By Dawn's Early Light

by Jason Fuesting

  “Four rounds, copy. ETA sixty seconds.”

  “Eric,” Julien’s voice jumped into his ear over the radio. “Eight guys up ahead, scratch that, two. Nope, one. He making a run for the storage shed. You and Leah take the front. Vic and I will take the back. You flush him and we’ll take him when he runs for it. He’s panicked, so this should be easy.”

  The lone man in white ducked into the storage shed Eric had helped build six month ago. Veering to stay out of line of sight, Julien’s group trotted up to the shed’s north wall two minutes later.

  “Don’t think he saw us,” Eric whispered, out of breath.

  Julien shook his head with a smile. Using hand signals Julien directed them to the corners and told them to pause ten seconds before going.

  Eric glanced around the corner. Still bodies populated the area towards the gate. The shed’s front door was closed. He glanced over his shoulder at Leah. She nodded at the unspoken question. Of course she’s ready.

  He counted and moved to the door.

  “I got left,” he signaled to his wife.

  She gave a quick nod and jerked her head to the right.

  She’s got right. Eric closed his eyes for a moment and breathed deeply. Just like we did in training. We got this.

  Eric’s brought his boot up as he thumbed his safety off. He planted his foot squarely by the handle and the door crashed open. In the center of the open structure, their quarry spun towards the noise to face him. Eric advanced, rifle coming down. The man’s rifle came up as Eric’s chevron settled on the man’s chest.

  Both sides opened fire.

  Gliar’s man stumbled back a step. Unfazed by the angry buzz of the man’s near misses, Eric kept shooting until the enemy fell.

  “Got him!” Eric shouted with a smile. The door on the far side of the shed, burst open and Julien leaned into view.

  Something bumped into the wood wall behind him and slid against it. Eric jerked around and his rifle fell from nerveless hands. Leah sat slumped against the battered doorframe, her hands around her throat. Blood streamed between her fingers as she stared at him with confused eyes. Her mouth opened and closed but made no sound.

  Sinking to his knees at her side, Eric gasped.

  “No, no, fuck no,” Eric blurted as he franticly dug at his LBE for his first aid kit. “Leah, it’ll be okay. You’re okay. We got this, we trained for this.”

  Eric pried back her hands and began wrapping the bandaging material around her throat. She looked at her blood coated hands and panic replaced confusion in her eyes. She gurgled and started to flail.

  “Easy, love, easy. You’re going to be okay. I’m going to get you to Doc, he can fix this,” Eric told her fervently as wrapped tape to hold the bandage in place. He leaned back and, forcing the worry from his face, gave her a hopeful smile. The glassy surface of her eyes clouded over. Eric blinked, unable to process what he just witnessed.

  “But, but,” he sputtered, unable to pull his eyes from hers. Shaking, he reached out and touched her cheek. “Leah?”

  A hand rested on his shoulder. Eric haltingly turned his head towards the hand’s owner.

  “She’s gone, Eric,” Julien told him softly.

  “But--”

  “She’s gone,” Julien repeated in the same sad tone.

  Eric’s gaze crept back to his fallen wife. She’s gone? No. No, she can’t be. I just-I. No, this has to be a dream. Has to be. I’m going to wake up any minute now.

  “Eric, I know this hurts,” Julien said firmly. “Keep it together. Mourn her later, when it’s safe. If we don’t secure the south gate now, this will be only the beginning.”

  This, no. A single tear trickled down his face. He started to shake as despair and rage tore through him, mauling each other as much as they mauled him for control. Keep it together. Keep. It. Together.

  “Secure the south gate. Got it,” he muttered numbly seconds later.

  Eric found himself standing. His rifle appeared in his hands. He watched himself smoothly, but robotically check the chamber, load a fresh magazine, and follow Julien.

  As they approached the torn south gate, Eric spotted several of the Gliar’s men still twitching on the ground. One was leaving a long red trail across the snow as he tried to drag himself away. Eric didn’t wait for Julien to give any orders. He knew what had to be done and did his duty. The infiltrator no longer moved when Eric moved to catch up to Julien.

