“Ain’t much to tell,” Jamie said. “I lost my shit. Fact is, I don’t even remember most of it.”
“Seriously? J, when you heard they arrested that asshole, you took a baseball bat out of my closet and ran all the way to the sheriff’s office. They said you ran in there, all wide-eyed looking like a demon or some shit. Woulda killed the asshole if he weren’t locked up. You were swinging at anybody who got near you. One deputy nearabout pulled his gun. And you saying you don’t remember most of it?”
“Like a demon? Who said?”
“Iggy Horne. And he only told me because he’s worried about you, and he knows how close we are.”
Jamie sat up, threw off his cap, and pulled up his t-shirt.
“I like Iggy, but he needs to keep his mouth shut. Whatever, dude.” He laid his t-shirt on the boulder and reached for his sneakers.
“Don’t dude me. That was a mile run, and folks say you were screaming the whole way. This was more than losing your shit.”
Jamie removed his shoes, his jeans, and his briefs without comment. A lanky figure, he jumped into the river and raced out to the deepest channel, up to his chest.
“Fuck this town,” he said, before dunking himself.
As he waited for Jamie to emerge, Michael knew he’d gone too far.
“OK, fine. It was too soon. I’m an asshole.”
When Jamie resurfaced and pushed the hair out of his face, he offered Michael a blank stare.
“Coop. What am I supposed to say? If I tell people the truth, they’ll know I’m nuts. Just let them think whatever.”
“You can tell me the truth. Jamie, you’re my No. 1. Right?”
“That’s what you tell me. But if you think I’m right fit for the nuthouse, you’ll do like all the others and turn tail.”
“Really, J? After all we been through? Don’t say that shit.”
Michael watched as Jamie softened his stare. Jamie wrapped his arms tight against his chest.
“Damn water’s freezing, Coop.”
“Sure is, dumbass. Spring don’t even start for a week.”
Jamie trudged out, shivering as he reached for his clothes.
“The hell’s wrong with me, Coop?” He pulled on his briefs and jeans. He looked away from Michael.
“So, um, there this was voice. Yeah, like, in my head. OK? It was right after I heard they arrested the guy. I don’t remember much. That part’s true. But I remember the voice. It was sweet. I dunno. Like your Grandma Verna. She just said, ‘You’re a monster.’ Kept saying it over and over. Then it’s like she pointed me to the jail. I don’t remember taking the bat. I just heard a voice say over and over, ‘I’ll kill them all.’”
Jamie’s voice cracked and faded to a whimper as he repeated those last three words, and he looked away from Michael, who wished he’d never taken things this far. Jamie slipped on his t-shirt and stood in the water’s edge, barefoot and swaying, his eyes as lost as they must have been when he entered the sheriff’s office, Michael reckoned.
As he began to cry, Jamie said, “Please don’t tell them, Coop.”
“Not a chance. Dude, I got your back. You’re my No. 1.”
Michael meant every word. Time passed and Jamie learned to laugh again. School resumed and bored them both silly. Pranks and petty juvenile crime filled the listless summer days. The Sheridan boys took no handouts and settled into a dreadful apartment. Michael visited his sketchy cousins in Starkville, routinely tested his parents’ patience, and was told by guidance counselors how he was throwing his future away with poor grades. Yet he took solace that he’d escape Albion with his No. 1 and they’d survive on the road somehow. It all made sense. It would all work out in the end.
That’s what Michael told himself whenever he remembered Jamie’s confession by the river. Twenty-seven months later, he changed his mind.
PART ONE
MICHAEL
Humans have been known to make irrational decisions in moments of greatest trial. Others, however, prove themselves to be visionaries of enormous courage. Their choices lay the foundation for exciting new paths in humanity’s long journey. The choices made on the world then known as Hiebimini in Standard Year 5358 will be debated for generations. What we can deduce with certainty is simple: History ended there.
