by Madlen Namro
COMMANDOS PART I OF THE TRILOGY ________________ Madlen Namro
Raider Publishing International ___________________________
New York London Cape Town © 2011 Madlen Namro
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First Printing
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All characters portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
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ISBN: 978-1-61667-322-2
Published By Raider Publishing International www.RaiderPublishing.com
New York London Cape Town
Printed in the United States of America and the United Kingdom
Nothing is certain about tomorrow
Imagine there’s no countries It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
John Lennon
They would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and feel hollow. Not knowing who they were, what they lived for. Anxiety and loneliness would pierce their souls.
At times, their own weeping stirred them awake. The realisation of their own humanity, their self-confidence, would come tumbling down and they would feel helpless and overwhelmed.
As they watched the Earth of 2143, they could not help but shiver. The past century had seen a complete metamorphosis of terrorist groups, who were now transformed into a specialised army, a united front against the United Nations. The terrorists had set up massive command centres and amassed armies of millions. With bombs planted everywhere, they brought entire nations to their knees.
The UN troops watched in amazement as the former ‘third world’ states, in order to survive and prevent economic cataclysm, surrendered their territories to the enemy, contributing to the growth of the global terrorist empire.
They, the heroes of those days, pressed the United Nations to develop their space stations and throw the cover off the fact that the Third World War was, in fact, a war on terrorism.
They called themselves commandos, committed to tracking down every move of the enemy. They did what they could to ensure that the space shuttles orbiting the Earth remained safe havens for the people living there.
They admired those brave enough to remain in the free zones on Earth for trying to live normal lives and secretly praying for a better tomorrow.
And sometimes…
Sometimes they would wake up in the middle of the night and feel the strength to alter the world. Knowing who they were and what they lived for.
At times, they were stirred awake by the desire to fight for honour, not only for the sake of their own nations, but for all of mankind.
Sometimes they felt really powerful.
COMMANDOS PART I OF THE TRILOGY ________________ Madlen Namro
Exile
They were said to be faster than the wind and as cunning as foxes. The people whose first thought every morning was about winning back their homes, about peace. They trained their bodies, but even more so their minds. The people who had given up their egoist dreams of happiness, the new heroes. Commandos.
They drifted in their new spaceships through the vast expanse of open space, always watching the Earth, watching, waiting and tracking even the slightest movements of the enemy.
They trained their cadre, stacking up their days with duties to put monotony and dullness at bay. They learnt that programming was not much different from reading, developing a programme was not some mystic art beyond the reach of a regular soldier. They also proved that martial arts and mastery of modern weaponry were skills available to anyone with the capacity and will to learn.
Above all, commandos depended on their cunning, knowledge, spirit and speed. Only through those skills could they hope to regain what they had once lost. Their home.
They were true warriors. Aggression would stimulate them and provide the energy and motivation to act. Commandos were always focussed and vigilant. No part of their lives would slip through their fingers as they trained
1 themselves to fully control both their bodies and minds.
And once they achieved clarity of mind, they could safely take the roles of strategists and tacticians, their expertise unmatched.
The realisation of the fragility and fleetingness of human life accompanied them at every step. As they fought, they harboured no illusions as to the danger they put themselves in. This knowledge, however, did not overwhelm them, but instead inspired them to live their lives to the fullest, to make the most of every experience and to become even more involved. Their burning drive towards freedom was far greater than that of other free citizens.
Commandos never spoke much. They moved with the strength and calmness of born predators and attacked with intelligence to strike down their enemies. Commandos were men of brilliance. They excelled.
One of the most eminent commandos of all time was Commodore Charles Levi.
He would often stand, as he did today, by the window of his shuttle, cheerless but upright. He realised he had a certain intimidating quality. His bald head and bearded cheeks gave his face a look of austerity. Through daily practice, his fifty-six-year-old body remained in good shape and his posture reflected his strength. Wearing a black, cotton shirt with his hands tucked in the pockets of his light linen trousers, he gazed into the distance, feasting his eyes on the magnitude of the universe in front of him. As always, he could not but marvel at the energy which could, in a fraction of a second and in an infinitely small space, spawn matter in all directions with unimaginable speed and shape an entire universe out of almost nothing. His mind played with the image of this matter; incredibly hot at first, before cooling down to form elementary particles which would later group themselves into protons and neutrons which would lead in effect to the synthesis of hydrogen and helium atoms.
He took a deep breath and narrowed his eyes. The universe kept expanding. What will happen when it finally slows down, freezes and begins to shrink? He enjoyed watching the stars, revelling in the power. The galaxy he called home was merely a single element of a larger cluster known as the ‘Local Group’ which was in turn a part of the ‘Local Super Cluster’, one of approximately sixty similar structures, which together constituted the largest known entities of the universe.
