By Dawn's Early Light

by Jason Fuesting

  “You know, with my interrogation they were awfully interested in a list of places. I remember Pershing was on that list. Jenkin’s station, too. They had surveillance video from there.”

  “They had a list?”

  “Yeah, Pershing, Jenkin’s, and a ton of other places. They just rattled off this list of places and asked me if I knew anything about them. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, you know? Hell, I didn’t recognize most of the names in the first place.”

  “Do you remember any of them?”

  “Uh,” Eric stalled and scratched his head. “Caledon was on there.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “Makes sense. Pretty sure they’ve have been a knife in the Protectorate’s kidneys since before Confederacy was clawed back, if I remember right. Good people, mostly. Do you remember any others?”

  “Some place named Grant?”

  Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed as she leaned forward. “Go on.”

  “They didn’t tell me anything, Liz.”

  “Oh, they told you plenty. You don’t make lists without a reason. What’s on the list tells you the reason if you’re bright enough to figure it out. Next name, please.”

  “Grant? Uh, Jefferson?” Elizabeth’s expression darkened as he continued. “Something with harbor in its name.”

  “Cold Harbor?” she asked quietly.

  “Yeah, there was another one like that, too. Black Harbor.”

  Elizabeth flung the canteen into the darkness.

  “What? What’s wrong?” Eric asked. “What are those places?”

  “Home,” Elizabeth whispered fiercely. “Grant is the only other habitable planet in the Pershing system. Well, barely habitable, but we’ve been terraforming it. Jefferson is Grant’s moon. Cold Harbor is the largest commercial station in the asteroid belt between Grant and Abrams. One of the largest shipyards in-system, too. Black Harbor is the largest military station orbiting Pershing.”

  Eric shifted his weight uncomfortably. “Oh. Well shit.”

  “They’re targeting home, Eric. And I’m fucking stuck here. I’ve got friends who’d give their eye teeth to know what we do. But no, I’m stuck in this godforsaken hole. Goddammit,” she growled, and rose to her feet, eyes shining with purpose.

  I know that look.

  She stalked toward the prisoners. Eric scrabbled to his feet when realized she’d palmed a jagged shard of wood on the way up. He raised his rifle.

  “Liz, I can’t let you do that. Put the weapon down,” Eric ordered.

  The blanket parted as Elizabeth whirled to face him.

  “Or what?” she spat. “You’ll shoot me?”

  Eric thumbed his safety, ignoring the naked skin exposed by the blanket’s unraveling.

  “I don’t want to, Liz, but God help me, I will. They’re not worth defending, but honor is. I will not be made a monster like they are.”

  “What’s honor have to do with this?” she growled at him

  “I get it; they hurt you. Thing is they’re our prisoners. Honorable people do not murder prisoners.”

  Elizabeth stared down at the two bound men at her feet through narrowed eyes, then back up at Eric.

  “They’ll be punished for what they did?”

  “They will,” Eric told her and she clenched her jaw. Seeing her conflicted expression, he continued, “Liz, we get off this planet, I promise you I will help you get this information back to your people. Just drop the weapon and come sit back down, okay?”

  “Fine,” she sighed and threw the shard into the fire. Eric lowered his rifle, putting it on safe as she tugged her blanket back around her. She hovered in front of the fire, emotions raging across her face.

  “Liz,” Eric began just before she burst into tears and nearly collapsed to the floor. He stayed where he sat, confused and fighting the urge to comfort her. Just met her, this could be a ploy. Eric opened his mouth to comfort her, but a series of resounding clacks echoing from the floors below interrupted him. He shot to his feet, rifle up. The fuck?

  Elizabeth’s voice cracked as she asked, “What was that?”

  “I’m not sure. Sounded like, like, fuck, I don’t know,” Eric mumbled as he flipped down his monocle and switched it on. First one and then many lights flickered below them. Brow knit furiously, Eric edged into the darkness and moved toward the diamond patterned grating around the elevator. Leaning over the edge of the concrete, Eric saw what might be more banks of lights flickering to life below.

  Flummoxed, he hollered, “Hadrian?”

