The Terran Mandate (27 page)

He slewed the reticle on another gaggle
of troops swarming towards one of his Cats. He pulled the trigger and waited.
Too many seconds ticked by while the ballistics computer struggled to
compensate for the staggering limp of the wounded right leg. The plasma cannons
reeled and another pair of canisters screamed through the air, landing wide of
the troops. Another black tube flew up and clawed at the Cat's undercarriage.
Gripped by a seizure from the electric shock, it shuddered and froze in place
as another tank loosed its bolt and knocked it down.

That They Shall
Not Perish

Lt. Simmons stood with her fists on her
hips, trying to ignore the noise of the battle behind her as she watched her
men struggle to raise the air control dish antenna on top of her carrier into
position.

"It's banged up pretty bad,
Lieutenant," one of them said as they strained to swing the pole up into
position. "The mounting bolt is bent."

"Rough ride," Simmons said,
squinting at them. Three of them pushed hard to try and shove the pole up far
enough to latch it into place, but the bolt kept them from moving it the last
few inches.

"It's not gonna' latch,
Lieutenant."

"Yeah, well then you guys are
gonna' have to hold it in position."

"It's kind of heavy," one of
them said, his voice straining with the effort of holding the weight of the
pole.

"Take turns," she said.

Grunting from the strain, another said,
"Yes ma'am."

Simmons ducked into the carrier. Jommy
and Shahn'Dra sat wide-eyed in their seats. "You kids doing alright?"

"Can we come out yet?" Jommy
asked.

"It is almost time," Shahn'Dra
said.

"It'll be over soon. Just hang tight,"
Simmons said. She climbed inside and sat down in front of the communications
console behind the passenger seat. "It'll be over soon."

She extended the cables from the panel
Sgt. Preston had prepared and wired it into the communications console. Setting
it aside, she flipped on her console's power swtich and waited while its LED
displays and myriad of lights flickered to life. She checked each one, brushing
her fingers over the switches and checking to make sure the LED displays could
withstand the injury of tapping them. She could have started a series of tests
for each of the subsystems, making sure they would be able to detect aircraft
and ground vehicle transponders and send them messages - but any that would
actually need such services were long in the past. She simply didn't want to
look at Preston's console. As long as she didn't see it, it could be in the
proverbial quantum state of both working and not working without reality
dictating for sure which state it was in. She took a breath and held it, then
forced herself to look at Preston's contraption. She let out a sigh when its
lights blinked back at her and the warning indicators along the top remained
dark.

She flipped a switch on her own panel
marked AUX, tying in Preston's fire control panel to her carriers
communications system. Since the commands were hard coded in the circuit board
Preston had assembled, all she had to do was press the transmit button on her
panel and it would take care of the rest.

Never in her life had she felt so
completely at the mercy of somebody else's work. As a recon officer, the
regiment depended on her to make the right decisions at the right time and give
them the information they needed to accomplish their mission. People depended
on
her
. Now, everything depended on pressing a button and hoping the
handiwork of a now-dead Marine did what it was supposed to. There had always
been one more route to patrol, one more angle to explore, one more place to set
up an ambush. There had always been one more piece of information to find and
an option hidden somewhere behind it. Now, there was only a button.

She thought of Dekker and how he had to
rely on people like her and Preston to provide options that came together to
give him a finite universe of choices. She realized the burden of comand wasn't
about being right. It was about trusting everyone else to be right. And he had
managed to find a path for to this moment despite all the different ways the
world had tried to push him away from it. What had been her contribution to keeping
him from finding the way?

She checked her watch, got up and
climbed out of her carrier. Dekker was lying prone on the crest of the ridge as
he watched the battle through his field glasses. As helpless as she felt,
something inside her settled into place as she watched him. Even now, he
wouldn't quit. More than that, it was a thought that never entered his mind.
She had seen many thoughts cross his face in the past few days, but doubt, fear
and hesitation weren't among them. All there had ever been, she realized, was
the mission. And it wasn't the mission he had been assigned. It hadn't even
been a mission he had known about until they had all paid a price for it to be
revealed. It had chosen him, hadn't it?  It had sifted through the scant
remains of their ranks, found Colonel Dekker and said, 
This one
.

He still had something that had drained
from her almost entirely. It was the only thing that could carry them any
further. The oath they had all taken had, as she now realized, many layers
between its words and its true meaning. He understood that. He carried it deep
down inside in a place that too many had forgotten about. He had faith that the
mission was of its own right the only thing that still mattered - that ever
mattered. It was, really, the reason he existed.

That they shall not perish
.

