Markov's Prize

by Mark Barber

  “One assault force, as previously briefed,” Owenne said. “Although we might be getting some help from the locals now that elements of their military are allied to our cause. In addition, the warship Steadfast has carried out a sensor sweep of this continent, and we believe we have located a lightly defended storage and maintenance facility behind their lines. A company of the 3rd Drop Formation will be carrying out an attack tonight. Make no mistake, Senior, we’re on. This campaign is beginning in earnest right now. Get your people ready.”

  Van Noor scratched his chin thoughtfully. The information gleaned by the warship was certainly useful, but not worth risking an entire ship and its crew to locate a storage and maintenance facility. No, Owenne was looking for something else entirely.

  Chapter Seven

  Illarii

  Eastern Panhuman Concord

  The autumnal scents of moss and damp vegetation filled the air as Tahl materialized on the transmat pad. The planet’s soft, green sky was broken up by a few thin layers of cloud which cast the surrounding, orange-brown forests into shadows. The transportation hub had several dozen transmat pads, allowing citizens from all over the region to instantly and effortlessly transport themselves to within walking distance of homes, entertainment hubs, and supply depots. Small groups of citizens would appear and disappear every few seconds as life carried on in this sleepy corner of the Concord. The main city was off to the north, but this scattered residential area out in the countryside had been Tahl’s destination for several days now.

  Picking up his kit bag and slinging it over his shoulder, Tahl began the walk down the winding country path which meandered between the forested hills to either side. Thanks to compression technology, his kit bag contained everything he could possibly need from bedding and sports clothing, to ceremonial uniform. He could have left it somewhere convenient, but he was a firm advocate of the age-old military saying: never get separated from your kit.

  Up ahead, an old man of perhaps two hundred years of age leaned against a white wooden fence that ran around the perimeter of his land. A picturesque, three-story house sat on top of the shallow hill behind him. The white haired man looked up at Tahl and smiled.

  “Morning, Strikes! How goes it?”

  The fact that the old man had recognized Tahl’s corps from his black beret hinted at the man having some past military experience, but Tahl dismissed the thought due to the use of the word ‘Strikes’ – a nickname which originated from a popular holovised drama series but actually had no use at all in the real military.

  “Morning, sir,” Tahl smiled. “Very well, thank you. Yourself?”

  “Aye, good,” the old man grinned. “Where you headed from? You been giving those Isorian bastards a good kicking?”

  “Not this time around, I’m off east carrying out border security,” Tahl said, mindful of both operational security and his duty as a soldier to withhold as much detail as possible about warfare from civilians. C3 had decreed it best to preserve normal citizens from the details of modern warfare.

  “Well, good job nonetheless,” the old man nodded, “I haven’t seen you here before. You got family here?”

  “Friends,” Tahl replied.

  “Who you visiting? I’ve been here all my life. I reckon I know pretty much everyone.”

  Tahl hesitated. It would not do her any good if her local community knew he was visiting, as rumors would probably spread, but being mysterious would probably arouse even more suspicion.

  “Becca,” he replied. “Becca Van Noor.”

  The man’s smile faded.

  “She lost her husband about a year ago. I guess you know that already.”

  “Yes, sir,” Tahl said.

  “Well, you treat her right. She’s a good woman with two fine children.”

  “I’m just passing through to say hello, nothing more. I’m afraid I’m late already. Good day, sir.”

  Tahl continued the walk up across two more hills until he saw the house he had spent eight days travelling to find. He had visited it three times before, but never on his own. Ignoring a brief urge to abandon the whole idea and turn back, Tahl approached the garden’s gate. Similar to the surrounding homes, the house was a wooden construct atop a small hill with several beautifully maintained floral gardens surrounding it. Two children were playing with toy spaceships amid the flowers. The smaller of the two, a boy of five years with blonde hair, stopped in his tracks and looked up at where Tahl waited at the gates.

  “Mom! There’s a soldier here!” He shouted.

