ring.
Some of the Gemina 1 crew actually pulled in their heads. They were only used to gentler tones; nobody ever shouted onboard a starship.
"At ease," the admiral ordered.
When the men and women stood relaxed, he went on, "We have come together today to brief you on a matter of grave importance for the security of our planet and of our neighbors' planet. You know that you will be going to Kasaganaan, where Vlad Jones and the colonists with him can't be raised and appear to be missing. What you will do on Kasa will be told to you by General Ben Harrow. Here he is." The admiral turned towards Ben and nodded. "Ben?"
Harrow came forward and the admiral went to sit down on the row of chairs behind the lectern.
"Good morning, soldiers," Ben said jovially.
They greeted him and the hangar shook again.
"Love your energy." Ben smiled, then sobered. "Before we talk about Kasa: I'm sure you all have heard that Terra Gemina got attacked a few days ago by a hostile war boat, supposedly the rare Delta-class heavy cruiser of a Human Union member state."
At that the soldiers began to boo.
He liked this bunch. Ben worked hard to keep a straight face. A few moments passed before he went on.
"How much damage has it done?
"Well, Harrow's Dale and its immediate environment were obliterated, including the inhabitant himself.
"It seems.
"Since then there have been no further aggressions and our authorities are working hard on the diplomatic channels to clear this up. Luckily, there was only one casualty brought about by this attack. The Human Union is at peace and we want to keep it so.
"But we know now that there are hostiles out there, capable of attacking us in the blink of an eye. We can't do anything about that Delta cruiser right now, but since it's our job to keep the planet safe, we are now going to do something about a rumored threat nearby. Let's forget about the cruiser for a moment and let's focus our attention on the job at hand.
"Our intelligence tells us that there is something brewing on Kasaganaan in our neighboring galaxy. Admiral von Schwarz can even imagine that the colonists on the ground over there have fallen under the spell of an alien race."
It got very quiet in the hall.
"Because they don't communicate with us anymore," Ben said, scanning the faces of the men and women in front of him. "The drones we sent haven't found a trace of them. They also seem to have given up their space station. That's very unusual.
"It's entirely possible that our planet will come under attack in the future. It is our job to forestall any success an enemy might have in raiding or subjugating our planet. Therefore we will enter the Kasa system to find out what's going on.
"Before we look at a holographic model of the space station, let me clarify something else. Since many of you are probably wondering, I want to say a few words about myself," Ben said.
"Yeah," Captain Anderson whispered, looking up at the figure on the platform. "Come clear, buddy. Fill us in."
"Shut up," Wakka Wakka next to him hissed. "I want to hear this."
"I was born many years ago on Terra Originalis," Ben said.
An excited murmur washed through the crowd.
"Me too!" Wakka whispered, bouncing on his feet. "Me too."
"I thought you wanted to hear this." Joel Anderson arched an eyebrow.
"Hey, he's a white guy from Terra O," Wakka Wakka murmured, barely able to keep his hands from gesturing. "I am a white guy from Australia myself. Australia's a part of Terra O, you know. "
Joel Anderson huffed. "As if I didn't know that, you old braggart." He himself had been born and raised on this planet, Terra Gemina. Not even his parents came from the Old World. They'd been born on a colony, too. On FH2-6917, which wasn't even a true water planet.
Pere Gruzka, a stocky fellow who seemed to be cut from a piece of rock, hailed from an ice planet whose name he had forgotten. Didn't matter. He'd never go back. Humans no longer lived there as far as he knew.
"Got my start in the infantry," Ben said. His deep and resonant voice filled the hall. "Worked as a commando. Learned to fly. Worked as a tactician. Marked time at a desk. Strategized. Marked more time at some more desks. Rose in the ranks. When my time had come
, I commanded armies." Ben stared into the distance at something only he could see. "I participated in wars most of you have never heard of."
"Tell me what you want," Joel Anderson whispered. "This is the Ben Harrow. The plasma bombs haven't killed him."