  “What’s up?” Hadrian’s reply echoed up from below.

  “That’s you, right? The lights?”

  “Yeah. I’m resetting breakers.”

  “Uh, is that a good idea? What about the drones?”

  “The reactor’s been online the whole time. If they haven’t bombed this place since the EMP, they won’t now if we don’t give them a reason to. Besides which, the feed for the top floor is fucked so it’s staying off,” Hadrian yelled back.

  Eric stepped back from the edge and looked back towards the camp fire.

  “Reactor?” a bewildered Elizabeth asked.

  “Don’t ask me. I’m just as lost as you are,” Eric replied as more lights flickered below them. He retreated back to the shadows amongst the crate maze with Elizabeth, staying near the entry way while she returned to the fire. He decided to keep his monocle on, just in case the power failed. Will have to change batteries soon.

  Several minutes later, his skin started crawling again. He turned just as Hadrian came to a halt behind him.

  “Elizabeth’s asleep,” the man commented flatly with a nonplussed expression.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I found Alan and his crew downstairs outside the power shed.”

  “Alan?”

  “Turing’s grandfather. Turing’s father, Nathan, told me when the fleet EMPed the valley, Alan was down here in the bunker. He assumed the worst when they couldn’t get the door open. He wasn’t wrong.”

  “That sounds unpleasant.”

  Hadrian nodded. “It looks like it was. Alan was supervising a few of his people moving stuff in the lower levels. Based off the mess in the shed, something in the grid up here picked up the EMP and reflected it into the junctions downstairs. When the grid tripped, it knocked all the security systems offline, everything failed closed.”

  “Oh, damn.”

  “They were a bit more resourceful than the crew up here and actually managed to bypass the lock to the stairwell.”

  “Didn’t do them any good, did it?”

  “No. They couldn’t get into the power shed. Even if they did, I’m not sure any of them knew enough to fix the damage and get the bunker hatch open. There’s enough spare material they might’ve rigged it if they had access to the power room.”

  “Shit. So, trapped in the dark and suffocated?”

  “No,” Hadrian sighed and pulled rolled notebook out of a pouch. “They had flashlights and enough time to write their goodbyes in this. It looked like they passed Alan’s pistol around. He had one bullet left in the magazine at the end. Based off the mess, I think they waited a few days.”

  Eric looked away, staring at his feet for several seconds before his brain snagged on a detail in the story. “Wait, you said they couldn’t bypass the locks. How did you?”

  Hadrian opened his palm to reveal a set of keys.

  “Nathan gave them to me when he asked me to be head of security. Blamed himself for his father’s death.”

  “It wasn’t his fault.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” Hadrian said softly.

  “I guess that didn’t really matter though, did it?” Eric asked just as somber.

  “Not to him. If what I saw when he was alive was any indication, Nathan spent his entire life trying to be perfect. He demanded a lot out of himself, out of all of us, really. His son’s just like him that way. Nathan would have been a good sergeant. Hell, a good officer. Look, it’s late, and we’re both beat. Go get s
ome shut-eye. I’ll keep an eye on the place.”

  “I might be tired, but you’re beat to fuck and back. You sure you got this?” Eric asked, looking Hadrian in the eye.

  “Yeah,” Hadrian replied. “Go get some sleep.”

  “Alright,” Eric said with a nod. He took one last look over his shoulder at the entryway before wandering back to the fire.

  Together

  Day 14

  “Meat, time to wake up.”

  Eric jerked awake and swung his rifle stock up into Frost’s face. Except it wasn’t Frost groping at his face with blood streaming between his fingers Eric saw.

  “Oh shit, Leah, I’m--”

  “What the fuck?” Leah blurted and scrabbled away from him.

  Wait. Where the hell did she come from? Where am I? Eric glanced around the cleared area. Okay, I remember this. The fire had been out long enough it he could barely smell the smoke. Bleary-eyed, Eric stumbled to his feet. A shadow hung by one of the crates near the path to the entryway. The shadow moved.

  “You okay?” Hadrian asked.

  “Er, sure?” Eric answered.

  “What just happened?”

  Eric muttered, “Nothing.”

