Ash: Rise of the Republic (14 page)

The Republic’s rivals had known of the
repellor’s existence almost since it was created. Though vast
resources had been expended over the years, none of them had been
able to duplicate it. Finally, in an act of vile espionage, an RNT
technician named Veron Bayfield had defected to the Texan Union and
sold them the repellor designs. The TU engineers had quickly
produced their own.

Once the secret was out, the Republic had
quickly capitalized on the loss. There was no longer any reason to
keep the technology in-house, so the repellors became one of the
most lucrative trade goods in the RNT’s arsenal. The ash suits had
once been reserved only for the rangers and a few elite troops in
the Campus Guard, but an enterprising upstart in the Trade
Development Department saw them as a gold mine. A demilitarized
version of the suit was now a top seller among the various trade
partners in the region. One entire textile factory was converted to
producing them to fuel the demand. This fortuitous capacity was
what allowed the army to be outfitted so quickly. There were only a
few modifications needed to convert the suits back to military
specifications.

As the Captain was making his rounds, the
Colonel arrived, climbed to the reviewing stand, and took the
opportunity to address the troops. Peter Garza was, like his
father, more of a career politician than a soldier. He was
characteristically long winded and never passed up an opportunity
for oration. He stepped up to the microphone on the reviewing stand
and launched into a prolonged diatribe on the virtues of selfless
service and duty, the importance of preserving civilization and of
proliferating technology, and the struggle between good and evil.
After a few minutes of this, the Captain noticed the troops growing
restless. They were proud men, here on their own accord, eager to
be done with the endless training and drills. He could tell they
resented being lectured by the plump windbag. Out of mercy, he
threaded his way through the Colonel's staff and politely edged him
away from the microphone. Garza stopped mid-harangue and backed
away stammering in surprise at his audacity. He could see the men
perk up as he cleared his throat. He didn’t like to acknowledge it,
but ‘Cap’n Mac’ was a legend amongst the hardy citizens of the
Republic.

"Thank you for those inspirational words,
Colonel Garza." The Colonel tried to avoid embarrassment by playing
along as if the interruption had been planned. He nodded and
gestured at the Captain to continue. McLellan ignored him and
turned back to his audience. "Men, we won't waste much more of your
time with speeches. I know you don't need to be reminded why you're
here. I won't patronize you, every man here knows his duty. I'll
leave you with this: two days from now we'll march south to kill
some outlaws. I won't lie to you, it's gonna be bad. Some of you
are going to die. When the bullets start flying and there's blood
all around you, some of you, no, most of you are going to get
scared. You're going to want to turn and run. There's no shame in
fear, fear keeps you alive if you use it right. In those moments of
doubt I want you to picture your families, your homes. I want you
to picture the things you love, and then I want you to think about
what those savage motherfuckers who are shooting at you would do to
those things you love if you don't kill them first. I want you to
picture that and then I want you to kill those bastards before that
can happen. You do that for me and we'll make it through this just
fine. That's all."

The Captain snapped a salute, turned, and
stepped off the reviewing stand. After a few steps he stopped,
remembering something. He jogged back to the microphone and
shouted:

"One more thing: you boys can kill as many
of those bastards as you want, but the leader, Werner, that one's
mine!"

At this the army erupted in a roar of
approval and excitement. The air was filled with piercing war
whoops and battle cries. Soon, they began chanting the famous
ranger's name.

"Cap’n Mac, Cap’n Mac, Cap’n Mac..." the
crowd roared.

He turned to look at the Colonel. The young
man had turned bright red. His ample cheeks quivered indignantly.
The Captain gave him an ironic salute and left the reviewing stand.
He smiled once his back was turned. The insult that the Garza had
served him by putting him in charge the supply logistics was now
repaid. He could hear the chant all the way back to his office.

