by Ben Weaver
I met his pained gaze for a moment, and I couldn’t help but snort ever so slightly over the irony of him calling me into his quarters—not in an attempt to persuade me to join the Wardens—but to seek, advice from me on how to deal with his son, whom he believed I knew better than he did.
“What’s wrong with your father?” he asked.
“Sir?”
“What’s wrong with him? What bothers you about him?”
“I don’t know, sir. Did you get a chance to meet him? I heard you sent a rescue force to Gatewood-Callista. My father’s supposedly on Kennedy-Centauri.”
“He’s there, and he’s being well taken care of. And no, I didn’t get a chance to meet him.”
“He’s a geologist, sir. A rockhead. Not the most interesting guy, but he was good to me and my brother. And I guess the one thing that bothered me about him was that he usually put work before us.”
The colonel nodded, gaze distant, gaze probably on moments when he, too, had done the same thing. “Oh, nonsense,” he suddenly said. “I want you to join the Wardens.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Bullshit!” he shouted. “The only thing you’re sorry about is that it was my ship that took out the Rhode Island. But Mr. St. Andrew, we can find you wherever you are.” He took a moment to study me, perhaps pity me, then his tone softened. “You can help us. And if you do, you help yourself. I’m willing to bet that working with us is what your father would want…”
I closed my eyes as the hatchcomm beeped. The colonel sighed, yanked himself to his feet, answered. Hushed whispers came from the hatch, then the colonel returned, towing in a familiar face, a woman whose presence shocked me.
“Captain, I think you know Security Chief Brooks,” the colonel said.
I rose unsteadily to my feet. “Uh, yes, sir.”
14
Ms. Brooks proffered her hand, and before I could finish shaking it, she pulled me toward her and hugged me fiercely. “I got your message,” she said softly, pulling back and frowning at my aged face. “And I’m sorry that you wound up in the middle of that fiasco on Eri Three.”
“Ma’am, I, uh, I’m confused…”
She gestured toward my chair, and I sat as she crossed to face me and the colonel went off to fetch her a drink. Was she working with the Wardens? She had to be. Why else would she be aboard?
“We’ve had a lot of trouble back on Rexi-Calhoon,” she said. “The Colonial Congress is divided on nearly every issue concerning this war. Relief funds are being misallocated. Three senators have already resigned from their posts, and, against our wishes, four colonial presidents have agreed to unconditional surrender. It’s a nightmare. And it gets worse. The Guard Corps is being fractured, not because of what the Wardens are doing but because the remaining senators are launching investigations into how we deploy our forces. Because of that, regimental commanders have been forced to operate independently.”
“You listening to what she’s saying?” the colonel asked me, then handed Ms. Brooks a snifter of brandy. “The Seventeen is already doing the same thing we’ve been doing because we don’t have time for all this political posturing and rhetoric. Our worlds are falling.”
“Scott, I’ve only recently been in contact with Colonel Beauregard, and we’ve come to agree that if we’re going to win this war, we need to resort to extreme measures—meaning the Guard Corps as you know it will be restructured and fall under the command and auspices of the Wardens. It’s true that we won’t have a majority vote in congress, but most opposing senators are being paid off by Alliance lobbyists who know that if the Wardens take over the Corps, we’ll have a fighting chance. Of course they don’t want that to happen.”
“And if we do take over the Guard Corps, military personnel will answer only to us and not the congress. We’ll fund ourselves and serve as independent contractors, meaning our mission will be motivated by victory and profit, not political bias.”
“So, I guess it is a coup, huh?”
“Not a coup,” said Ms. Brooks. “Just a restructuring without full approval. Scott, this has to be done. It will be done.”
“I’m sure it will,” I said gravely. “The Wardens are nothing if not efficient.”
She put a hand on my shoulder. “Assigning you to Rebel ten-seven was a mistake. My mistake. I know where you’re needed now. And it’s with the Wardens.”
“You came all the way out here to tell me that?”