  Hadrian shook his head. “That wasn’t nothing.”

  “I,” Eric started. He sighed and sat against the nearest crate, deflated.

  “Don’t know what the hell just happened?” Hadrian finished.

  Mortified, Eric rubbed his eyes and nodded.

  “One second I was sleeping, then Frost was grabbing me.”

  “Frost? Oh, Frost. Shit. No, this is my fault.”

  “How do you figure? I’m pretty sure I’m the one who fucked up here.”

  “Well, you did, but I didn’t see it coming. Look, I’m not a professional counselor but I’ve seen my share of shit. I’ve had the kind of mornings where the ghosts of your past jump out at you and you just react. Everyone in my line of work does.”

  “How do you deal with it?”

  “Come to terms with your past, Eric.”

  “Or?”

  “Or it eats you alive and shits out a sad, shattered shell of a man more liability than anything else.”

  Eric chewed on his lip for several seconds and asked, “How? How do I come to terms then?”

  “Everyone’s path is different, lad. The rocks I stumbled over you might not. I never hit the rock that’s tripping you up, so I’m not the best person to ask for that one. I can tell you this, though. When I was a lot younger, back when I’d first got my jump wings, I was part of a pacification campaign on Seraphim Prime. We killed a lot of folks. Men mostly, but women and children, too. I’m not saying I’m proud of that last part, but there wasn’t any way around it. When an eight year old child comes running at you strapped with two kilos of homemade simpex screaming, ‘death to heretics,’ you don’t have much choice if you want to live.” Eric considered Hadrian’s words somberly. “And when some asshole loads up the back of his van with explosives and puts a kid in every seat in front of it, you don’t have much of a choice either. No matter how much you wished to God you did.”

  “Holy shit, Hadrian.”

  “We knew the guy was building something to hit our patrol base, we got intel the day before. Team showed up a few hours later and he was gone along with the vehicle bomb. I was up in the tower when he came barreling toward the gate, swerving around the barriers. I hit him with a three hundred kilowatt pulse laser. He hit the last safety barrier with a gaping hole in the front end, smoke and fire streaming out everywhere. I still see the burning kids rolling out of that slagged hulk, right before the ANFO went up. I woke up in the evac bird. Four of my buddies didn't.”

  “I-There’s nothing I can really say, Hadrian.”

  “You don’t need to. Nothing I haven’t said to myself in the twenty years since then.”

  “How did you deal with that?”

  “Poorly. I drank at first. Got busted down, twice, before I pulled my shit together. I’m not going to tell you I found God. I can’t see how God would want anything to do with me after what I’ve done. But I did find peace, in a fashion. After that many drunken fist fights, disciplinary boards, and nearly losing my wife, I had to. In the end, I did what I had to do, Eric. Not just so I could come home, but so my buddies could come home. Later, so my men could come home. People like to shit on mercenaries, but we were no less human because someone hired us. I found peace because we were doing the right thing most of the time.”

  “And when you weren’t?”

  “And the thankful few times when I wasn’t, I did my duty to Caledon. Duty is a hard thing, Eric, but without it a man has no purpose. Without purpose, idle hands only destroy. I guess when the time comes, you need to know what your duty is.”

  Eric regarded the man standing across from him. Gone was the giant Eric had marched up the mountain behind, replaced with a gaunt shadow that echoed only pain.

  “Live with honor,” Eric whispered.

  “Protect the weak,” Hadrian said, a hint of a smile under his beard.

  “Punish the wicked,” Eric finished. At Hadrian’s sudden frown, Eric asked, “What?”

  “Where’d ya hear that, lad?”

  “That’s the last thing my father told me when I was a kid, why?”

  “The first two are part of the oath to Caledon,” Hadrian told him, his gaze serious for a moment before evaporating. “Two oaths out of three ain’t bad for an orphaned pirate, I guess. We’ll make a proper Caledonian out of you yet. Tell you what, you keep your shit together for us a bit longer, and maybe we’ll have a drink or three for memories past when we get home.” Hadrian snorted. “Home. To think I call that place home now, I’m surrounded by former Protectorate elite, and I have to see them safe. The Creator has an awful sense of humor, I tell you.” Eric nodded and opened his mouth, but realized the old commando had merely paused in thought. “I miss home, lad. Real home. I miss my wife, my three kids. I should’ve filed my retirement papers when I thought to and not taken one last assignment,” Hadrian sighed.