Levi frowned. His thoughts returned to the ship and the issues at hand. With every passing day, he drifted a bit further from other people. Watching the stars and other planets was what helped him regenerate his strength. He thought about the time he had spent onboard the shuttle, about the work to which he devoted himself entirely and about the great effort needed for every mission he had undertaken. He had always committed himself completely. He was a winner. Losing was not an option.
“Commodore…”
A voice interrupted his meditation. It was time to pull himself together and go. The life and wellbeing of one of his fellow commandos were his primary concern. It had taken over a month to convince her to erase her memories of the last five years. That, and not a day more.
Jo, a young woman about thirty years of age, would not lose any of her skills, but would not recognise any of the people she’d met
over the last five years.
She lay on the surgical table, curled up from cold. Her normally petite body seemed even smaller as she cringed, her fear apparent.
The commodore watched as Margaret plugged Jo into memorial leads, switched on all the readers and placed a portal-mask on the woman’s face.
The computers were working at full capacity. Jo twitched uneasily as if trying to express through body language what she was unable to get across in words. Finally she waved her hand at Margaret to take the device off her face for a moment.
Levi studied the woman to make sure that for her own good, she would not change her mind and cancel the procedure.
“Commodore,” Jo whimpered quietly, the remains of her mental strength shattered. “Please… let’s just get it over with…”
Her firm grip on his hand paralysed him for a moment. He understood that she would not hesitate. She was strong, and unique.
“Jo.” He gently wiped the tears from her cheeks, finding it hard to swallow. “I’ll do it as fast as possible. For the last time… are you sure?”
“Just do it…” She closed her eyes, exhausted, and he sighed with relief.
On Levi’s mark, Margaret initiated the wipe. In an instant, Jo was fast asleep and calm. The commodore punched in the memory reduction codes. The room grew cold. Margaret carefully covered Jo’s body. This was not her first assist in this sort of procedure. She’d done it hundreds of times.
Everyone on the Luna shuttle’s crew knew that the events of the day would have to remain a secret, one of so many.
Levi looked down at the woman. She was a close friend. Should he need to undergo a similar procedure, he would gladly do so. Even though the government had banned this kind of mind surgery years ago, he did not hesitate to break the law for Jo’s sake.
In the years past, whenever a soul felt lost and overwhelmed, it had been so easy to just ‘throw the switch’ and start all over again; journey back in time and learn everything from scratch. It had never been a good way to solve problems, but in Jo’s case the situation was far beyond the stage where this was just an option.
* * * *
“Will you stop bustling around and calm down!” Diana looked at her husband anxiously.
It had already been some months, but for her it may as well have been a day. When she and her uncle arrived at station Atlantis over one and a half years before, she felt lost and confused. She never made friends easily. She did not understand the notion of military service or all that hustle about ‘tracking the enemy’s moves’. Her only friend in those days was Margaret, an older, childless widow who in time became a substitute for her mother. Diana was twenty when her parents were killed in a terrorist attack. Her uncle, a senator, who remained her only living relative, was forced, like it or not, to take her along when he moved out to the station. One day, wandering the pathways aimlessly, she stumbled into a nearby bar and provoked the fate that led her straight into Alec’s arms. He was one of the commandos from the Luna. He fascinated her, enough to surrender herself to his sweet words and embraces and to neglect the fact that he was clearly beyond mild intoxication. Mesmerised by his hazel eyes, fit body, jetblack hair and jasmine-pale complexion, she sank into his arms and inevitably began to fall in love with him. She did sense some sort of detachment in him, an undertone which made her think he may have been involved with somebody else, but her ecstasy was far too overwhelming for her to back out and question his affection.
She stopped sewing for a moment and gently put her hand on her stomach, she tilted her head throwing her long, dark hair aside. She could not help thinking about her husband’s former lover.
“Now…” Alec could not come to terms with Jo’s decision. “Now, when we have a mission to complete, she decides to erase her memory?”
“The commodore says it’ll not influence her skills,” she said reluctantly. She was fast losing her patience with all the talk about Jo.
“We are rotting up here in space.” He continued walking around, picking up the pace. He would gladly get himself a stiff drink to calm his nerves. “We need people. Terrorists are taking over the Earth! In our cities…”
“Stop it!” Nine months pregnant, she walked up to him with some difficulty. She embraced her husband. “You’re worried if she’ll remember you, is that it?”
She gave up trying to mask the fear showing on her face. She craved for reassurance and needed to hear that it was not the way she thought it was. She wanted his lies to be convincing, but they were not. She knew he was in love with Jo; her and only her. Every word he uttered gave away this truth, even less than a word, just the sound of his voice, the timbre of his breath, every gesture and every expression on his face.