“No, I’ve moved my office here. And I’ll keep doing what I’ve always done: advise the Colonial Congress on military matters. We’re no longer keeping any secrets. In the next few days, the Wardens will issue an official statement about the restructuring of the Seventeen, and believe it or not, we’ve already gained the support of five of the seven joint chiefs.”
“The congress is going to view this as a coup, no matter how you try to sell it,” I said. “And you’re going to have people like me who don’t even know whom to fight for anymore. You might have company commanders taking matters into their own hands. You’ll have anarchy. Chaos. The Guard Corps will be divided. And the alliances will exploit that weakness to capture more worlds.”
“Almost makes you wish you had stayed with the alliances,” said the colonel. “I know. But while it sounds disorganized now, Ms. Brooks is working on a plan to make this transition happen smoothly.”
“Scott, we’re here because we believe—both of us—that someone with your experience, someone with your power, can provide the rallying cry we need.”
“They used to call it a wahoo, a Rebel yell, and if there was ever a rebel, it’s you.” The colonel winked. “Got it in your blood. I can tell. And that mistrust you have for us? I like it.”
Ms. Brooks pursed her lips. “Scott, we all want the same thing.”
“No. You want me to break the code.”
“I can reinterpret the code for you so you can say that technically you’re not breaking it because you’re not doing anything that endangers the colos. But I can’t lie. By deceiving the congress and joining the Wardens, you will be breaking the code. But maybe it’s time for a new code, one that allows us to do what’s necessary in order to save our worlds.”
She had been right. But I couldn’t have known that. I needed something else, something to make me feel better about selling off my honor, my dignity, my loyalty—something that reassured me that I was not making my mother’s mistakes and becoming an opportunist like Breckinridge. “Jarrett…I want to know about him.”
Ms. Brooks glanced to the colonel. “He has a right,” she said sternly.
The colonel shrugged. “Tell him.”
“Your brother’s alive.”
I gritted my teeth. “Don’t lie.”
“We’ll arrange for a meeting, right after you’re conditioned,” she said. “Colonel, I’m sure you can make that happen.”
The old legend nodded, and for the first time since hearing that my brother might be alive, I allowed myself to believe, to really believe, that I had not lost him. I stood there, shaking, trying to remember the last words we had said to each other but drawing a blank, despite my enhanced memory. I regarded the colonel with a hard stare. “So it’s true, then? The Wardens staged that accident on Exeter and kidnapped all of those cadets?”
The colonel narrowed his gaze on me. “They weren’t kidnapped. They were transferred.”
“Illegally transferred. Sir. So why didn’t you have Paul taken? Why did you leave him there when you knew the academy would be attacked?”
“For the same reason why we left you: you’re both high profile cadets. And that decision was more difficult than you could ever know.” The colonel finished his brandy, then stared absently at the glass.
“Scott, you’ve helped me, and I’ve helped you,” said Ms. Brooks. “Now here we are again. What do you say?”
I tried to read her wide-eyed gaze, searched for something earnest and telling, for a whisper behind that look, something that said, “It’s okay.
I’m telling the truth. And you can trust me.” I couldn’t be sure.
“C’mon, Scott. You know what you have to do.”
“I’d like some time,” I told her.
“We’ll reach Aire-Wu in a few hours. We’ll get you down there and reconditioned,” she said. “No matter what you decide, I trust the colonel will allow you that much.” She cocked a brow at him.
After a resigned sigh, he nodded.
I pushed myself out of the chair. “Ma’am. Colonel.” I saluted and left, realizing that I was practically running by the time I reached the hatch, not that I was desperate to get out of there, but I was so excited about my brother being alive that I couldn’t wait to tell Halitov.
Something dawned on me as I opened the hatch. “My brother,” I called back to them. “Was he brainwiped?”
“Scott, just relax,” Ms. Brooks said. “Don’t worry about a thing.”
“Was he wiped?”
“Your brother’s fine,” she assured me. “Just fine.”
