by John F. Carr
He ran his fingers through his black hair. Everyone, including his wife, thought he dyed it, but he didn’t. If he did, it would be to dye it grey. The regeneration treatments he been given on Tanith had worked even better than the doctors had predicted. Now everyone around him was growing old, while he appeared never to age.
On the other side of the Plaza rose the Chamber of Deputies, a stone monolith. It was too bad the rioters hadn’t burned it along with the Palace when King David Steele’s reign came to a well-deserved and violent end. Deputy Booth, one of the Brigade’s “friends,” had called him with information that the Speaker, Martin Sanderson, was about to put through another measure to place the militia under Chamber rule. Why not, he thought, they’ve already given up every other asset—including the goodwill of the citizens of Castell—they ever possessed.
It was true the Empire had strategically pulled back—make that abandoned—this sector, but that hadn’t changed his orders. Originally a citizen of Churchill, Cummings had been put in command of the Seventy-seventh’s Second Regiment back in 2609, when it had been unstated Imperial policy to put ‘trusted’ commanders in charge of frontier military units, as more and more planets joined the Sauron Coalition of Secession.
It had taken him a few years to prove himself as one of the commanders of the Land Gators. Initially, the Seventy-seventh’s Haveners had not been pleased to have a Churchillian in command of one of the Division’s most decorated regiments. It wasn’t until the Liberation of Lavaca that he’d earned their trust as well as their respect. Now he was as much a Havener as any of his original command, many of whom had died in battles on one or another of the forgotten worlds spanning the Empire.
He had been as surprised as anyone when he’d been given orders by Marshal Blaine to ‘retire’ from the Land Gators and become the Imperial watchdog on Haven. And, while he had his regrets about leaving the Imperial hub, commanding the Haven Militia was not one of them. Just keeping the Volunteers together and out of civilian control, during decades of economic upheaval and civil war, had taxed every bit of his energy and ingenuity.
Thanks to his old friend, Albert Hamilton, he’d been able to work out a compromise that solved most of his payroll problems. The best part was that it had left him independent of local politics. In exchange for a few hundred metric tons of useless durasteel and obsolete weapons, the old Baron had supplied him with enough hard specie to keep his troops fed and clothed. Meanwhile, the Baron had provided positions for retiring soldiers and officers at his estate in Whitehall. In exchange, he had given the Baron the best intelligence he could obtain in these days of decline and technological breakdowns.
Almost a decade before it had become obvious, the Baron had foreseen Haven decivilizing to a far lower level of civilization and technology. At the time Cummings had thought maybe Hamilton had taken one too many falls from his beloved horse, Belisarius. But he had jumped at the chance to exchange surplus durasteel for hard currency and precious metals. Now, it appeared the old fox had known exactly what he was doing, and had earned well-deserved goodwill from the militia in exchange.
Colonel Anton Leung, sitting to his right, pointed to a black plume of smoke coming from the commercial section of Little Frankfurt. “More rioting, or just another act of senseless violence, Brigadier?”
Cummings shook his head, while his left hand absent-mindedly stroked the bowl of his pipe. “Whatever it is, we’ll be blamed for it—or for not stopping it.”
“Just like that riot last night! Couple of our boys are on R & R and next thing you know they’re under attack by armed street rats and gangsters. We should have proscribed this city long ago, Brigadier.”
“It’s proscribed now,” Cummings answered. “I used to believe that spending our marks here would make the City Fathers realize that having us nearby was good business. By God, these citizens aren’t the enemy, they’re the reason we’re here.”
“Some of them know it. The Harmonies and a delegation from Hindutown protested the Ban this morning. I told them to go talk to Mayor Niles and the City Fathers. They left shortly thereafter.”
“Can’t blame them,” Cummings said, then paused to take a deep draw on his pipe. “City Hall in Castell City is about as stacked with old families as a cardsharp’s deck. Those poor bastards won’t get any satisfaction from the Chamber, either, and they know it. I feel the worst for the Harmonies: those poor primitives are virtual prisoners in the Compound, like they’ve been ever since the CoDominium came and snatched the planet away from them.