She understood what that meant now. It
was something that no Terran Guard understood. It was something that few
Marines truly understood, but they had given over to the faith of this man to
compensate for that. It was something that she was just now beginning to
understand. 'They' included all of them - not just colonists; not just Shoahn'.
It was all of them - even the ranks of the Terran Guard trying to kill the only
real friend Colonel Dekker had ever known. What kind of faith did a man have
that understood that? He had it. The Paladin had it. Shahn'Dra had it. Lt.
Simmons felt like a child, just realizing that to walk was only the beginning.
There was so much more to learn. And no time left to do it.

She paced up the shallow rise to stand
behind Dekker. As the valley came into view, she gasped.

The smoking shell of a Cataphract lay on
its side, its legs frozen in mid-step as smoke boiled out from its cockpit.
Another leaned to one side, its leg sheared at the knee. The barrel of a Terran
Guard tank recoiled and the Cat fell back, heaving up a billowing cloud of dust
that curled away into the sky. Moments later, the muffled thunder of the frame
crashing into the ground swept over her.

Another Cat stepped back as a gaggle of
soldiers rushed underneath it. Its plasma canisters recoiled and a wall of blue
flame erupted from the ground behind the soldiers as they climbed over its
feet, one of them firing a black object into the bottom of the frame.

She saw it die as it shook from the
surging current and then froze in place.

Lt. Simmons hadn't cried since she was a
girl running from the Terran Guard as they gunned down her family on the slopes
of the Highlands. Even as they were all screaming, she had caught the Paladin's
Cats out of the corner of her eye - and Dekker's Foot Guard kneeling next to
them, firing into the flanks of the Terran Guard troops. Even then, she had
understood. It was at that moment, her legs aching from the strain of galloping
down the hill and her chest burning as she gulped air, that she knew she would
be a Marine. She would never run again. And she would fight next to men like
Dekker. It wasn't a thought. It was something that came alive inside and rose
up to consume the very soul of her.

But now, a tear splashed onto her cheek.
She didn't even feel the urge to fight it back, because she understood. They
had stood watch over them for almost a hundred years and now they were dying.
The Cataphracts weren't machines. They were Marines, every bit as much as she.
The ranks of the fallen would always be replenished by people like here, people
who understood what it meant to stand and fight back. But the ranks of the
Paladin's Cataphracts would never come home again. They were dying right before
her eyes, and they would never return. There would never be their kind again.

That they shall not perish
.

The swarm dragged another pilot from his
cockpit. A soldier leveled his weapon at the pilot's head. The head jerked back
and the body fell limp. As they dragged him away, something burst from inside
and tears flowed down her face as she realized that she wasn't worth all of
this. There were sacrifices too great and they were being made - here, now,
when all an unworthy soul could do was watch and mourn the loss of those few
whose departure would make the universe something less than it could ever be
again.

She fell to her knees and a scream
erupted from her. Apart from her, it ripped its way out of her soul and reached
out across the desert sky, unheard and swallowed up by the wind.

"No!"

Dekker lowered his field glasses and
craned his head around to look at her. "What are you doing?" he
asked.

Simmons wiped her nose with her sleeve
and took a shuddering breath as she fought back the rest of her tears. "This
isn't right."

"Then what are you going to do
about it?"

Simmons stood up and brushed the front
of her field utility blouse. "Right."

"How much time on the shot?"

Simmons checked her watch. "Not
long now, sir."

"Then you better get ready."

"Yes sir." Simmons stood for a
moment more as he turned his attention back to the battle. She had a mission.
Even if it was only to wait until the time was right and just push a button,
she had a mission.

She turned back to her carrier and
ducked back inside to sit down in front of the console. Something inside her
pushed the sounds of the battle away and she counted the seconds away.

Faith

Terran Guard troops were swarming in
from both sides as Major Walker backed up. The few Cats left cranked their
plasma guns around as far as they could and fired. The troops were too close
now and they impacted the ground behind the troops, throwing up a blue wall of
flame that did little more than provide a backdrop to silhouette the faces
straining with hatred for the men who had held them back from their calling
during a lifetime of war. Every soldier was a martyr for his own cause, Walker
thought. But he knew better this time. This time, it was different.

Forcing himself to ignore the sight of
another Cat shuddering to a halt as an electromagnetic pulse surged through its
frame, Walker slewed his reticle to another tank and pulled the trigger to
designate the target. Disciplined in their focus on cutting down the crippled
Cats, they seemed to ignore him as he pulled the trigger a second time and
waited. Once again, the computer took longer than it should have because it had
to compensate for the staggering limp of his Cat as it struggled to back away
from the line. Finally, his cannons let loose their salvo of steel spikes and
pushed the tank into a smear of orange stretching across the ground.

He glanced at the Pyramid and tapped a
button next to his center display to bring up a map of his position. He
overlaid it with the projected impact area of the STI and saw that he was
between the Pyramid and the outer edge of the impact zone.