  Tahl offered a smile.

  “Hello, Jabe,” he said softly. “You remember me? I’m one of your dad’s friends.”

  The girl ran inside, but Jabe walked slowly over, his head cocked to one side before a smile slowly spread across his face.

  “Ryen!” He waved.

  “Jabe! Get inside!” An angry shout was issued from behind him.

  The little boy immediately turned and scuttled back up the garden path before dashing inside the house after his older sister. Tahl looked up and saw Becca storming back down the path toward him. Only a decade or so younger than her husband, Becca was a woman of relatively short stature whose pleasant features were framed by shoulder length, auburn hair. The woman came to a stop by the garden gate. With three decades of martial arts training to fall back on, Tahl saw the slap aimed at his face coming before she had even finished bringing her hand back to commence the strike.

  Even with plenty of time in the last few days to sleep, Tahl still felt fatigued. The fatigue made him resent Rhona’s allegations of misconduct, begrudge Owenne for sending him away from his company, and feel bitter toward Zhen Davi for confronting him so aggressively in the terminal. He knew the gentlemanly thing to do would be to allow Becca to vent her anger and allow the strike to hit his face, but he had run out of energy.

  Tahl swept a clenched fist forward and out to block the strike, swatting away Becca’s attempt to hit him. Her facial expression immediately changed from one of unbridled anger, to a more calm, serene, and accepting demeanor. Tahl had seen this sort of reaction before, from soldiers recovering from traumatic experiences. Becca was using a tranquil – a device to stay connected to the IMTel for artificial assistance with mental stabilization following a difficult ordeal. The IMTel had detected her anger and reacted with the only care it knew how to give, by immediately controlling her emotions and taking away the negativity. Such was the strength of the all-powerful man-machine interface which controlled all lives via the nanosphere shard connections.

  “I am sorry, Ryen,” Becca said, almost mechanically. “I should not have attempted to hit you. But I’m angry with you.”

  “What did I do wrong?” Tahl asked gently.

  “It’s what you didn’t do. You knew Bry better than anybody. You should have stopped him.”

  “I had no idea,” Tahl replied truthfully. “I knew he was tired, I knew he had a lot on his mind, and he was struggling with all of the people we’d both seen killed. A load of the guys went out one night when we were given a respite from the front. I stayed back. The next morning, he told me what happened with that… woman. As soon as he sobered up, he knew what he’d done and he regretted it. He contacted you within minutes.”

  The serenity behind her eyes faded again as the raw, powerful panhuman emotions fought to override the paternal care provided by the tranquil.

  “You expect me to feel sympathy for that?” Becca demanded. “I’m back here, the mother of his children, and that’s the respect he shows me? All of us? I assume you’ve come here to try to convince me to forgive him?”

  “It’s not even him,” Tahl tried to explain. “The man who committed that act is dead and gone now. The Bry Van Noor I now know has changed.”

  “It’s the same man!” Becca seethed.

  “Up to a point,” Tahl persevered. “He backed up his memories, the same as the rest of us, and he… suffered significant trauma to the head. The whole process of getting somebod
y back up and running, it’s not without its hazards. A person can lose huge parts of their memory or have their personality altered. The Bry I now know never betrayed you. It all happened after…”

  “But he’s still capable of it!” Becca snapped. “That bastard has shown me what he’s capable of, and I don’t want anything to do with him!”

  Again, the angry woman took a deep breath and her brow unfurrowed as calm descended.

  “Won’t you come in, for a drink at least?” She managed a small smile. “You must have travelled a long way to get here.”

  “I did, and I’ve already missed a couple of connections, so I’ll be late in returning to my unit,” Tahl said. “But I had to get here. For Bry. Becca, he’s learned from this. The man went into a chamber to upload his memories and then woke up to find that for him, a few moments had gone by, but for everybody else, nearly a year had passed. He remembers you, the children, and he loves you very much. He has no memory of the mistake which was made. All he knows is the fallout, and I can promise you that he would never, ever do that to you again.”

