by Ben Bova
A ring of soldiers had formed around the tiny hopper, and every pulse rifle was trained on it and its occupants. The guns of the two Eastland craft that had landed with it were likewise pointed menacingly at the little craft. Other weapons, both larger and smaller man the ones that now kept the landing area in their sights, had also been brought to bear on the Kestrel.
Nothing moved. The occupants of the hopper made no attempt to leave the craft until a small open transport, similar in design to the GEMs Adela had seen at the tap station, entered the edge of the landing area from the direction of the Capitol, followed by several wheeled vehicles. The hopper's cabin hatch swung open when the vehicles came to a stop, and a helmeted man stepped out onto the pavement. Salera, surrounded by security, got out of the GEM and barked an order to several of the soldiers. They immediately approached the hopper.
The man was searched, a little too roughly, Adela thought. Other soldiers, their weapons leveled at the cockpit of the craft, forced the two pilots out onto the landing surface as well, their hands behind their heads. The two were taken to one side and detained, while the other man walked forward under heavy guard and stood before the Eastland Speaker. As he passed in front of them at the edge of the shield he hesitated and turned to them, lifting his helmet's tinted visor. It was Niles, as they'd suspected.
"Well, it's your move," Salera said angrily when the man stopped before him. He swept his arm to take in the whole area, adding, "We've met you as you requested. We've agreed to your conditions. We've lived up to our promises." He looked over to the shuttle, staring coldly at Adela and her companions, and bowed mockingly in their direction. "We've even been given the honor of having the high and mighty Imperial representatives attend."
"I'm glad they're here."
"Well, I'm so happy that you're pleased," he said sarcastically. He stood straighter and nodded to the soldiers at his side, who immediately brought their weapons a bit higher. "Now give me one good reason why I shouldn't take you into custody immediately and end this charade of a war."
"I'm here to end this charade, too." He pulled off the helmet and dropped it, allowing it to clatter loudly to the ground. The soldiers fidgeted, the metallic sounds of a hundred weapons being shifted simultaneously breaking through the still, hot air.
Niles came forward, his hair pasted to his scalp with sweat, and stood facing Salera. "This has gone on long enough, Kip. I've run the same simulations he has." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Montero. "So have you. You know you can't win. Let's stop this now before even one more dies."
Salera laughed. A soft chuckling sound at first, then he tilted his head back and roared with laughter until tears flowed from his eyes. The young soldiers at his side smiled, following his lead, but they were clearly too unnerved by this confrontation to see any humor in anything that had been said.
"That's it?" Salera demanded, wiping his eyes. "That's all this was about?" He laughed again and turned for the GEM, hopping into the open passenger seating. "I think you need to rerun your simulations. But this time, include a factor about the breakdown of the Westland Commander in Chief. I plan to." He motioned for his driver to take him back to the Capitol.
"Wait!" Several guns clattered as they were reaimed at Niles.
Salera turned in the GEM, his manner seemingly more of annoyance now than anything else. "Yes, Niles?"
The man started to speak, but stopped himself as his face changed abruptly, showing an expression of—what? Adela couldn't tell from her viewing angle just what had masked the man's features. Sorrow? Fear? Hatred?
"Open the shield," she said to the Imperial guard nearest her. The man stood dumbly, not knowing what to do, and looked to Montero for guidance. Adela followed his gaze and stared the Commander in the eyes. "Open it!"
He nodded, and the guard removed a flashlight-shaped object from his belt and pointed it at the shield in front of him, nullifying a circular area large enough for Adela to pass through. A stiff breeze, far cooler than the air inside the shield, blew refreshingly through the opening. Adela stepped through.
Woorunmarra stood by the opening. "Commander?"
"Go with her," he replied. Woorunmarra stepped through and caught up with Adela. The pair was immediately flanked by several Eastland soldiers, causing the Imperial guards nearest the opening to prepare to follow them. "No," Montero ordered, stopping the guards before they could clear the opening. "I think they'll be safer if you stay here." He nodded once to the man at his side and the opening disappeared.
Ignoring the armed soldiers covering the two of them with their weapons, Adela and the Lieutenant walked steadily to where Niles and Salera confronted each other. Niles regarded her and Woorunmarra as they approached and stood to one side, and Adela saw the look on his face for what it was: pain.
"I've brought something you need to see," he said, facing Salera again. "In the hopper." He started for the craft.
"Hold it!" Salera called at his back. He turned to several of the soldiers, ordering them to check the hopper before Niles could move any closer to the parked aircraft.
The men trotted for the craft, easily opening the hatch to the cargo hold. One handed his weapon to a companion and, covered by the others, climbed into the hold. A minute passed, then another, and he reappeared in the opening and said something to one of the others, who also climbed inside. They both reappeared a moment later and spoke animatedly to the others.
All but one of the soldiers remained at the open hold of the hopper while the first man who had inspected the craft ran back to stand panting, and fearful, before Salera.
"Well?" he demanded when the young man hesitated.
"Sir, I…"
"Is there a weapon? What?"
The young man stuttered, unable to speak. "There is… are… no weapons. Nothing dangerous. Sir."