  His radio hissed and he heard Julien’s voice. It sounded distant and tinny.

  “South gate retaken. Reinforcements needed, we’ve taken casualties.”

  “Copy that. Bear is en route. ETA ten minutes.”

  Eric heard something move inside the tattered gatehouse he’d helped build. His rifle came up.

  “Come out with your hands up,” he heard himself bark.

  Three men limped out. Eric recognized one immediately. His eyes narrowed.

  “Who was behind this?” he asked flatly.

  When none of them replied Eric lowered his rifle and hissed, “If you expect any mercy whatsoever, tell me.”

  The two privates pointed at Specialist Perkins. The man who wouldn’t shoot. Leah’s lifeless face loomed before him. He couldn’t hold the gyre of rage back any longer. Mentally he smiled, letting it take him. Eric watched himself raise his rifle, shoot both privates in their startled faces, and then butt stroke Perkins unconscious. The darkness consumed everything.

  Day 1025

  Eric groaned. His everything hurt.

  “Honey, I had the weirdest-” Eric said as he rolled over in bed. His hand found only cold, empty space where Leah should have been. “-Dream.”

  He grunted as he sat up and looked around their bedroom. He spotted his rifle. His plates weren’t where he normally put them, they were lying next to his rifle. Where’s her gear? Maybe she got up before me and decided to do some target practice?

  Every muscle, every joint protested his decision to stand loudly. He shuffled over to their chest of drawers and dressed. My gear’s filthy. Why’s my gear filthy? Someone’s got to be screwing with me. Not going out there with a dirty rifle. What is that smell? Anne’s assistant burnt something in the kitchen again.

  Eric took his rifle to their desk. He pulled out the basket of chemicals from under the desk, broke down the rifle, and cleaned it. He picked up the magazine to reseat it and realized it was almost empty.

  “Okay, this shit is getting old,” Eric muttered as he looked through their closet. Someone had clearly dug through their storage bins and left their contents strewn across the floor. All forty of their spare magazines were nowhere to be found. Eric seated the mostly empty magazine with a frown and slung his rifle over his shoulder. He stepped out into the hall and froze. What the?

  Carefully, he picked his way through the slumbering forms that lined the hallway in their twisted masses of worn blankets and sheets.

  A half dozen of his recruits sat leaning against sandbags that lined the wall to either side of the front door in full gear. They stood as he reached the bottom of the stairs.

  “Sir, nothing to report,” their group’s officer snapped a salute and told him. Warily Eric returned the salute. Eric did not miss the respect and fear in the man’s eyes. What’s this about?

  He shuffled into the kitchen. Bags, boxes, and their contents were strewn about. It looked like someone forgotten they’d left meat to thaw on both the prep tables. Blood pooled on the tops and had dripped to the floor into puddles and blood soaked gauze. Anne sat on a stool in the middle of the disaster, her head in her hands.

  “Anne?” Eric asked. “You okay?”

  She looked up with bleary, red-rimmed eyes and slowly shook her head before resting it back on her hands. Flickering light from the yard brought his attention to one of the windows. A bonfire? As he watched, the two men by the fire turned and bent over the dark pile next to them. They heaved something large up and hefted it into the fire.

  “Anne, they’re burning--”r />
  “Bodies.”

  Dark realization needled at him, but memory did not come.

  “Anne, why are they burning bodies?”

  Anne began to cry. Not knowing what else to do, Eric stepped through the debris and squeezed her shoulder. She bawled and leaned into him. Eventually the crying became sniffles.

  “Turing is in his study.” she managed and blew her nose. “He’ll want to see you.”

  Turing half stood and raised his pistol toward the door as Eric walked in. Hadrian snored loudly, face down on one of the other desks.

  “Oh, you’re up,” Turing said and sat his pistol down.

  Hadrian jerked awake at Turing’s words.

  “I guess,” Eric said with a shrug. “I feel like I got hit by a starship. No, a small moon.”