- Edward Faust
- Annotation 1044-B
- The Fall of the Collectorate, Volume 4
1
Ericsson Research Station
Planet: Tamarind
Four months after Collectorate Realignment
Standard Day 16, SY 5358
M ICHAEL COOPER LINED UP HIS KILL SHOT. The Mongol cluster approached at dawn in a formation that screamed easy pickings. They ascended the ridge in single formation, not trying to disguise themselves or use the wide-spreading Lebanese cedars as cover. His DR29 zoomed in, expanding the view from inside his peacekeeper helmet.
At three hundred meters, from his crouched position on a layered crevasse, Michael concluded these zealots were begging to commit suicide. Each brandished a laser pistol and a retractable Lin’taava sword. Their ceremonial robes, splashed in the Tuvaan clan shades of brown and sunset orange, fell over them as little more than potato sacks. Suitable for worship perhaps, not combat. From his vantage, Michael needed only to press the trigger button on his Mark 10 blast rifle, and he would cut down all eight with a burst of flash pegs. It would be a single-shot record for him, yet it seemed unfair. Damn indigos. What is wrong with these people?
He rolled his eyes to swipe through the holostreams of his fellow Guardsmen. Six other positions, flanking the ridgeline and radiating outward from the mountain base’s only entrance, depicted the enemy’s approach. Three columns of eight Mongols in single file maintained a hundred meters separation. Like their previous strategies which ended in slaughter, this made no military sense.
You think we’re violating sacred ground, Michael mused. We’re trying to steal the damn secrets of the universe. Yeah, so maybe we are. But this ain’t gonna get it done, guys.
“Turn back, dumbasses,” he whispered. “I’m tired of counting bodies before breakfast.”
The Tuvaan incursions occurred at dawn. Weeks earlier, the special operations team learned why. This fringe group adopted the beliefs of pre-colonial ancestors, who equated sunrise with rebirth of the soul. They insisted the Creators would look favorably upon warriors who gave their lives at this most divine moment. And since the Void was the Creators’ greatest gift to humanity, the devout must defend it with all their being and cast out the interlopers.
Michael was present with his new band of brothers and sisters when they interrogated the only Mongol survivor of the second incursion. The prisoner was a vicious hound at first, unwilling to speak Engleshe but happy to spit in the face of any Guardsman. Ten hours of torture, a reopening of his wounds, and a realization of his impending death calmed the prisoner at last. He spoke in a tongue unique to his high-forest clan but did so with a glow of absolute peace. Blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth, the prisoner answered all their questions and died with a contented smile, his message processing through a translation program.
These Tuvaan fanatics weren’t going to give up the fight. Ever. Their numbers were limited, their weapons insufficient, and their allies among other Mongol and Chinese clans non-existent. But they were committed in heart and mind. And this, the spec-ops team agreed, posed on unacceptable threat to the mission.
*
The debate over military response became heated, inside Ericsson Station and in orbit onboard the Praxis. Spec-ops team leader, Major Aiden Nilsson, favored preemptive surgical strikes with energy slews. Take out the entire clan – intel suggested three thousand casualties – and free up resources for girding the base against a possible assault by Chinese and Mongols loyal to Brother James and Salvation. Major Nilsson obtained the full support of his team before making the formal proposal to Praxis Capt. Delano Forsythe.
“We weren’t brought here to be
butchers,” Nilsson told his team. “That’s the job of rank-and-file Guard. Sooner or later, these animals will stumble into a fit of luck. They may even kill one of us. I’ve never lost a soldier, and I’ll be cudfrucked if it’s going to happen now. We kill them all while we have the advantage. Say you?”
Six hands rose, Michael’s included. His resolute commitment surprised Nilsson, who became Michael’s commanding officer fifty-three standard days earlier.
“No hesitation, Cooper? No moral qualms?”
The first non-Chancellor in the history of the Unification Guard squelched any reservation about a wholesale slaughter.
“Personally, sir, mass murder ain’t really my thing. But this base is too important. If we don’t finish what we started here, we’ll never make it to Hiebimini.”
He wanted to add, “Or to Samantha,” but personal goals were neither relevant nor appreciated by the chain of command. Michael learned that painful lesson early in his spec-ops training. The Guard serves the Chancellory. The Chancellory protects the Collectorate. Preserve the natural order.