****

As the thin grey light began to wane that evening,
the Captain settled with a sigh into the cracked leather of an old
armchair in the lobby of the rangers’ billet. He sipped a glass of
whiskey, the endless lists and ledgers forgotten for a time. His
troop, after a week of overindulgence in rest and relaxation,
mostly of the liquid variety, had decided to take a night off. The
nine of them were spread around the lobby on the aging furniture,
in various states of repose. Most of them were cradling bowls
heaped with a thick, meaty stew that the two new recruits had
worked on all afternoon. Deb was curled up in the chair next to
him, dozing, her empty bowl at her feet.

The Captain enjoyed his whiskey for a time,
his mind blank for the first time in days. The half dozen
conversations in the room merged in a soft, chaotic murmur. Before
long, however, one conversation in particular jumped out at him. He
risked a glance at the source. The two new girls, Lee and Sam, were
arguing with the twins. Pirate was snickering and shaking his head,
his big hoop earrings and facial piercings glinting in the dim
light.

“What do you mean? It was a volcano, stupid!
How can you not know that?” he asked.

“I know that’s what they say, but it can’t
be true!” replied Lee indignantly, “Look, we might not have grown
up at the University, but we had plenty of books at home, at least
we did before Momma died. Sam doesn’t remember it that well, but I
do! Momma was a school teacher, she told me to read everything I
could. One of the books we had was about geology. There was a whole
chapter on volcanoes. They’re big, yeah, big as a mountain, but not
big enough to cover the whole world in ash! Yeah, some of them
erupt and throw ash and melted rock all over the place, but it’s
localized. A few towns nearby might get covered in it, but then
it’s over. The eruption stops until the pressure builds back up and
it does it all over again. Then there are other volcanoes that just
ooze lava all the time. I think it has something to do with what
kind of rocks get melted underground.”

“Look, I don’t care what momma taught you
out there in the woods, we learned here, at the goddam University,
that…”

“Actually, she’s right Pirate.” The Captain
cut in suddenly. “Well, mostly.”

“But Captain…” Casper began, jumping in to
help his brother.

The Captain waved him off, “Sometimes I
forget how young you all are. With all the rangering, there hasn’t
been much time any of you to get a proper education. That’s my
fault. I’ll tell you what: Not two hundred yards from here there is
a building filled with some of the best geologists in Texas. Why
don’t we all head over there? I bet I can arrange a lecture.” The
troop groaned at the idea.

“I think that’s a great idea.” The exchange
had disturbed Deb’s nap. “Pack it up rangers, we’re heading to
class. If you’re gonna waste your youth as hired killers, you might
as well be educated hired killers.”

The Captain polished off his whiskey and
stood up, knees creaking. “I’ll go on ahead and see if I can rustle
up a PhD or two.” He pecked his wife on the cheek and ducked out
the door, suddenly full of energy. He loved the old geology
building, with its entrances lined with pebble mosaics, its gaudy
brass doors, its display cases filled with fascinating rock samples
and fossils, and its dank basement where undergrads would camp for
weeks memorizing mineral samples or peering in frustration at
thin-samples in polarizing microscopes. It was one of the older
buildings on Campus, built in the early twentieth century with an
eclectic mixture of architectural styles and decorated by
scientists with an enthusiastic lack of taste. The charming old
heap of limestone contrasted sharply with the stark, ominous,
utilitarian boxes that surrounded it on three sides. The 1970s and
80s had been an awkward time for Campus architecture. The
monstrosities produced in those dark days looked as if their
architects borrowed heavily from the design of Soviet-bloc tenement
housing. There were some portions of campus where, if a man had
just regained consciousness after a night of heavy drinking, he
would find it difficult to convince himself he was on the campus of
one of the largest universities in the country and not a state
funded housing project in the slums of Bratislava.

The Captain had spent most of his four years
of college in the building, and its nostalgia was overpowering. He
had spent much of his time between patrols tucked away in some old
geologist's office with a few professors, passing a bottle and
philosophizing on rocks. Deb found these sessions repugnantly
boring, and would recoil in horror when he would inevitably invite
her to join him. He had long since given up hope that she would
enjoy the rock-talk, but it amused him to watch her fabricate
excuses, so he never failed to ask her to come.