  Grim-faced, Hadrian staggered to his feet, holstering the pistol his face had concealed.

  “Eric?” the commando asked as he dug something out of a pocket.

  “What?” Eric asked, concerned by Hadrian’s tone. Horror crept over him as Hadrian’s resigned look tugged at his memory. No, this isn’t happening. Eric stepped back, but Hadrian caught his arm and pressed something small into his hand. Eric looked down. The simple metal band in his palm glinted in the light where flakes of dried blood fallen off.

  “Well, you can thank Jeff for them looking like rings instead of globs of metal shit.”

  Leah shook her head at him, grinning.

  Eric gasped and his knees buckled. Hadrian caught him.

  Day 1027

  Eric shifted, rubbing his toes together in his boots in a vain attempt to keep them warm as the crowd assembled. Turing’s lack of sleep had finally caught up with him, leaving him bedridden and forcing Eric to conduct the final pronouncement.

  He glanced to the prisoners next to him and scowled. Two days of interrogation had produced a fair amount of information, but with the strain he’d been under, most details slid from his mind like rain off glass. What little he retained lit his heart like a small black sun.

  Traitors.

  Eric glanced about the crowd again as he pulled out his notepad.

  That should be enough.

  Eric sneered as he reviewed his notes from the night before and began to speak, “Let it be known that Doctor Lainz was sent here as a plant by Colonel Gliar with the direct goal of fomenting distrust and rebellion in our ranks so as to weaken our defenses. This account is confirmed by direct evidence, collaboration by the other prisoners, and video recorded testimony by witnesses and the defendants.”

  Eric paused, letting his pronouncement sink in. A low mumble raced through the crowd

  “Let it be also known that under the under the influence of Doctor Lainz, Specialist Perkins convinced the members of his squad that a peaceful solution was possible. In so many words, Perkins convinced his squad that Turing’s council wrongly refused to negotiate terms with the Legion, that we were using everyone here as slave labor and had no regard for their lives despite more than ample evidence to the contrary. Convinced of these lies, that their leadership were more the enemy than the legionnaires, the members of his squad opened the south gate for the invaders and greeted them as brothers. This account is confirmed by direct evidence, collaboration by other prisoners, and video recorded testimony by the accused.

  “Under Protectorate law, the penalty for treason and espionage is death.”

  Eric’s pronouncement hushed the crowd.

  “Are there any objections?” Eric asked no one in particular. Without waiting, he continued, “Seeing none, the sentence is to be carried out forthwith. Under lesser circumstances, I would be well within my rights to personally execute each and every one of you.”

  Eric caressed the butt of the flintlock tucked in his belt.

  “However, I will not stain the honor of common criminals by treating these traitors as I would criminals,” Eric told the crowd. “Doctor Lainz, Specialist Perkins, you and your co-conspirators are hereby stripped of your ranks and your names struck from the roll. You and the rest of your ilk are sentenced to hang by the neck until dead whereupon your remains will be fed to the animals and your bones, much like your names, will be forgotten. May God have mercy on your souls. You will find none here. Sergeant-at-Arms, you have your instructions.”

  Day 1028

  Eric stared in silent disbelief at the flag-draped coffin before of him. Turing did say he was going to do something special for her. Dimly he realized Elizabeth was squeezing his hand as Turing said something. None of it mattered. Not the words, not the condolences. None of it mattered. My wife is gone.

  Images and half remembered memories floated by. Leah, scared and hiding under a scratchy wool prison blanket. The serious cast on her face as she handed him the knife as he stood over the dying man. A wary hint of a smile from that first spring. You were still too afraid to smile then. Leah stood at attention mocking him with skewed helmet and a silly grin under the salute. I miss that smile, Leah. God, I miss you. Eric pushed at the last memory, but it came anyway. Leah lying next to him, breathless and flushed. You laid there giddy about how the contraceptives were wearing off, about how we could start a family soon. That was the night before, before--

  The first volley of fire interrupted that thought and sent his heart racing. More memories tumbled through him as the shots rang out. The angry buzz of bullets passing only centimeters from him. Firing. Firing. He’s shooting at me! Keep firing! Why is he still shooting back? Keep firing! He gripped Elizabeth’s hand until his knuckles ached.