Still unnerved, I closed the hatch after me and raced down the corridor, raced all the way back to the captain’s quarters, where a midshipman who was cleaning up told me that the others had left for the ship’s bar.
I found all four of them at the long counter, sloppy drunk, with Paul wobbling on his stool and Halitov hanging on Breckinridge as though he were an attention-starved juvenile.
“My brother’s alive,” I announced.
Only Jing actually met my gaze. “The colonel tell you?”
“Yeah. And thank you.”
“Rumors around here…they tend to be true more often than not,” Jing said.
“Old Jarrett’s alive?” asked Halitov. “Always liked him. One of the best guys in our old squad. Let’s have another drink.”
I marched up to Halitov, grabbed him by the collar. “Are you in?”
“What?”
“Are you in?”
His eyes bugged out. “In what?”
“You are, aren’t you,” I said. “You already told them yes.”
He nodded in realization. “Of course I did. What the fuck was I supposed to do? I’m in, and so are you.” He ripped my hands away, shoved me back. “No more of this I-can’t-decide bullshit. We’re in.”
“Okay. We’re in.”
He looked at me. “What?”
“We’re joining. We’re breaking the code.”
“You’re doing the right thing,” said Breckinridge.
“Then why does it feel so wrong?”
“I asked myself the same question when I left my brother behind. But I had to, Scott. He’s mentally disabled, and he needs more than I can give him. I fought my way up the ranks to pay for the best care. You think I’m an opportunist. Maybe I am. But it’s always been about my brother. Leaving him was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.” She closed her eyes, massaged them, lost her balance a moment. “Anyway, have a drink.”
“No, I’m tired. And I guess I owe you—”
“Respect. That’s all I’m asking.”
“Deal. See you later.”
I was halfway back to my quarters when Jing called to me.
“Hey,” I said. “You following me?”
Her cheeks grew flushed. “Thought maybe you’d like a little company. I’m getting tired of being around those drunks back there.”
“I was going to get some sleep. We’re going to be at Aire-Wu soon.”
“There’s a really impressive observation dome at the stern. We can go up there, watch the approach. Have you ever seen Aire-Wu before?”
I shook my head.
“They say that of all the seventeen worlds, it’s the most Earth-like. Once you visit, you never want to leave.”
“All I know about the place is what they jammed in my head: second of three planets orbiting an M-five star that sits about nine-and-a-half light-years from Earth. Seventy-one percent forest biome, fourteen percent ocean, and the stats go on and on and on, right?”
She grinned knowingly. “Kind of takes the awe and magic out of it…”
“I don’t know. Let’s see.”
I followed her through the corridor, and two lifts and a half dozen levels later, an MP cleared us onto the OBS deck, a circular room beneath a plexi hemisphere that afforded breathtaking views of the stars.
“It’s right over there,” Jing said, crossing the room and pointing to her left.
The planet grew swiftly into view, an orb whose massive, finger-shaped continents bore hundreds of shades of green and brown and alabaster, while her much smaller oceans shone a deep, dark blue. Long tendrils of powder white clouds pushed out from the south pole, working their way across the seas and landmasses and breaking off into small dimples and haze and creases like those you’d find in a piece of leather. I had never seen so many colors, and I found myself voicing that.
“Yeah, and wait until you see the forests down there. Just wait,” she said, wriggling her brows.
We went to the glass, pressed our foreheads against it, and just watched as the ship brought us closer. From the corner of my eye, I caught Jing watching me and pretended I hadn’t seen her. But then, a few seconds later, it was hard to ignore her hand reaching around my head, pulling me toward her. “Please,” she whispered. “Please.” And her eyes welled with tears.
I wasn’t a fool. I knew she hadn’t called me up to the OBS deck just to chat and take in the view. And I felt damned guilty that I had agreed to come. I tried rationalizing my behavior, told myself that Dina was gone, that life had to go on, that if I felt something for Jing, I should explore that or suffer the regret.
And after all, she was the only one who really knew what it was like to be me.