  Uncomfortable, Eric stepped forward and laid his hand on Hadrian’s shoulder.

  “I’ll see you there, Hadrian. Until then, duty calls.”

  Hadrian blinked and looked around as if he’d just woken up. The commando squinted at him for several long seconds before replying, “Aye. Duty calls.”

  Eric could hear voices downstairs as the pair walked over to the open grating.

  Hadrian saw Eric’s questioning glance and commented, “The relief crew got here a bit over an hour ago. They’re doing a quick inventory to see what’s here. Turing’s probably going to use that to prioritize what we pull out of here. By the sounds of it, there’s some terribly useful stuff in the crates down there.”

  “Like what?” Eric asked. The pair came to a stop near the inoperable elevator.

  “Terry was saying he found a half dozen machining mills.”

  “Why would Turing’s grandfather have mills here?”

  Hadrian shrugged. “Beats me. Turing was pretty surprised to hear it, too. I’d imagine he’s probably asking the same questions, assuming he hasn’t figured it out yet.”

  “He probably has,” Byron said, joining them. “I have.”

  “Then?” Hadrian asked.

  “He was smuggling,” Byron told them.

  “Say what?” Eric blurted.

  “Call it a feeling. Layout of the place, the type and quantity of what we’ve found. Top floor has weapons, ammunition, rations, medical supplies, a little bit of everything. Things get more ordered as you go down. More specialized and expensive, too. Casual observer or someone who has never worked a warehouse would miss the fact that every crate, every pallet up here is sorted into discrete but subtle groups.”

  Eric eyed the crates behind him, tuning out Hadrian’s follow-up.

  “Yeah,” Eric interrupted. “You’re right, Byron. I can see it now that you say it. Shit, why didn’t I see that?”

  “Oh, you
saw that,” Byron said. “You just didn’t put it together. Like I was telling Hadrian, there are crates of shit downstairs that would not have been available to anyone who couldn’t drop six or seven figures to grease palms. Some of them? Add a few digits to that. Goods made in the Confederacy, primarily. Now, Eric, the stuff here, how valuable would it be back home? Wherever the Fortune called home, specifically.”

  Eric dredged through his memory. “Quite a bit, actually. Especially the machine tooling. Equipment was constantly breaking down and replacement parts were a bitch to find, if there were any. Making your own parts would be priceless. How can you be sure he was smuggling? They ran the largest shipping company in the Protectorate, right? I mean, they were wealthy enough to terraform this planet for a vacation home. Couldn’t he have just bought the stuff?”

  “Anywhere else and you’d have a point, Eric. Consider this, Turing’s family was Inner Party, but that only gets you so much leeway. Other Inner Party members are always looking for an advantage. Money can buy a lot of things, except when it can’t. How Turing’s family got here demonstrates that point amply. I would imagine some amount of smuggling was done using his ships, but one can only move so much without getting noticed. Bribing a few local officials isn’t hard, nor is paying your people a little better, but the more illicit goods you move, the more noticeable it gets. As your operation gets more notice, the illicit costs stack exponentially. At least until you run into someone who can’t be bought, or has been bought by someone else already.

  “So, we have a bunker stacked to the brim with crates filled with things not found in vacation and retirement homes, much less in the nonsensical quantities they’re present in. Either Turing’s parents were irrational or they had good reason. Their position in the Protectorate hierarchy makes irrational implausible, so what was their reason? What better reason than money? Who knows, maybe they were dealing with pirates to skirt customs inspections, maybe not. Could be they suspected what might be coming and were preparing to move?”

  Someone coughed behind them.

  “Both, actually,” Turing said, joining them. A dozen conflicting thoughts and questions bubbled through Eric’s head in the moments before Turing continued, “Hadrian, the manifests back at the house were not up to date. I’ve a preliminary inventory. It’s rough, but still useful.”