  He knew the droning that followed was a recording, but the soft bugle call reached through silent centuries to pull the pain from his heart and the tears from his eyes.

  People moved. Words were spoken.

  Someone stood before him. Blinking the tears away, he looked up. A watery-eyed Hadrian was handing him a folded flag. The flag of a fallen nation given for the loss of another. The white stars amongst the dark blue burnt holes into his eyes. You came to love what they stood for, Leah. Eric wept as we weakly accepted the flag.

  Leah, my love. It should have been me. Why couldn’t it have been me?

  Day 1052

  Eric grumbled as slid his feet out of bed and sat up. He leaned forward, rubbing at his eyes. Leah’s ring swung on its chain against his chest, its weight tugged memories he no longer wanted to feel. Eric squinted at the bottle on his nightstand. Grabbing it while he stood, Eric lurched over to his desk to sit down. He stared at the bottle in his lap for several long seconds and had started to twist the cap off when someone knocked at the door.

  “What?”

  “Can I come in?” Elizabeth asked outside.

  Eric sighed and sat the bottle on the desk.

  “Sure.”

  He reached for the tumbler he’d used the night before as Elizabeth let herself in.

  “Don’t you think it’s a bit early to be drinking alone?” she asked.

  Eric glanced at the sunlight filtering through the heavy curtains and back to her.

  “I’m not drinking alone. Muffin’s sleeping over there in the clothes pile. That, and you’re here, too.”

  Eric saw a brief flicker of a smile in Elizabeth’s face before she shook her head at him.

  “You know what I meant,” she said and pulled a chair out from the small table.

  Leah’s chair. Eric tried not to wince as memories of sharing breakfast with Leah at that table spun through him. Every one of Leah’s happy smiles cut deeper into him than the last. His eyes slid back to the bottle.

  Eric felt concern rolling off Elizabeth in waves. He sighed.

  “What did you want?” he asked, trying to keep the hurt out of his voice. He failed.

  “Eric, I’m worried about you. We’re worried about you.”

  Eric stared blankly at the bottle in his hands. When did I pick it up?

  “And?” he asked, casually pouring what was left of the bottle into his tumbler.

  “And what?” she said, anger heatin
g her words. “Eric, when you’re not downstairs acting like a robot, you’re up here drinking. You’re destroying yourself.”

  Eric glared at her and growled, “Maybe that’s what I want. Why do any of you care?”

  Liz gaped at him. Her features hardened and she rose to her feet.

  “I came up here to talk to you as a friend, Eric, but it’s pretty clear to me now I should have come up here as your superior officer.”

  Eric blinked. She continued before the words had sunk in, “With what little respect I have left for you, Eric, you’re Turing’s factor and a high ranking militia officer, but you’re not acting like either and you haven’t for the last month.

  “So far, people have understood. Everyone’s lost someone they cared for, but how much longer will their understanding last? How much longer will it take before they start losing respect for you? No, I get it, what do you care? Why should you give a thrice-damned piss about what all these people think, right?

  “I’ll tell you why, Eric. Because these people depend on you. You might not be the keystone holding everything together, but you’re damn close to it. What happens to an officer when no one respects them? Orders, even proper, correct ones, don’t get followed. Insubordination becomes the norm, morale tanks. Fights start. Do you honestly want to take this place along with you on your path to self-destruction? Because that’s exactly what you’re doing right now.”

  “Liz--”

  “Don’t ‘Liz’, me, Eric. Do you understand how much of what we’ve built here depends on you? Do you have an idea, any idea at all?”

  Words failed him.

  “Eric, when I was a young ensign, I saw all the perks the senior officers got and I kept thinking to myself that with rank comes privilege. I got hung up on the idea that the more important I was, the less the rules applied to me. Thinking like that damn near cost me my commission when I was a lieutenant. Yes, with rank comes privilege, but it also comes with responsibility.