So I kissed her. Even as our lips touched, I felt a pang of guilt, and my lips suddenly tightened. She sensed it, and drew slowly back. “I’m sorry.” She swore under her breath and pushed away from the glass.
“Not your fault,” I said. “This whole thing, you know, joining the Wardens, being in that cell all those days, I guess it’s just—”
“Difficult. I know,” she said softly, sadly, rubbing her eyes. “Yeah. Think I’ll go get a little sleep myself.”
I nodded, turned as she strode out. As she neared the exit, she muttered something angrily to herself. And seeing her do that, seeing her, perhaps, agonize over her feelings for me, made me realize that despite everything that had happened to her, despite that thick skin, she still had a very vulnerable heart. A good heart. And I found myself even more attracted to her. I knew the guilt would ease in time. I knew I’d be a fool if I didn’t pursue a relationship with her. But I didn’t want my feelings for her to be influenced by my memories of Dina. I wondered if I was asking too much of myself. In fact, I was.
I left the OBS deck, returned to the colonel’s quarters, and woke him from a sound sleep. The door cycled open, and he stood there, boxers drooping below his sizable gut. “Mr. St. Andrew?”
“Sir. I’m in, sir.”
He scrutinized me a moment, then said, “Very well.” Suddenly, he snapped to and actually saluted me. “You’ll be promoted to major. Welcome aboard.”
I returned his salute and tried to repress my grin—not a grin of joy but one of irony that I was, yet again, being shoved up the ladder and would now wear the gold “Major’s angle,” a triangle with a ruby in its center. “Yes, sir. Sorry to disturb you, sir.”
As I walked away, I thought, You’re committed. No turning back. The code has been broken. Or maybe, just maybe, the code has been redefined.
Once Vanguard One reached Aire-Wu and settled into orbit, we climbed aboard an ATC. The colonel and Ms. Brooks had business at the Wardens’ outpost near the city of Orokean, and Paul was coming along for the ride. Breckinridge and Jing had to attend a briefing there as well, and they were about to receive their next assignment. I assumed that Jing knew that, and maybe she had wanted to be with me back on the OBS deck because now we might never get that chance.
We lau
nched with the usual rumble and thunder, streaking away from the big cruiser. Off at our three o’clock lay Aire-Wu’s lone moon, Theta-Marcus, a rocky world of volcanic plains and basins whose thin, Mars-like atmosphere made it unattractive for civilian colonization but a sure bet for the corporate and industrial sectors. Once the former colonial headquarters of the Inte-Micro and Exxo-Tally corporations, Theta-Marcus had been abandoned several months after the war broke out, and the Wardens, Colonel Beauregard explained, had utilized many of the companies’ warehouse facilities to create a shipping hub the likes of which the seventeen worlds had never seen. He gestured to the rectangular porthole, where we glimpsed literally hundreds of transports leaving or jetting toward the grayish brown orb.
“Sir, if I might ask, sir. How did you find the second conditioning facility? And where is it?”
“Mr. Halitov, the answers to your questions are classified. Before soldiers are conditioned, they’re drugged, then transported. Only a handful of people are aware of the facility’s coordinates. I’ll say this much…they’re subterranean and not easy to reach.”
“So we’ll never get to know, sir?” Halitov asked.
“No. And let’s just say that finding such a remote place wasn’t easy. We had a little help from the local lumberjacks. And we’ll leave it there.”
I grinned inwardly. No, it couldn’t be. That would be far too coincidental. Sergeant Canada, a native of Aire-Wu, had told me how her father, a lumberjack, had allowed researchers to dig on their land. Could the conditioning facility lie beneath her father’s property? If so, fate had tipped her cards, and I had been glancing her way.
“Okay, sir. No more questions about that,” said Halitov. “Just one more thing. What happens when we get to Orokean?”
“I know you’re a little nervous, Captain,” said Ms. Brooks. “Don’t worry. We’ll take care of everything.”
“Will we get to eat?” he asked.
“You’re still hungry?” cried Breckinridge. “After that feast we had?”
“I didn’t eat that much,” he said.