He keyed his headset. "Keep moving
it back you guys." Another group of carriers scurried around the flanks,
trying to get around to the rear of his formation. They were brushing the edge
of the impact zone and would drift out of it if they moved much further.
"Tighten up the line. Draw them in behind me." All along the line,
the Cats angled their track to close their ranks as they continued to march
away from him.  He centered his control levers and his Cat swayed as the
stabilizers strained to keep it from falling over as he brought the behemoth to
a halt.

"You need to keep moving there,
Major," one of them said.

Walker smiled and slewed the reticle
onto another tank that was moving in towards a Cat on the left flank of their
line. The carriers halted and discharged more troops. He pulled the trigger.
Now that he was standing still, the computer found its firing solution in less
than a second and fired the guns at almost point blank range, sending the tank
tumbling over the ground with a swirl of orange wrapping around it as it
disintegrated.

"Don't worry about it," he
said. "Just keep moving them towards the Pyramid."

He slewed his reticle again and
dispatched another tank. The loading mechanism clunked into action as the
banner on his display flashed LOADING. He quickly counted, realizing he
couldn't dispatch the remaining eight tanks on his own.

More importantly, though, he wasn't in
optimal position for the STI. As his guns loaded, he pulled back on the left
control lever. The leg rose up and swung back while the sound of metal buckling
rose up from the right leg straining to slide forward so the Cat could turn.
The change in its direction wasn't enough. It was going to take many more steps
than she probably had left. "Come on baby," he said, "just a few
more."

The left leg clomped back again and he
could hear the metal that had started to buckle in the right leg starting to
tear, sounding like a bell cracking apart.

The display flashed READY when the Cat
yanked sideways as another steel spear tore into his left gun, knocking it off
its mount to leave it hanging by electric control cables and hydraulic fluid
lines. The graphic for the left gun flashed red on his display.

He pulled the weapons control grip as
far left as it would go and the reticle slewed to the edge of his HUD display,
but the tanks were already moving too far to the side for his weapons to reach
them.

He flipped the display to show the view
through the camera mounted behind his cockpit. The Pyramid was still off to the
side behind him, but he was slowly moving towards it.

"Close enough," he said, and
yanked both control levers back, instructing his Cat to back up in a straight
line. The left leg took a smaller step this time. White smoke curled up next to
his canopy from the right leg grinding itself towards destruction as it slid
back.

Dekker's voice crackled in his headset.
"Two Bravo Delta, Enforcer - Major, we're just a few minutes away from the
shot. You need to get out of there."

The left leg took another step back,
shorter still as it compensated for the shrinking distance the right leg could
still move.

"Are my boys out of the way?"
he asked.

"They're out of the zone. Can you
move any faster?"

The right foot scraped along the ground,
black smoke curling up past his cockpit now.

"How many left?" He coughed as
the smoke started to seep into his cockpit.

"Four. You've got four Cats
left," Dekker said. Walker could hear the tone in Dekker's voice as he
tried to make it sound like a good thing. He had always been that way. If he
had run out of ammunition, Dekker was the kind of man who would say he could
beat the enemy to death with an empty rifle.

Walker's throat squeezed in against
itself as more smoke filled the cockpit. He coughed again and said,
"That's good."

"You're moving the wrong way. You
need to get away from the Pyramid."

"I know."

"Major, you're running out of time.
Move yourself clear of the zone. That's an order."

The frame shuddered and the cockpit
swayed as another round ripped through the Cat's right leg at the knee and
sheered the last of it away. The stump of its leg slammed into the ground and
impaled the dried clay below the sand and dirt of the desert floor. The frame rocked
back and forth as gyros stabilized it enough to keep it from falling the rest
of the way over.

The smoke filling his cockpit was so
thick he could barely see the display in front of him. Walker smacked the
canopy release plunger. Smoke spilled out of the cockipit as the canopy popped
open and slid up on hydraulic struts. He coughed and reached behind him to
unstrap the Old Scrolls from the bulkhead. He set the case in his lap and
wrapped his hands around the edge.

As the smoke cleared, he saw two Terran
Guard troop carriers standing just behind the tanks closing in on the Pyramid
and the rest of his Cats. A hunched figure disembarked from one, took a few
steps towards him with the help of a walking stick and looked straight into his
eyes as his antennae fluttered over his head.

He must not come here.

"Negative, Colonel," Walker
said. "Two Bravo Delta is unable to comply at this time."

"Sam! Get the hell out of
there."

Walker eyed Shoahn'Fal as he stood
behind heat waves rippling across the ground between them. He smiled, knowing
that the old priest now stood in the STI impact zone with him. Another figure
stepped out from the carrier to stand next to the Shoahn'. General Godfrey
glared at him as she stood with her hands on her hips.

"Take the shot, Ben."

He unkeyed the microphone and looked up
into the sky. The Shoahn' sun beat down on his face and he closed his eyes,
imagining a time when he was a boy and would lift his face to the sun, close
his eyes and pretend he was on a world they had called Earth.

He whispered to himself, "Semper
fi."