Rebels in Arms

by Ben Weaver

  REBELS in ARMS

  BEN WEAVER

  For Kendall and Lauren

  Who remind me that we are all children…

  Contents

  PART 1

  Campaign Exeter

  1

  From my seat on the dais, I looked over the…

  2

  Over twenty years have passed since the night I was…

  3

  Disque had been trying to teach me something in that…

  4

  I raced by one of the markers left several decades…

  5

  As Paul, his crew, Halitov, and I were about to…

  6

  I waved on Paul’s group, ordering them to take the…

  PART 2

  Treading Water

  7

  Just two weeks after our narrow escape from Exeter, Halitov…

  8

  After we ate, or, more precisely, after I watched Halitov…

  9

  To my surprise, Halitov and I were able to slip…

  10

  Lieutenant Colonel Drage’s evacuation was in full swing and playing…

  11

  We rendezvoused with the Charles Michael at the designated location,…

  PART 3

  Defining the Code

  12

  I kept watch through a porthole while Halitov set a…

  13

  After listening to that racket a moment more, I finally…

  14

  Ms. Brooks proffered her hand, and before I could finish…

  PART 4

  Rebels in Arms

  15

  Lieutenant Addison and I were the last ones down the…

  16

  Halitov and Breckinridge approached in an airjeep, zooming in above…

  17

  The Colonial Wardens had destroyed AQ Tower and the Eri…

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Ben Weaver

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  The Seventeen System Guard Corps Articles of the Code of Conduct

  Revised 2301

  [adopted from old United States Marine Corps Articles]

  ARTICLE I

  I will always remember that I am a Colonial citizen, fighting in the forces that preserve my world and our way of life. I have resigned to give my life in their defense.

  ARTICLE II

  I will never surrender of my own volition. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the will and/or the means to resist.

  ARTICLE III

  If I am captured, I will continue to resist by any and all means available. I will make every effort to escape and to aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy.

  ARTICLE IV

  If I become a prisoner of war, I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners. I will give no information nor take part in any action which might be harmful to fellow Colonial citizens. If I am senior, I will take command. If not, I will obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me and will uphold them in every way.

  ARTICLE V

  Should I become a prisoner of war, I am required to give name, rank, and willingly submit to retinal and DNA analysis. I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability and will not consciously submit to cerebral scans of any kind. I will make no oral, written, or electronic statements disloyal to the colonies or harmful to their cause.

  ARTICLE VI

  I will never forget that I am fighting for freedom, that I am responsible for my actions, and that I am dedicated to the principles that make my world free. I will trust in my god or gods and in the Colonial Alliance forever.

  PART 1

  Campaign Exeter

  1

  From my seat on the dais, I looked over the crowd of cadets about to graduate from South Point Academy. Could they really listen to a middle-aged soldier like me drone on about the challenges of being an officer? After all, the commandant, a war vet himself, was already at the lectern and boring them to death with that speech. In fact, when the commandant had asked me to speak, I had panicked because I knew those kids needed something more than elevated diction and fancy turns of phrase. But what?

  The commandant glanced over his shoulder and nodded at me. “And now ladies and gentlemen, at this time I’d like to introduce a man whose Special Ops Tactical Manual is required reading here at the academy, a man whose treatise on Racinian conditioning transformed that entire program. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Colonel Scott St. Andrew, chief of the Alliance Security Council.”

  Applause I had expected, but a standing ovation? Or maybe those cadets were just overjoyed that the commandant was leaving the podium. I dragged myself up, wincing over all the metal surgeons had jammed into me after the nanotech regeneration had failed. Unless you were really looking for it, you wouldn’t notice my limp. I tugged at the hems of my dress tunic, raised my shoulders, and took a deep breath before starting forward. The kids continued with their applause, their eyes wide and brimming with naïveté.

  “Thank you. Please…” I gestured for them to sit, then waited for the rumble to subside. “First, let me extend my gratitude to the commandant for allowing me to be here today.” I tipped my head toward the man, who winked. “As all of you know, we are living in some very turbulent times. The treaties we signed at the end of the war are now being violated. Rumors of yet another civil war persist. But let me assure you that we at the security council are doing everything we can to resolve these conflicts. Now then. I didn’t come here to talk about current events. I came here to tell you what you want to hear—a war story—not because it’s entertaining, but because it’s something you need to hear…”

  I lay in my quarters aboard the SSGC Auspex, cushioned tightly in my gelrack and in the middle of a disturbing dream. My name wasn’t Scott St. Andrew; I wasn’t an eighteen-year-old captain and company commander in the Seventeen System Guard Corps, in charge of one hundred and sixty-two lives; and my cheek no longer bore the cross-shaped birthmark that revealed I had a genetic defect and came from poor colonial stock.