Michael knew his allies on Earth – those who stood at his side in the fight for Solomon equity – would not understand his choices. To wear their body armor. To fight with their weapons. To transform his physique using their synthetics. And for the love of one woman?
“You surprise me on a daily basis, Cooper.” Nilsson nodded, setting off grunts of approval from the others. “Good man.”
Unfortunately, neither Capt. Forsythe nor his special advisor, Col. Joseph Doltrice, supported the proposal. Forsythe insisted the Praxis crew not expose its military capability unless boxed into a corner. Praxis was, officially, a science vessel, and its crew independent researchers engaged in a continuing study of the Void. The spec-ops team was private security hired for protection only.
“May I remind you,” Capt. Forsythe said via holowindow, “we are here under the direct authorization of Supreme Admiral Poussard. She does not wish to antagonize the Chinese Convocations or their Senate. If they decide we are a military mission in defiance of this so-called realignment, they won’t hesitate to deploy an army with substantial air power. Or, they’ll simply call in Bouchet’s terrorists. You will be annihilated. You are to maintain defensive operations.”
This did not sit well with Nilsson.
“So, we engage in morning target practice until these indigos decide they’ve had enough, or they can’t climb over the corpses.”
“Correct. As long as the major clans don’t consider us a threat, they’ll have nothing to do with the Void.”
Michael went through a back channel to convince Joseph Doltrice to support the team. Joseph saved Michael’s life in the last battle of the Solomon uprising while working as a mercenary for Samantha. The two bonded after her kidnapping and during the journey to Tamarind. Michael thought, incorrectly, he had Joseph’s ear.
“With apologies, Michael,” Joseph said. “I cannot put my respect and devotion to you and Sam ahead of this mission. Our predicament is more fragile than you realize.”
“I’m sorry, Joseph. I think my voice should count more than most. My Presidium paid for twenty percent of this mission.”
“Samantha’s Presidium. I understand your point. Nonetheless, it’s a military decision. Financial outlays are not relevant.”
Michael fumed. “I just thought after everything that happened on Earth, you’d have my back.”
“I do. Always. But you and I are soldiers. This is what you wanted, Michael. I gained you access to spec-ops. You survived their training and proved yourself worthy of the uniform. Your job is to protect the mission and kill the enemy. This is our path to Hiebimini.”
Michael nodded. “Killing, I don’t mind. Not anymore. But when I was on Earth, I assassinated Chancellors who posed a genuine threat to the Solomons. I knew their names and their faces. But these Mongols? They got no shot against us, and they believe we are a genuine threat. And they will not stop coming. Instead of these massacres at dawn, all we need to do is drop three energy slews on their village. It’s what the Guard used to do from the Ark Carriers. I’ve read the history.”
“True.” Joseph sighed. “I must admit, hearing you so casually advocate for the annihilation of an entire village is … unsettling.”
“Or maybe I’ve learned from all the Chancellors I been hanging out with it the past few years. Sometimes, murder is practical.”
“As is patience. Do your job, Michael. Kill the enemy.”
They had not spoken to each other since. Thirty-one days. Twelve more incursions. Six hundred twenty dead Mongols. And for the spec-ops team? Two broken bones, a few bruises, and a holographic scoreboard documenting kills. The latter was 1st Lt. Percy Muldoon’s idea. He figured a little competition would liven the proceedings. Maj. Nilsson did not object.
*
Michael ranked third going into this morning’s fifteenth conflict, mostly because he was ordered to take point in the early attacks. Nilsson, influenced by hardliner Col. Rachel Broadman, threw Michael into the first line of fire to show his true mettle or die trying. Michael succeeded to the tune of a high body-count, a feat not everyone in spec-ops appreciated.
“In any other context,” Rachel told Michael over a round of drinks two weeks earlier, “you’d be an indigo. A proto-African rat like the ones I killed on Zwahili Kingdom and Boer.”
She bared her teeth at Michael, a predator closing in for the fatal strike. But he didn’t flinch. Instead, he pulled on his pipe and filled his lungs with poltash weed.