Speaker Salera scrambled down out of the GEM, shoving the soldier aside as he strode toward the hopper. The men at the cargo hold moved away as he neared, futilely attempting to make themselves invisible.
Salera stood at the edge of the open hatch and stared inside, remaining there, unmoving, for several moments.
"What is it?" Adela asked of Niles. He turned to her, his eyes welling with tears, but didn't answer.
"Adela, look," Woorunmarra whispered, his hand on her shoulder, and nodded toward the hopper.
Salera had reached inside the hold, removing its contents, and was walking slowly toward them, his face a mask of consuming grief. The crowd, until just moments before abuzz with speculation and chatter, fell silent. There were gasps here and there from some of the soldiers as the Speaker walked into their field of view. He carried a uniformed woman in his embrace, her arms and legs dangling limply as he walked slowly back to the GEM.
But as he neared, Adela realized that it wasn't a woman at all. She was tiny, smaller than she was, and couldn't have been more than a teenager—eighteen, maybe nineteen years old at the most. Her blond hair hung, dirty and blood-matted, over her youthful face. The left shoulder of her uniform was blood-soaked, and her left arm swung at an odd angle as Salera stopped before them.
He tried to speak, but couldn't find the words. He gasped painfully and looked away, his eyes scanning the soldiers whose attention was now riveted on him. His lower lip quivering, he asked, simply, "What happened?" Gone was the forceful sense of command he'd displayed only moments earlier. He walked past them and sat on the fender skirt of one of the wheeled transports that had escorted the GEM, and stroked the filthy hair away from the girl's face. He looked up suddenly, his expression repeating his question.
His daughter, Adela realized. She felt tears of her own forming and turned to Billy, who put his arm around her, to comfort himself, she knew, as much as her.
Niles went to Salera, stopping just short of him, and looked down at the man as he held the broken body to his chest. "She was a member of one of the raiding parties involved in the hit-and-runs on the abandoned stations," he said softly. "Her hopper was shot
down last night near station 189."
Salera knelt forward, laying the dead girl gently on the ground before him. Remaining on one knee, he rested an arm on the fender skirt and, still staring unblinkingly at her, whispered, "You've killed my daughter, bastard." He didn't rise, but looked up into Niles' face. "You've killed Lanni."
"No," Niles replied, his voice filled with pain. "She received only minor injuries in the hit; none of her crewmates were badly hurt." Niles sat on the fender and several soldiers brandished weapons, but Salera waved them off and stared again at the girl. They moved a few paces away, their weapons still held uncertainly at the ready, leaving the two Speakers, and Adela and Billy, alone.
"She and the others from her hopper were taken to a detention center at the encampment near Taw," Niles continued. "Their injuries were treated and they were being taken care of according to the Laws of War." He hesitated, his voice dropping still lower. "But this morning there was a series of tremors. The POW holding facility collapsed, as did one of our barracks. Others were severely damaged. Thirty of our people, most of them civilian support, and ten of the prisoners were killed. There was no power to the medical building, and the supplies it contained were destroyed. Medical evacuation hoppers were dispatched immediately, but eighteen more people died before they could be treated. Lanni was one of them."
Salera, his head bowed deeply, asked, "What section of the tap system runs through Taw?"
"It was controlled from Leeper grouping, on one of the sections you ordered severed two weeks ago." Niles shook his head. "There was nothing we could do to stop the tremors. I'm sorry, Kip."
Salera slid to the ground at his daughter's side and picked her up, cradling her in his arms as he rocked back and forth on his knees, causing her head to loll lifelessly from side to side. "I did it," he croaked. "I did it." His eyes closed tightly and he pulled his daughter closer, sobbing into the dead girl's neck.
A throat cleared softly at her side and Adela realized that Montero had left the combat shuttle and had come up behind them. The Commander said nothing, but stood silently with the two of them.
Niles knelt at the man's side, a hand laid softly on his shoulder.
"Let her be the last to die," he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
"My people fought well," Amasee Niles said, looking around him at the blackened landscape. "So did Eastland's."
"It's not wrong to be proud of fighting to serve your homeland," Adela said, "even if the fight is wrong."
Niles sighed heavily, shook his head at the signs of war that had swept the area surrounding the stations at Leeper.
The ceremonies had been planned for early morning, to take advantage of the cooler temperatures. The control grouping at Leeper was the northernmost of the stations, a few kilometers farther north, in fact, than the corresponding groupings linked to it on the other side of Arroyo. The breezes that blew down from the Grande Sea, laden with the tangy smell of salt water, helped a bit, but it was already hot. The orange K-type sun that was Dannen's Star still hung low in a clear morning sky that promised an even hotter day.
The fighting at Leeper had been the first to begin and the last to stop, and had seen the greatest loss of life. It was decided to hold the ceremonies here, at the site of the worst fighting, and most of the battlefield had been left untouched. Here and there the overturned charred hulks of GEMs were scattered over the rolling hills that were more common here than at station 67. Even though the fighting had been over for months, the hulks looked as if they had only recently fallen silent. Adela supposed that the wrecks would someday be cleared, but that day would come long after the Levant had gone.