  In the dream I was a real Terran, born in New York, and about to download my entire college education through a cerebro. I sat in a classroom with about fifty other privileged young people who would never need to join the military as a way to escape from their stratified society. I looked down at the C-shaped device sitting on the desk in front of me. I need only slide it onto my head and learn.

  But I couldn’t. I was afraid I might forget who I was, forget that my father, an overworked, underpaid company geologist, had tried his best to raise me and my brother Jarrett, since my mother had left us when we were small. Jarrett and I had entered South Point Academy just when the war had begun, and Jarrett had died in an accident during a “conditioning process” developed by an ancient alien race we called the Racinians. The conditioning, which involved the introduction into our brains of mnemosyne—a species of eidetic parasite found aboard Racinian spacecraft—enhanced our physical and mental capabilities…and aged us at an accelerated rate.

  No, I couldn’t forget. I needed to remember what I had become, because I sensed even then that if just one person could learn something from my story, from my mistakes, then the universe might forgive me my sins.

  They were many.

  So I sat there, watching the others put on their cerebroes and flinch as the datalock took hold. Some grinned as they were “enlightened.” All that cerebroed data became a part of them, while I would rather my life, all that I had done, become a part of it. Still, I wonder if anyone will really care about the war between the alliances and the seventeen colonial systems a th
ousand years from now. Future generations might never understand that in the year 2301, hundreds of thousands died in the name of what United States president Abraham Lincoln had once called “a just and lasting peace.” They died for a cause, and for those untouched by war, that is too often incomprehensible. I knew that even the young people in that room had no true concept of war. I wished I could teach them, but all I could do was sit there until the shipboard alarm yanked me out of the dream.

  I sprang from my rack, expecting the captain’s voice to boom over the shipwide comm. Nothing. The alarm droned on and drove me to the hatchcomm. I dialed up Lieutenant Colonel Jeffery Disque, Twenty-second Battalion Commander, a middle-aged man with buttery brown skin and a striking shock of gray at just one temple. He eyed me with disgust, then spoke in a voice hoarse from screaming at insubordinates. “What is it, Captain?”

  “Sorry, sir. Thought maybe you knew why the Klaxon sounded.”

  Disque yawned, his lip beginning to quiver. There I was, some antsy kid who had beeped him out of slumber. The first time I had met him, I had an immediate sense of just how ill proportioned his ego had become. You could fit planets, star systems, entire nebulae inside the thing. Then again, having a battalion commander who thought he could live forever wasn’t always a bad thing, especially when the rounds were flying. He would never order another company to turn tail on yours, and you might even find him outside his command tent, pumping off rounds himself…

  I cleared my throat, grew more tense as he just looked at me, failing to answer. “Do you know why the Klaxon sounded, sir?”

  He screwed his sour puss into a tighter knot. “’Course I know why that goddamned alarm is going. You think I’m a brainwipe, Captain?”

  “Sir, no, sir.”

  “That’s a nav alarm. We’re changing course.”

  “Sir?”

  “We just got new orders, Captain.”

  “We’re not going to Kennedy-Centauri?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then who is? Those people in Plymouth Colony need us. You saw the holos. Civvies are getting shot in the streets.”

  “Then whoever’s left better hide, ’cause the Twenty-second Battalion ain’t going there.”

  “We have to send somebody.” Disque could not have known that my own life depended upon us reaching Kennedy-Centauri, not that he would have cared.

  “Bandage your bleeding heart, Captain. I’m sure they’ll dispatch another element. We got a more interesting op. I know you’re going to like it. The briefing alert will hit your tablets in a couple of minutes.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.”

  “Anything else, Captain?”

  “Uh, no, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  He flashed an ugly grin and nodded.

  Even as I switched off the hatchcomm, it rang again. Someone was at my door: Rooslin Halitov. I let him in. He steered himself directly to the chair at my desk and sat, scratching nervously at his jaw.

  A year prior, I would never have imagined that a cadet who had tried to take my life, a cadet who had despised me more than anyone else in his world, would eventually turn down his own shot at company commander to become my executive officer. One look at the guy—blocky jaw, blond hair, barrel chest, flaming blue eyes—made you think, yeah, he was the neighborhood bully. And Rooslin had grown up to become academy bully. Then, after we had both seen and had doled out more death than the Corps could have ever warned us about, we had become uneasy friends. His transformation had not come without a price.

  “Know what that alarm’s saying to me?” Halitov asked. “It’s saying: you’re fucked.”

  “We both are—’cause we’re not going to Kennedy-Centauri.”

  “Shit…” He rubbed eyes full of sleep grit, eyes that had looked years younger only a few months prior. “You talk to Breckinridge?”

  “Just found out myself.” I crossed to my gelrack, dropped heavily onto the mattress. “She can’t change this.” I sighed out my frustration. “Anyway, Disque says we’ll get the decrypted poop in about twenty minutes.”