  The anger returned immediately.

  “What guarantees can you give? If you knew him so well, you would have stopped this in the first place!”

  “I couldn’t see it coming, no!” Tahl retorted tersely. “I couldn’t stop him! You say it as if we’ve all been lounging around, taking it easy, and enjoying life! You have no idea! Your husband was dead and gone, and we couldn’t save him there and then because his entire head was gone! He was stood as close to me as you are now when that sniper hit him. I had to have fragments of his skull removed from my cheek. So no, I can’t lecture you on much, but I can tell you that whilst you are here, pruning your damn garden, life is not so easy for us on the other side of the Concord borders!”

  Tahl immediately regretted the outburst, knowing full well that it would be incredibly difficult raising two children alone, and that was something he could understand. Becca closed her eyes for several long moments. A gust of wind blew across the garden, bringing the delightful scents of the various exotic and colorful flowers.

  “What do you want from me, Ryen?” She finally asked calmly. “It’s been nearly a year and I still don’t know what to do. I feel anger, I then have help from the shard, and I feel calm. But I never feel acceptance or forgiveness. I just… can’t. I don’t know what you want from me, but whatever it is, I can’t give it.”

  “I know I can’t convince you to change your mind about what happened,” Tahl said quietly. “I’m not a father, I doubt I ever will be. I’m nobody to lecture on children or parenting. But Jabe and Alora… they need their father. My home planet acknowledges that the ideal family unit is two parents, that’s science. Please, just let him contact his children. Please.”

  Becca buried her face in her hands, her shoulders trembling. She looked up, wiping a tear away before that same expression of calm descended upon her. She smiled warmly at Tahl as if she did not have a care in the world.

  “Thank you for coming and talking to me,” she said, her voice sounding void of emotion. “I will give it some thought. That is all I can promise. Don’t tell him that I’ve agreed to anything, because I have not. I will think it through. That’s all.”

  Tahl nodded and took a step back away from the gate. A thin mist of drizzle began to fall from the green-tinted clouds above.

  “Take care, Becca,” he said. “I’m so sorry this all happened. So very sorry.”

  He turned and walked away before she called his name. Again, emotion forced its way through the mask of indifference which the tranquil had provided her with.

  “You’re a good friend to him. To come all this way for five minutes. You’re a good man, Ryen. Stay safe.”

  Tahl smiled and turned again to walk back to the transport hub and begin the long journey back to the frontlines. The weariness and loneliness, his constant companions, returned in force as he dragged his booted feet along the path, bringing him closer step by step to the guns of his enemies. The words of Davi and Mosse at the terminal echoed around his head, reminding him of those he had hurt in the past. Then, amid it all, Becca’s words gave him some hope. ‘You’re a good man.’ He realized just how few people had ever expressed those sentiments to him. Although his motive had always been to try to help his friend, this long journey for its five-minute conclusion was all worthwhile from a purely selfish view, just to hear those words from one person.

  “Ryen?”

  Tahl turned around again. Van Noor’s daughter, Alora, stood behind him on the track. Tahl dropped to one knee to bring his eyes down to her level.

  “Hello, Lora!” He smiled. “It’s nice to see you again! You doing okay here?”

  The girl transmitted a tiny fragment of data to him via the shard.

  “Please give this to my daddy,” she said before turning and running back toward her home.

  ***

  The rumble of artillery echoed from the west. The late afternoon suns continued to beat down along the dusty road that wound through the suburbs and the neat lines of gargot trees which separated the road from the abandoned residential buildings to either side. Three C3M4 combat drones powered their way slowly along the road at head height, heading from the Formation Repair Depot back toward Alpha Company’s positions at the frontline. Beta Company had seen some isolated action against a few Ghar Outcast probes, but it always seemed to be Rall and his squad who ended up mowing down waves of the furious little creatures; Rhona and her squad were yet to fire a shot.