Someone had put white wooden markers, hundreds of them, in the ground to mark where soldiers died. In one spot a Westland hopper had crashed into a unit that must have included nearly a dozen GEMs with Eastland markings. The markers sprouted there like wildflowers, with no differentiation as to which marked Eastland soldiers and which signified the dead sons and daughters of Westland families. It was the markers, rather than the wreckage, that held Niles spellbound.
They sat in a group of seats that had been set up on the apron of the second station of the five-station grouping. The station had been the first one rebuilt, the work on the other four in the grouping still in its final stages. Where Adela sat now was a smaller section of maybe thirty portable chairs located at the front of the Westland viewing area. To her left Speaker Niles sat with his wife, Marabell. Although they sat stiffly, she held his hand as if afraid to let go; as if he might disappear and be lost from her if she did. She held a small leather case on her lap with her other hand. Carolane Pence, the representative from Leeper, along with a man she didn't know, sat next to them. There were others in the seating area—Westland government officials, several men and women in military and scientific uniforms, other guests. Montero and two officers from the Levant were at her right. Behind them, seated in a separate section, was the entire Westland Congress. No, not the entire Congress, Adela reminded herself. There were empty seats scattered throughout the assemblage; seats left vacant for representatives who also served in the Congressional Guard, but did not come home from Pallatin's short civil war. Behind the formal seating area stood row after row of uniformed men and women. They ringed the low area that comprised the station apron and spilled up the rise that surrounded the station like an amphitheater.
Farther down the apron was a corresponding seating area where the Eastland officials were to watch the proceedings. Like the one where she now sat, the most forward portion was set up as a VIP section where Speaker Salera and those closest to him would be watching. Woorunmarra was there, next to Salera.
The ceremonies were nearing their end. The speeches, including an address by Commander Montero, were over and a color guard made up of a mixed corps of soldiers from both sides of Pallatin was now drilling in formation for the assembled crowd. A band played; not patriotic military songs, Adela noted, but a melodic refrain that was both beautiful and haunting at the same time.
"It's lovely," Adela whispered to Niles. "What is it?"
"It's called 'Marianna Dawn.' There are lyrics, as well, that tell of a young man going off to a war that nobody wins." He listened closely a moment, determining where the band was in the song, then spoke softly in time to the music: " 'Tell me why you leave me, whene'er the hot wind blows; and I'll tell you of my love for you, to guard you when you go. But tell me you'll return to me, and tell me not to cry; and tell me we'll be one again, and I won't ask you why.' It was written not long after Pallatin was settled, by a woman who emigrated here from Hawthorne."
Adela nodded in understanding. Hawthorne was a dead world, evacuated two centuries earlier following a bloody civil war that left the planet's ecosystem unable to support human life. Survey ships had since returned there, but no attempt had ever been made to resettle it.
The song ended, the last soft notes of the horns fading away over the crowds of soldiers lining the rolling hills. As the band moved off the apron, Niles leaned over and kissed his wife, embracing her briefly before turning to Adela. "I guess this is it," he said simply. Marabell handed him the case and he walked briskly to the center of the apron, where Speaker Salera was already waiting.
Salera made some brief comments regarding the end of the hostilities and of hopes for a brighter future. He spoke optimistically about the newfound trust that had developed between the two halves of Pallatin, and of a new relationship with the Hundred Worlds. His words came naturally, as they would to a man so used to public speaking, but Adela heard the feelings behind what he was saying, and saw that he was indeed making his best effort to accept the situation.
And why not? Commander Montero had lived up to his promise to help rebuild the war-torn world. The work to restore—and improve—the pressure-tap network was nearly done. The new technology and software that had been downloaded from the Levant directly into the planet's data libraries would enable the Pallatins not only to better control t
he violent nature of their world but to become more efficient in production at their shipyards. Further, Salera had at last seemed to accept that the Empire truly had no intention of interfering in their way of life. Genetic information, trade, technology and more would be available for Pallatins to accept—or not—as they saw fit.
When Niles' turn to address the crowd came, he echoed many of the sentiments expressed by his counterpart. While he was now realizing a goal of which he'd dreamed for more than two decades, he said nothing in his remarks that might appear to be condescending to the other Speaker.
"There is one thing more," he said as he concluded. He released a catch on the leather case and unfolded it, removing a thin rectangular slab of gleaming silvery metal that reflected the morning sunlight. "We have learned many things from those aboard the starship from Earth, but the most important things we've learned cannot be measured by technological means. The things we've learned… are about ourselves.
"I've also learned a great deal from the information contained in the Levant libraries. One thing I learned came from the writings of a man who lived on Earth many centuries ago. The people of his homeland would one day divide themselves, much as we have done, and he was destined to give up his life to reunite his people. Twenty years before his land was ripped apart, however, he wrote these lines." Niles lifted the metal plate and read the words that had been engraved onto its polished surface. " 'At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the Earth, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.' " The crowd had fallen silent, so much so that Adela thought she heard the sound of the snaps on the leather case as he refolded it around the plate.