  “Fuck Disque. I hate that prick. He’s going to get us all killed, then stand on the big pile of bodies and give his victory speech: ‘These young men and women have given their lives so that the seventeen systems might one day be freed from Alliance tyranny…’ Yeah, they gave their lives so you’d have a soap box to stand on, you asshole.”

  “Next time we’re out drinking, I’m going to pay you to do that. Of course the old man will show up behind you.”

  “This ain’t funny…” His sober expression dampened my smile. Thankfully, the hatchcomm beeped again, distracting us from feeling any more sorry for ourselves. I checked the monitor. It was our Accelerated Assimilation Trainer, Captain Kristi Breckinridge, who, with short, dark hair gelled back and a body conditioned to machinelike precision, could steal some officers’ breaths with a salacious glance or a chokehold, depending upon her mood or how obviously they had gawked at her. I opened the hatch.

  “Captain,” she said, then didn’t wait for an invitation and pushed past me. “Shut the door.” She regarded Halitov with a curt nod, turned her clandestine expression back on me. “He has to leave.”

  “He stays.”

  A dangerous realization lit her gaze. “You haven’t told him, have you? You understand that information is highly classified…”

  “Told me what?” said Halitov, feigning ignorance.

  “Sit down, shut up,” I said, then faced Breckinridge, trembling with the realization that I would stand up to her, be honest with her—even reveal that I had done some research on her past and discovered things that made me distrust her even more. If she wanted me to play her game, I’d play—but by my rules. “He knows everything. And you’re going to help him, too.”

  She swore under her breath, closed her eyes. “Scott, that wasn’t the deal. He hasn’t been invited to become a Warden.”

  I looked at her, grew rigid. “You came in here, said the Colonial Wardens—the most powerful and elite group in the Seventeen System Guard Corps—wants to recruit me. Turns out you guys are running a little coup to motivate the new government and want me to help. Then you tell me you know something about my brother, get me thinking that maybe he’s not dead, and finally, you promise me that I can meet a woman on Kennedy-Centauri who has epineuropathy just like me, only her conditioning process is perfect, and she’s got three times the strength and endurance of the average conditioned soldier. You say you can fix me, make me like her, ’cause the Wardens have found a second conditioning facility on Aire Wu, when everyone thinks there’s just one, on Exeter, currently occupied by Alliance troops. If I ever do get reconditioned, if there is a cure to this rapid aging, then I’m not going to keep that information classified. Every conditioned solider deserves to know about and receive that cure, and the first one in line is going to be him.” I pointed at Halitov.

  “You’ll do what we tell you—or you’ll get nothing,” she snapped.

  “I’m not sure I want anything from people like you. I know what happened at the academy, the hazing and the cheating—”

  She snickered. “Don’t you have better things to do than pry into my life?”

  “Not when mine’s on the line. They cleared you, but you were guilty, I bet. Then you graduate, try to get into the Wardens, but the request is denied five times—until the CO who’s been denying the request suddenly changes his mind. I talked to an old buddy of yours, Grimwald. He told me just how you got that CO to change his mind.”

  Her cheeks flushed. “If I were you, I wouldn’t say another word.”

  “But I’m not done. We haven’t even gotten to your brother. Yeah, I know about him, too. Disabled and abandoned. Your parents are gone. He’s all you have in the world. So why is he still there, rotting away in that hospital?”

  She eyed me for a moment, then, in the next second, she reached out with her mind into the quantum bond between particles and crawled across the bulkhead behind me, shifting like some a
rachnid unimpeded by gravity. She slipped in and got me in her patented chokehold. Her voice came low and harsh, directly into my ear: “You…don’t…know…anything.”

  “I know you’re an opportunist. You have no honor, no loyalty.”

  “What I have…is your life in my hands.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Halitov jab a pistol into Breckinridge’s head. “Let him go,” he said.

  She thought a moment, then ripped her arm away, shoved me aside. “You want to push my buttons? I can push yours. Should we talk about your mother?”

  I massaged my neck, felt a sudden tightness in my chest.

  “Oh, spare me this bullshit,” groaned Halitov, his expression turning emphatic. “We’re dying. We need to be reconditioned.”

  “That’s right,” I said, then glared at Breckinridge. “He gets reconditioned—or I don’t even meet with your people—whenever that’s going to happen, because we’re no longer en route to Kennedy-Centauri.”

  “I knew that before the nav alarm sounded. We’ll reschedule. I sent word to my people on a chip tawted out just five minutes ago.”

  “I hope this little meeting will be soon,” said Halitov.

  Breckinridge’s stare turned menacing. “It will be.” She took a deep breath, sighed heavily. “Got more news for you. We’ve done some studies on the aging side effects. In one month you might age a standard year. In the next month, you might age only three, four months, in the following month, you might age naturally. We haven’t found a pattern or a way to predict the effects yet.”