The Captain was friendly with the entire
faculty and knew most of the graduate students by name. He knew
there was only one man who would take pleasure in holding an
impromptu, late night lecture. Dr. Rudolph Burns was in his late
seventies, one of the oldest men on Campus. Despite his advanced
age and perpetually failing health, the craggy old geophysicist
still taught five classes a week, and an evening seminar on
Fridays. He held both undergraduate and graduate classes in several
subjects, clinging to his lectern for support, squinting through
horn rimmed glasses with lenses thick enough to stop a bullet. He
was renowned for his deadly aim with blackboard erasers. If a
student was unlucky enough to nod off during a lecture, he would be
assured a chalky revival by one of the well placed missiles.

Noting the late hour, the Captain bypassed
the original section of the building which housing the classrooms
and teaching laboratories, heading instead for the annex. The
annex, one of those unlucky structures which looked as if it had
been designed by Slovakian communists, was a three story rhombic
prism behind the original building. A two story bridge over a
breezeway was the newer lump of concrete's only connection to the
limestone of the old structure. Built to house faculty offices and
research labs, it was now the department dormitory. Each full
professor was designated a block of offices and a lab in which to
live and work. Graduate students were packed in on the third floor,
sometimes as many as four to an office. All over campus, the
various academic disciplines had similar arrangements.

The Captain could hear a frantic muttering
behind the door to Burns' quarters. Smiling and shaking his head,
he hammered savagely on the door. It was violently yanked open
before he could land the third knock. The gaping maw of a ten gauge
shotgun yawned before him. At the other end of the huge weapon, a
thin, grey haired man squinted down the sights through fishbowl
lenses. He had once been tall, but years spent hunched in front of
computer screens or peering through microscopes had slumped his
posture. An unruly bush of white hair sprouted from his upper lip
and mingled inextricably with the twin grey and black forests
growing from each nostril. Similar tufts jutted from each ear.

The Captain, still smiling, raised his hands
above his head in surrender. "You got me old man, don't shoot! I
promise I'll give up this life of sin and spend my time helping the
poor if you just give me this one chance!"

"McLelland, you meddling young bastard, what
are you doing beating on my door in the middle of the night like
the goddam gestapo?" The professor lowered his cannon and leveled a
stern squint at him.

"I have a gift for you, Doc: In my travels
I've found a ragged troop of young deviants uninitiated in the
mysteries of the world of rocks. I wanted to give you the
opportunity to fill their empty minds with wonder. Unless, of
course, you feel like you’re getting too old to teach?”

The ancient professor scoffed at the
suggestion, “You’d better watch that impudent mouth, young man,
I’ve still got a few more years of putting students to sleep left
in me. Let me get a few erasers good and chalky, I’ll meet you down
in 106 in twenty minutes.” He started to close the door but stopped
suddenly, poking his head out, “Err…What is it they need to
learn?”

Captain McLelland smiled again, “I caught
them arguing about volcanoes. I think they need to hear how the
world was made.”

“Ah, the question of the epoch: ‘where did
all the ash come from?’ Splendid, I’ll be down shortly.”

****

Precisely twenty minutes later, the wizened old
geophysicist hobbled into the small classroom, a jumble of papers
and ragged books clutched to his thin chest. He looked them over
with a skeptical and well-practiced eye. The young rangers were
scattered throughout the risered bank of well-worn seats. The
Captain and his wife had claimed two of the chairs in the front
row.

Burns shuffled to the dented steel desk in
the corner and gently deposited his mess of papers, pretending to
sort them for a moment. Apparently satisfied with their
arrangement, he moved to the center of the room and propped himself
against the lectern. He glanced myopically around the back of the
room for a moment, then gave the Captain an impatient look, one
bushy white eyebrow raised slightly. The gentle chatter of excited
young men and women had reached a crescendo.

McLelland took the hint. He half turned in
his seat, catching the nearest group of rangers with an icy stare
and cleared his throat loudly. The room fell into obedient silence.
The Captain turned back and gave the professor a small nod.