“Alec, please hold me.” She could not go on torturing herself with endless doubt over her own place in her husband’s life.
When she was only a few weeks pregnant, Margaret - a nurse and her close friend - told her about Alec and Jo.
It took some time to shake off the bemusement after she’d found out how close they had been, how much they had loved each other and how envious everyone had been of their great affection. When Alec had first been transferred to the Luna, he had been a disciplined, diligent soldier, one of the best commandos there were. Fully devoted to his work, he took no notice of anyone around him. When a few months later he saw Jo walk onboard the ship after she’d been called off from some undisclosed mission, he could not take his eyes off her. He shamelessly stared at her as if thunderstruck. He fell in love with her at first sight and soon found out that she reciprocated his feelings. It was a stormy and passionate relationship.
As Diana listened to the story, she could not stop the tears running down her cheeks. Alec once had it all: money, position and love. Then he lost the love and found another. The other was her, Diana. But how was she to tell if Alec still felt something for Jo? Did he marry her only because she’d got pregnant? She had to know, for her child’s sake. For the last few months she had felt trapped, caged and the cage was of her own making, built bitterly out of endless deliberations and doubts about her husband’s past. It haunted her, even in her sleep.
* * * *
Jo had been asleep for over ten hours. Levi stayed at her side the whole time, took her temperature and examined her brainwaves. The procedure was a success. In his hands, he held the woman’s memory encrypted onto a memorial disc. He wanted to hand it to her after she woke up, as a memento. She would never be able to transfer it back as he was the only one who knew the access code.
He held her hand and felt it become warmer. She was coming to.
“Jo? My name is Commodore Levi.”
“Hello, Charles. I know who you are.” She smiled at him, feeling a little uncomfortable, as if she’d been asleep for years. “It’s good to see you.”
“I’ve erased your memories of the last five years, as agreed. You’ll soon be ready to return to your duties, Captain.”
Jo tried to get up, but her body felt sore and mangled.
“So, I’m a captain now, hmm?” She touched her face, closed her eyes as a massive headache seemed to split her skull in two. Margaret walked up to her bed. With terrified realisation Jo began to hear the silence, the terrible silence in her head.
“Are you’re trying to remember?” the commodore asked.
She nodded, tried to lift herself up again, but he stopped her. It was too early for that.
“Rest, we’ll get you up in the pilot’s seat soon enough; we’ll see about those navigational skills of yours.” He winked at her, but he himself was curious about her ability to handle the shuttle. “We’re going back to Atlantis early,” he whispered in her ear.
“Commodore, Jo needs to rest,” Margaret reminded him.
“Yes, I’d better go...” He squeezed her hand and turned to the nurse. “I’ll be with the guys.”
The shuttle’s corridors were very long and it took a while to get anywhere. Although the idea of a cargopassenger space shuttle dated b
ack to the 2030s, the designers still struggled with the need to expand the space even slightly in certain parts of the ship. The initial concept reflected the design of earlier prototypes and was divided into three basic sections. The first usually served as the cockpit for the crew, now called the navigation and was where most maintenance and operation of the computers and steering would be done. It was also where the Thermal Protection System was located, whose sole purpose was to prevent the shuttle from being scorched while entering the atmosphere. Adjacent to the cockpit, were rooms for the crew to have their meals or to just exercise and recuperate. The cabins could be reached through long, narrow corridors. Depending on the type of shuttle, there would be several dozen rooms including the medical bay and the gymnasium. One of the main corridors led to the cargo hold, which also housed the air filters and fresheners, temperature controls and fuel cells. Past this, the space lab was typically installed, filled with plants, crystals or even animals cultured for a myriad of obscure, scientific reasons. The back of the shuttle, the so-called third section, housed the main engine room. The most distinctive elements of every shuttle’s construction were the manipulators, twentymetre cranes used for hauling satellites in and out of the ship, often serving as stable commandos performing various space.
Levi walked briskly into the navigation room, one of every commando’s favourite places onboard, aside from the canteen and meditation hall. The computer wall, which was his brainchild, demanded constant supervision and everyday verification. This place truly made him feel the weight of responsibility for all the people onboard his ship. He walked up to the two pilots, Eric and Leon, who were struggling to maintain the unstable communication uplinks with the Earth and the base in turn.
“Boss, we’ve got Atlantis online. You may want to see this!” Eric’s excitement was apparent.
walking platforms for repair works in outer
* * * *
Jo was sore all over, as if she was suffering from a monstrous hangover. She sat up in her bed and looked around. It wasn’t that bad. She remembered the shuttle. She glanced curiously at the nurse. Her face meant nothing to her.