“Now it appears their shunning of technology has left them better prepared than anyone else for the next couple of centuries on Haven. Of course, the Empire could win the War and return.”
Colonel Leung gave out a hollow laugh that sounded as if it might have taken his last breath. Leung was a native of Haven and had no illusions about his home world’s importance neither to the Admiralty nor to the Imperial Council.
Suddenly, Leung pointed to the street below: “Look, Brigadier, those thugs are hijacking that beer wagon in broad daylight!”
The turbocopter was flying lower now and as Cummings looked down, he saw scattered muzzle flashes and men scrambling onto an overloaded beer wagon. Someone had shot the muskylopes and more looters were running out of houses to share in the bounty. One of the guards was firing back, but both drivers and the other guard were sprawled on the pitted roadway.
“And they call this the civilized part of Haven,” Leung added, pausing as a series of coughs wracked his frame. He had contracted a nasty strain of Black Lung, Haven style. Even the militia’s stock of medicines, which had the best pharmacy left on Haven, were impotent against the ravages of this slow virus. Leung was far past the infectious stage, but the disease would clog his lungs until he was bedridden, which might be no more than another two or three years. If Cummings hadn’t needed his administrative abilities, he would have put him on compassionate leave several standard years ago.
“Castell is the center of civilization on Haven, Colonel—or was. I had hoped that maybe the Chamber of Deputies had learned something during David Steele’s reign. He was not a nice man, but he did stop inflation and put people back to work. Hell, he carved out a nice little kingdom for himself, even called himself King of Haven. If he had allied himself with the Sons of Liberty, instead of taking New Abilene… Well, he wouldn’t have had to fight both the Sons and the Rhinishers at the same time. And might still be on his throne.”
“I’ve never understood why we just didn’t take a couple of battalions into the city and clean the place up ourselves, Brigadier.” He pointed to the burning wagon below, covered with “citizens” prying loose barrels and casks. “We could hardly have done a worse job.”
“Maybe. But Brigadiers don’t make good rulers. They’re not supposed to. Our job is to break things and kill people. It’s the politicians’ job to start them. I never signed on to run Haven. Remember what a great job the Federales did on Diego? Not that anyone could have done much better. Sort of like here.”
“True,” Leung said, “and we don’t have many allies in the Chamber of Deputies.”
The Brigadier bit down on his pipe so hard he left teeth marks on the stem. “They’ve done a damn good job of turning most of the citizens against us, too. Made us scapegoats. Hell, scapegoats we may be, but sitting ducks we’re not.”
They both sat in silence as the pilot brought the turbocopter down on the little pad on top of the Brigadier’s walled residence. It had been the Cummings’ home since the Seventy-seventh Land Gators had pulled out for good back in 2623, but it was where Laura had put down her roots. After decades of roaming the Empire—as Cummings and the Seventy-seventh Imperial Marines had been rotated from one hotspot to another—Laura had sworn that once he’d retired from the corps, she would never move again. Sworn an oath to it.
She’d kept it too, despite his protests. Now he had to make her break it. Castell wasn’t safe anymore for the militiamen or their families
.
They didn’t have much of a marriage these days. How could it be, with him only aging a year for every decade that went by? Since Laura had turned seventy, he’d no longer been able to deny the obvious. Physically, he was in his early forties, while she was quickly becoming an old woman. Haven, with its extreme temperatures and thin atmosphere, did that to people. Most people, but not him.
He could remember when Colonel Leung was a shavetail Looie; now he looked a decade older than Cummings. It hadn’t hurt their relationship, but it had played hell on his marriage, especially since it hadn’t been very strong to begin with.
Laura had been such a beautiful young girl when he’d first spotted her on the streets of Old Heidelberg during his days at the Marine Academy on Friedland. He had fallen for her like a gut-shot buck. It had taken him almost a month to learn her name and six more to get permission to “visit” her at the family estate. It hadn’t helped that her father, the Baron, was the Marine Commandant of the Academy.