Staring intently, Wakka Wakka ran his tongue over his lips and swallowed. "I hear you. You know what they say about him…"
"There is also something else I would like to clarify," Ben up on the stage said. "I assure you that I am a hundred percent human. I promise you that I will always be looking the way I am looking now. You will see me settled with the same limitations as any other human. Just in case some of you are wondering."
"Maybe he's not the Ben Harrow," Wakka Wakka murmured. "Or maybe he has really good ears and heard you."
Anderson looked straight ahead and didn't reply.
"Now for the important matter," Ben said. "We have work to do.
"The three rifle companies going module to module on the station will be distributed onto three transports. The engineering company specifically tasked with de-mining will be split into three groups and each group will fly with a rifle company.
"We do not expect to make war. Rather our job is to reconnoiter the Kasaganaan space station, which drone reports say is deserted.
"We want to know why that's so."
Ben went on to explain the situation on the planet of Kasaganaan, that its colonists were missing and were possibly living underground.
"The possibility that they are being held hostage by an alien race is real," Ben said and explained about the black pyramid in the northern desert outside the green belt of Kasaganaan.
It was dead-quiet when he spoke about the Magogian threat that the Empire of Neo Babylonia had once overcome.
"However, at this time we will not enter the planet. Our main concern is the space station, which we will secure for our purposes."
"Are we starting a war?" Captain Anderson wondered quietly.
"Go ask him," Wakka Wakka replied softly.
General Harrow turned towards the media specialist in his booth. "Corporal, please show us the holograph of the station now."
In anticipation of the command the corporal's finger had been hovering over the button on his touchscreen. It came down on it now. When it did, a very big 3D model of Kasa Station appeared above and in front of Ben.
All eyes were on it.
It resembled a cube. However, on second glance it became obvious that the station was a giant maze, an entanglement of water pipes that a mad plumber had slapped together. They rose and fell in every direction, connecting larger cubes and spheres until it all roughly formed one giant cube.
"As you can see, it's pretty big," Ben said. "It can house about ten thousand people. The yellow pipes that connect the globes in this model are actually made of vitrum. In many places inside those vitrum pipes, a red fog or red light has been seen wandering around."
The corporal in his media cubicle touched another button and a simulated red fog began to crawl around in some of the vitrum tubes of the holographic model.
"Very impressive, Corporal," Ben said with a smile. He turned to the crowd. "We'll have to determine what it is and where it came from. We already know that it doesn't seem to damage anything. Because the station is working. Power is up, gravity generator's running and there's plenty of air and water. It's just that the people who should be there—aren't.
"We want to know where they are. We want at least clues to their whereabouts.
"In those spheres and cubes you're looking at we will find hydroponic gardens, shops, living quarters, transport facilities, in short everything that is needed to enable life in a small city. Now we get to something interesting."
Ben aimed a red laser pointer at different spots on the holo-model.
"You can see that this station sports a good many gun turrets and battle stations to ward off attackers from space. It's pretty well armed. What the station does not have, however, is an energy shield. This lack of defensive capability may have prompted the colonists… to desert the station. But we don't know. We mainly don't know, because Kasaganaan doesn't talk to us. It's for us to find out why they don't talk.
"We will go through this space station blow by blow, pipe by pipe, module by module, bay by bay. We will secure it in its entirety. To achieve this objective, we will enter the station from three different entry points. We will work our way from the outskirts to the core. We will meet in the middle of the station, at its command center."
Ben went on to talk some more about procedure, equipment and tactics post entry.
After about an hour he wound up his speech and said, "We'll be gone for three TG-days. During that time, our transports will not be available. I have decided to send them home immediately after we have entered the station. If anybody objects to that, now is the time to go to your company commander and to ask to be replaced. I do not wish to go downrange with people who are uncomfortable with the idea of self-reliance."
"He's burning the bridges behind us…" Wakka Wakka whispered to Joel Anderson. "He sinks his ships, like Cortez did when he set out to conquer Mexico."
"What are you talking about?" Anderson whispered back.
"Old World stuff," Wakka Wakka replied. "You know, lore from Terra O."
Anderson didn't reply. He swallowed and kept his gaze on General Harrow.