“Want a toke?” He offered his pipe. “G’hladi weed. Best around.”
“So they say.”
She accepted his offer and pulled on the pipe, her eyes laser-driven on Michael’s all the while. She nearly tore him from limb to limb during spec-ops training, broke his ribs, and savaged his ego daily. Kick by kick. Punch by punch. And each day he returned, often with little sleep and/or straight from the medpod. She tried to break him, even as he fought with vigor, adapted to peacekeeper combat techniques, and became more powerful with infusions of Guard proprietary synthetics. Now, Michael saw it in her probing, arrogant eyes: He had become her equal. A soldier of the Guard, civil rights on par with Chancellors. And perhaps worst of all: Every bit as adept at killing. This simply would not do. Not for Rachel.
Michael wasn’t surprised when she propositioned him. He took satisfaction in her confusion when he accepted without hesitation. He whispered in her ear, “I slept with a Chancellor for two years. You won’t be a step up.”
She wasn’t, but she was good enough that he came back for more. It wasn’t like with Sam. Not ever. But Michael needed those interludes. To breathe. To relax. To forget.
*
The possibility of more such moments – and the hope of looking into Sam’s eyes one more time – steeled Michael for this fifteenth assault by Mongols. He studied the formations of the advancing enemy, listened to the chatter among his team, and realized that something was off this morning. The formation was new, yes, but the body language was …
Now it made sense. He reviewed them again, waited for the order to fire, and thought over the previous fourteen incursions. It was their eyes. Their fucking eyes. He opened an audio stream.
“They’re playing with us,” he said. “They haven’t looked up. Not once. They’re staring at the ground.”
“What are you suggesting?” Nilsson replied.
“They know we’re watching. They’ve seen how we operate. If they show us their eyes, they’ll give themselves away. They always have. We’ve talked about it. They’re scared shitless. Not this time.”
“I believe our newb is right,” Rachel said, her voice dripping in the usual level of condescension. “They have a secret they don’t wish to tell us. Order to fire?”
Nilsson didn’t have a chance to give the command. Lt. Percy Muldoon’s excited voice interrupted.
“Cud! Where did these come from? I’m seeing movement across the northern and s
outhern perimeters. Identifying …”
Michael didn’t have to wait: These Mongols needed to die now.
“Mountain rifters,” Percy said. “Twelve. Three occupants each. They’re coming in from …”
Too late. As the low hum of the personal hover transports echoed through the cedar forest and across the ridge, the three columns of Mongol foot soldiers dispersed in a blink, and three targets became two dozen, all disappearing into brush or behind boulders.
Nilsson didn’t have to say it for Michael to understand: The Mongols adapted at last. They calculated the precise distance at which their enemy would fire and timed both the arrival of their rifters and their own dispersal to the very edge of their extinction.
So much for religious fanatics. This time, they came prepared to kill. As Michael reared up from his protected position and prepared to advance, he did so with the rising concern that this victory was not as certain as all the others.
2
M ICHAEL DIDN’T NEED AN ORDER to know they couldn’t stay here. The ridgeline offered a superior view of the cedar forest and the enemy on foot, but as soon as the team opened fire, they would expose their positions to a flighted enemy. Mountain rifters were both fast and flexible. The high-forest clans had used them for generations.
Nilsson’s order came as no surprise. The flanks – Michael, Rachel Broadman, Kal Carver, Percy Muldoon – were ordered to engage the ground enemy while pulling away as many rifters as they could. The others would hold position outside the base’s sealed entrance and take on the bulk of the rifters. The math wasn’t good, but Michael didn’t care. He clicked on his gravmod boots and remembered how the math insisted he should be dead already.
He mapped his target from inside the DR29 and raised himself into a forward stance, ready to leap. The blast rifle, more than eight hundred flash pegs ready to discharge from a rotating cylinder, wrapped over his right arm. His weapon of choice, the Ingmar Pulse Gun, Model 16, sat firmly gripped in his left hand. The Ingmar served him well on Earth, and Michael refused to part with it until someone took it off his corpse.
The Impossible Future: Complete set Page 107