The war hadn’t yet started then, but there had already been clashes with the Saurons and Outie planets. After marrying, they had spent an idyllic year on Friedland, one of the oldest and most beautiful settled worlds. Then he’d been transferred to New Washington as part of the Thirty-second Imperial Marine Division. Another peaceful and Earth-like loyalist world; they’d stayed there almost six months before the thirty-second shipped out to put an embargo on Meiji.
He and the Thirty-second had been shifted from hotspot to hotspot until the Secession Wars began with the death of David II, who had died with no heir, in 2594. Many pundits pegged the beginning of the war with the Sauron attack on St. Ekaterina in 2603 and called it the Sauron Rebellion. But in Cummings’ mind the War had really begun with Emperor David’s death, or maybe even before. Of course, the Imperial historians would be the final arbiters; if they could ever make up their minds on what to call the damned thing!
All Cummings knew for certain was the Empire had been at one kind of war or another during almost his entire career.
Laura had liked it on New Washington. She had set up permanent quarters there with most of the other Thirty-second’s officers’ spouses. Only a few intrepid wives had attempted to travel with the Division as it hopped hither and yon from one crisis to another. Their times together had been few, but good. Like many space navy wives, Laura had grown to enjoy her independence and, after a while, appeared to enjoy his leavings nearly as much as his arrivals. They had had enough time together to bring two beautiful girls and one son into this chaotic period of history.
“Looks like trouble in the Compound,” Colonel Leung interjected. Cummings peered down at the Harmony Compound, enclave—or barrio, depending on whom you asked—where several houses were on fire. The New Harmonies had been the original owners and settlers of Haven, until the CoDominium decided any place that far away from Earth made an excellent dumping ground for political exiles, troublesome minorities and garden variety criminals. Haven was over a year from Earth by way of the old Bureau of Relocation deportee ships, and four Alderson Jumps from the nearest inhabitable world.
In other words, it had been the end of the line. Still is, for that matter.
The Harmonies had lost their world and most of their property in the following years. Now they only occupied a small enclave in Castell City, although there were still Harmony farming communities throughout the Shangri-La Valley. The Harmonies were non-violent—not pacifists, or they would no longer exist on Haven. They had developed certain castes, the deacons and bedes, who took the onerous job of violent confrontation.
He could see scores of the deacons in their black robes scurrying around the burning houses, keeping the growing mob at bay. Cummings had always admired them for their adherence to a code of action that was, in its way, as structured as that of the military. The Harmonies also supplied most of the militia’s grain and dairy products. They didn’t believe in taking animal life for any reason other than self-defense. He suspected the attack was directed as much against the Haven Volunteers as it was against the Harmonies.
He tongue-keyed his tooth mic: “Sergeant Major Slater, call a company of troops into the Harmony Compound, at the intersection of Concord and Peace.” He could see the Harmonies’ horse-drawn red fire wagons approaching as he spoke, “Send three of the Falkenberg 120’s. That will keep the streets clear.” The Falkenberg tanks were fifty years obsolete Coreward, but here they were still the most powerful vehicles on Haven.
“Yes, sir.”
Cummings could hear his trusted aide in his earphone. The chopper had a line-of-sight laser comline to Fort Kursk so he wasn’t worried about it being intercepted. The last thing they needed was another confrontation with the locals. “If anyone asks you where you’re going, tell them we’re escorting dependents out of the firezone. Out.”
The Brigadier heard the distant pop of gunfire as the ’copter settled onto the small pad on top of his residence. I haven’t been home in months, he realized with a guilty start. Well, there’s so much to do…and we really don’t get along anymore…
A trapdoor took them inside the house where they were met by the butler with a revolver in one hand, pointed toward the floor, as Cummings had taught him.
“How are things outside?” the butler asked.
“Not good, Wilson. Not good. Where’s the Missus?”
“She’s in the sitting room, sir,” the butler said, with a nod that let Cummings know she was already heavily into the Sherry. But then again, when had she not been, especially when she knew her husband was arriving?