"After three days our job will be done. At that time the transports will return and we will go home to report our findings to Admiral von Schwarz and to the Council around Governor Alighieri. They will then determine what to do next.
"Now, one more word about travel on the pylon road. I want those of you who tend to get seasick to talk to the surgeon, if you haven't done so already. It will be a rough ride and it will last at least six hours. We'll be jumping in and out of hyperspace to keep from turning into a blob of energy, so to speak. You most probably will feel nauseated—veterans of pylon travel know what I'm talking about. You will want to rest after we arrive at Kasa station, but there won't be any time for you to rest. We'll have to swing into action as soon as we get there. We've got to seize the old element of surprise.
"Get ready now. Eat a light lunch. At fourteen hundred we'll be on our way." Ben turned towards Admiral von Schwarz. "Daniel, is there anything else to say?"
Von Schwarz shook his head. No.
Ben turned to the soldiers. "Any questions?"
Eyes got unfocused as the troops were thinking hard of something intelligent to ask. But, as usually is the case, nothing came to mind.
After a few moments the general said, "You're dismissed!"
Chapter 10
The hulking transport ships sat on their humming thrusters on the tarmac of Gemina City's spaceport. Long lines of laden soldiers were lumbering up their ramps and disappeared in the cavernous bellies of the gray monsters.
Tractor crews were busy loading the three x-jets into their cargo spaces. Their wings didn't form an X now, but were folded up, making the fighters look like spindly cigars. Their noses pointed outwards so they could be ejected into space prior to the transports docking on Kasa Station, where the jets were to serve as CSP—combat space patrol—for their former hosts.
Fast attack vehicles, "dune buggies," with old-fashioned rubber wheels were driven up and parked and tied down beside them. One had a white star on its hood and was the general's car. Mech suits and the engineering platoon's robo-dogs followed as did a good number of drones to monitor the Kasa surface.
Once the sweating soldiers were embarked and the matériel was stowed, ground crews wheeled the ramps away. Hydraulics hissed and the doors closed, locking out the heat.
Alone, Ben watched all this from the flag lounge on the first floor of the spaceport building. The top-to-bottom vitrum panels were tinted against UV-radiation and the heat. They also drained most of the color out of the picture.
Ben found that the bleak look of those spaceships depressed him. He tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry. Bew
ildered, he wiped his sweaty palms on his trousers and realized that his breath was coming in short gasps.
What's the matter with me?
He wiped his forehead with his sleeve.
Come on, he said to himself. You've done this a million times. There's nothing to it.
Ben turned his back to the window, strolled to the table and stood behind one of the leather chairs. Like talons his fingers dug into the chair's back, almost breaking the leather. He stood rigid. For a long moment he tried to stave off the memory of the long black night that he'd endured until thirty years ago. The hopelessness, the loneliness, the despair of those years alone in space was all of a sudden very present in his soul. He squelched a sigh.
He wasn't ready for this.
Daniel would surely understand. He'd tell him that he'd have to find somebody else to lead the troops on this mission. Surely there were competent Marine officers who could take down this measly station without him. Meanwhile he'd go back to Harrow's Dale. He'd rebuild his house. Modules were to be had for the asking. The hardcopy library and the mechanical astrolabe would be more difficult to reacquire, but hey, they were just toys anyway and he had all the time in the world.
No, no, no. Ben shook his head. You can't cop out now. You're a Marine general. What kind of example are you setting before these young people?
He had given his word; he had publicly said that he'd lead the MARDET onto Kasaganaan. He couldn't walk back now. He'd given his word and someone like him could not go back on his word. Other people might be able to say one thing today and another thing tomorrow. But Ben Harrow had to be true to his word.
To whom much is given, much is required.
Ben gritted his teeth.
Hey, at least this time you'd have company. Hundred and fifty people, not counting the sailors.
But in time they'd starve, should they be thrown off the pylon road. And he'd be there to watch them.
He'd see them squabble once they realized they were marooned. Tempers would flare, like they always did in extreme situations. Once it got scarce, he'd see them fight over scraps of food.