  “Go on, what is it?” Rhona asked as she walked along the pavement, a kit bag full of compressed and recently serviced plasma carbines slung over one shoulder.

  “What do you mean?” Rae asked as she struggled to keep pace with the taller woman and carry three x-launcher firing tubes.

  “It’s obvious that something’s on your mind. You offer to keep me company on the walk to the repair depot, then say nothing all the way there.”

  A trio of troopers from Alpha Company walked past them on the pavement, two of the three soldiers flashing smiles to Rhona as they passed.

  “You get that a lot?” Rae asked. “It must be nice.”

  “It was to both of us, not just me,” Rhona said. “You can’t blame ‘em for it. Take guys away from home for months at a time, even two grimy women in dusty battle armor are gonna look hot.”

  “You always look hot, guys are always looking at you.”

  “You’re changing the subject,” Rhona said, slinging the kit bag over her other shoulder as they reached a small crossroad and headed south.

  “Okay,” Rae finally said, “I’ve been thinking about what we spoke about a few days ago, and I just don’t get it. Why would you lower yourself to taking your clothes off in a bar full of strangers?”

  Rhona threw the kit bag full of weapons down on the cracked pavement and turned to face the younger woman. Even with a couple of small suspensors fitted to the bag, it was heavy; and she removed her beret to run a hand through her sweat soaked hair before answering the challenge.

  “Did I not make it clear that a crime lord was effectively holding a gun to my pa’s head?”

  “Yeah, you made that clear,” Rae said slowly and carefully, “but if he owed money, why not just get another job and pay it back? There had to have been a hundred things which paid better than lap dancing and were more… moral.”

  “It’s not about money, Ila,” Rhona exhaled, “it’s about power. Crime is about power. Crime is about being able to force the daughter of a guy who has pissed you off to do something she doesn’t want to, and the guy would die if he ever knew his daughter was doing it. But that’s life outside the Concord. People criticize the Concord way of doing things for being some draconian dictatorship where a faceless machine saps your free will. I’d rather lose some free will and live in a place where my mom survived childbirth and crime lords couldn’t exist to take my pa away. I mean, I’m not saying it’s perfect. I’d rather have the ability to fe
el emotional pain than have the big robot mind suddenly dampen my senses every time I think of something meaningful and real.”

  Rae nodded slowly as Rhona replaced her beret and slung her kit bag back over her shoulder.

  “But lap dancing,” Rae said, “I mean, how could you just get everything out and grind against some fat guy…”

  “Jeez, Rae!” Rhona threw the kit bag down again and turned away from the punishing sun glare. “I’m here talking to you about politics and life, and you just wanna talk about lap dancing! You’re like… I dunno, a guy! I’m not ashamed about what I did; it kept my pa alive for another five years. Like I told you, the pole dancing was cool. It was a high, being center of attention for something I worked hard at and was damn good at. The lap dancing? No, that was crap. I mean, real bad. I don’t remember much of it because the only way I could do it was if I was so drunk I could barely walk straight. Some of the other girls were on stuff far worse than booze to go into those damn cubicles. Life outside the Concord doesn’t necessarily consist of finding the right person, getting a huge house, and raising perfect kids with no other responsibilities to worry about. Life is very different out in the Determinate. Life out there can be… well, just be grateful for what you’ve got.”

  “Okay, okay,” Rae held her hands up. “What do you mean about feeling pain? Why would you want that?”

  Rhona dragged the bag up for a third time and began walking back to the company holding area as she talked.

  “It’s like a bath; if you’re freezing cold and you put your foot in lukewarm water, it feels very different to when you’re boiling hot and you get into that bath. It’s all about perspective, and if you’ve never felt sadness and pain, you can’t really feel and truly appreciate happiness. I don’t want the IMTel getting in my head and turning off my pain. I want to feel it for myself.”

  A convoy of four Dukes rumbled past them on the road, their jets kicking up dust along the pavement and the noise of their engines putting a temporary stop to the conversation.