Even though he knew what to expect, Brigadier Cummings still wasn’t prepared for the sight that met his eyes. Laura was still dressed in a disheveled nightgown; her thin grey hair looked as if it hadn’t been washed or combed in a week. Her face, a nest of wrinkles, looked twenty years older than her seventy years would have led one to expect.
My God, she has every reason on earth to hate my guts! he thought. “Darling, how are you?”
“Well enough, Brigadier. And, no, I’m not too drunk to know my own mind. It’s early yet. I had a dream about Robert last night, before we came here and this place killed him.”
It was an old argument and one that he no longer bothered to respond to. Their twelve-year-old son had died within a month of their arrival of a blood-clotting disease specific to Haven. She had never forgiven her husband for it. He, himself, had only come to terms with it through hard work and the words of the Brigade’s chaplain.
“Now that Helga is married and Ingrid is off with that pompous friend of yours, Baron Hamilton, I don’t have anyone left to talk to. The other officers’ wives are too young, and, anyway, most of them actually like this bloody Hellhole!”
“Most of them were born here, darling.”
“And they’ll die here, too. Just like I will. Only I don’t like it! But don’t worry, Brigadier, it won’t be very long.”
“Please, Laura, let’s not get maudlin.”
“You bastard. I should have never left Friedland with you. Now my daughters are gone and I’m left here all alone.”
“That’s what I came to talk to you about, dear. It’s not safe for you any longer in the City.”
She slowly raised her head, turning her gaze on him for the first time since the conversation began. “How dare you! I stayed here during the time that dreadful man, who called himself King of Haven, ran roughshod over Castell, and I never had any problems. Why should things get worse now?”
“Because, for all of his faults, David Steele was not a fool. Steele knew better than to harm the wife of the man who was commander-in-chief of the largest military force on Haven. Unfortunately, these pompous fools in the Chamber of Deputies don’t have half his common sense. I never thought the day would come when I’d miss that villain, but I do. These damn idiots think they can bend the Brigade to their will by threats and intimidation.”
“Then they don’t know my Gary,” she said with cold sarcasm. “Now, do they?”
He signed. “I don’t want anything to happen to you, Laura. Please, start packing. We have to leave now.”
“No,” she said sternly. “You’ve bullied me enough. This time I will not leave my home; it’s all I have left.”
The Brigadier felt his heart sink. He’d been afraid of this. It would only get uglier from this point on. He was tempted to turn around and leave, but the girl he’d fallen in love with still lived inside, underneath the wrinkles and wattles. It wasn’t Laura’s fault they hadn’t aged together like everyone else. He wouldn’t leave her here unless she absolutely refused to go. No matter what, Laura didn’t deserve the indignity of being carried off against her will by his own soldiers.
Let her preserve what little self-respect she has left, he thought. If Laura truly wanted to stay in their home, fortified by her familiar possessions and memories, let her stay. He owed her that much—at the very least.
Chapter Nine
I
Vessel Commander First Rank Galen Diettinger took his seat in the wardroom as his staff filed in. There were no distinctions of services among Soldiers, only of caste and rank, so the Deathmasters and Breedmasters were directly subservient to Diettinger, as First Ranker.
Perhaps even more so than when I was Dictator, he mused. That must have seemed quite ludicrous to many of my old staff, for a while, there. No doubt they prefer having things back to normal…
“Normal,” he smiled, almost saying the word aloud. His staff had never been allowed any doubt whatsoever about the chain of command, and the tone of this conference, Diettinger knew, would be maintained along those lines.
The Survey Rank was presenting as much information as she had on the Haven System. “The inhabited moon which is named Haven is only marginally habitable. Rotational period for the moon is eighty-seven hours standard, with a longer relative ‘day’ owing to the considerable illumination provided by the gas giant, Cat’s Eye. Drier than we might like, with only a sixty-percent hydrographic index…” The voice of the Survey officer droned on through the communications panel in the wardroom, but the impassive faces of the listeners belied their keen interest.
