The Terran Mandate (11 page)

Sky Rider

Emmet held Jommy's hand as they watched
the rest of the farmers tote bundles and crates into the clearing. They were
into the deep of the night now and darkness shrouded everything as they worked
by the light of electric lanterns. Hasam, the colony foreman, directed the
families as they deposited their packages and then backed away, forming a
circle around the growing pile of supplies.

They brought vegetables that looked like
they were rotting, a bit of grain that was already in short supply and
processed food packages from the dwindling stockpile provided by the MEF.
Everyone stopped and stared when one man brought a portion of meat. He had
found and killed the only animal anyone had seen in years and most wondered if
there would ever be another. Hunting was illegal and would have landed Hasam
and a few others in the Marine stockade, if there had been any real reason to
put them there. The unwritten rule was that the colonists could do whatever it
took to survive as long as they were discreet about it.

What happened next, though, the MEF
would have taken very seriously. The radio slung over Hasam's shoulder crackled
and hissed. He stepped away so nobody could hear him speak with whoever was on
the other end. When they were finished, he pointed to two men standing on a
patch of dirt just beyond the pile of goods and yelled, "Light it!"

One of the men poured something from a
clear plastic bottle on a pile of cord wood - the one thing that Shoan'tu had
in abundance - while the other ignited a plasma torch and lit the wood on fire.
As the blaze came to life, they trotted back to join the rest of the farmers.
Nobody talked as they all scanned the night sky.

The first thing they heard was a whining
hiss in the distance and then the distant roar of turbines as a boxy hovercraft
crested a hill and scooted in over the fire. With the dexterity that came from
a lifetime of flying a freight hover that had hauled every manner of supplies
and structures used to build, move and rebuild the colony, the pilot slowed the
craft to a hover and then eased it onto the ground between the fire and the
farmers waiting with their supplies.

Just as it landed, the crowd sprang into
action and converged on the pile to haul packs, sacks, crates and bundles to
the craft as the pilot stepped down a ladder hanging from the cockpit and
hopped to the ground. As the first bundles arrived, he opened the wind-scarred
side doors, swung them up on squealing hinges and latched them in place with
rusting steel rods.

The farmers lined up and started handing
their goods to the pilot. As each bundle was delivered, the donor said the same
thing: "For the Paladin." The pilot nodded and smiled as he hoisted
the goods into the freight box.

Emmet handed a bundle to Jommy and told
him to get in line. When it came his turn and the boy handed over his bundle,
the pilot signaled for him to wait. He climbed the cockpit ladder and fetched
something from inside. He climbed back down and slipped it into Jommy's hand.
He leaned forward to whisper something. Jommy quickly pocketed the item and
gave a little hand salute.

He ran back to Emmet with a grin
sprawled across his face. He stopped next to his father, looked over both
shoulders to make sure nobody could see and then pulled the transmitter from
his pocket.

"What's that?" his father
asked.

"It's a radio," Jommy said.
"He told me to use it to call him if I ever get lost."

Emmet gulped, hoping his son wouldn't
catch it in the darkness. That Jommy was the youngest member of the colony
wasn't something he thought about much. That the pilot knew this and had given
him something that would only be useful if he were in danger ignited a stab of
loneliness as he thought of how few they had become. He knew what the pilot
really meant: it was in case Jommy found himself alone. He smiled and patted
the boy on the head. "Keep it close to you son, and don't tell
anybody."

"I will. And I won't." Jommy
looked at his father and beamed as he stroked the edges of the treasure in his
palm.

After the last bundle was loaded, Emmet
joined the other senior farmers next to the freighter as the pilot folded the
hatch back down and locked it in place.

"Is the Paladin coming back?"
Hasam asked.

"I can't tell you anything right
now, Foreman. Everything's a mess."

"Well we can't afford to just keep
feeding the Paladin and his men if they're not going to protect us."

The pilot looked at the ground and
grunted. "Look, I know y'all are scared right now. Everybody is. But look
yonder." He pointed towards the MEF compound. "Y'all have the MEF
guarding you day and night right now. I'm sure they'll look after you until
this all gets sorted out."

Hasam raised the binoculars hanging
around his neck and peered through their scratched lenses. "Yeah, and I
see an entire brigade of Terran Guard parked right there on the
Highlands." He lowered the glasses and glared.

The pilot smiled and asked, "How
y'all know a battalion from a brigade anyhow?"

Hasam stepped closer to the pilot and
said, "You don't farm Dirt Hill and not learn a thing or two about how
things work." He jabbed his finger in the pilot's chest. "Now look,
we need to know, when is he coming back?"

The pilot's smile vanished. "I
honestly don't know sir. Like I said, everything's a mess. All I can tell you
is the MEF ain't givin' him supplies right now." He kicked the bolt
holding the freighter's hatch closed. "You're all he's got."

Pyramid

The twelve Cataphracts of Major Walker's
Combat Armor Team were crouched in three box formations stretched across the
base of the Pyramid. Four large tents made from thin sheets of green resin
formed the command post. Smaller tents, serving as a field barracks, flanked
the command post on either side. Lights mounted on thin poles next to the
command post illuminated the camp as the sun fell behind the horizon. The
Company First Sergeant and a detail of Marines stood in front of the command
post, watching the freighter as it approached the camp. 

The First Sergeant turned his head and
held on to his cover as dirt swirled around the freighter from its turbines
straining to lower it to the ground. As soon as the freighter touched the
ground and the turbines started to spool down, he unbolted the doors, swung
them up and latched them. Before the pilot had even dismounted, the Paladin's
men were hauling crates and bundles from the freighter and depositing them in
one the command post tents where the headquarters staff would sort, catalog and
distribute them.

When Major Walker limped to the
freighter to pick up one of the packages, Petty Officer Graham set down his own
bundle and clapped a hand on Walker's shoulder. "As you were sir."

"Dammit, Doc, I can haul twenty
pounds a few feet."

"Give it another day or two,
sir," Graham said. "The heal pack is working well and you'll be
tip-top by then." Walker pulled his shoulder away and tried to lift his
leg when Graham gently pressed a boot on top of his foot. Walker strained to
lift the injured leg, but he couldn't overcome the weight of Graham's foot. He
glared at his corpsman. Graham just lifted his brow.

"Fine," Walker said, and
ducked into the supply tent. Looking over the growing pile brought from Dirt
Hill, he asked the First Sergeant, "How long will this carry?"

The sergeant tapped his tablet and
scrolled through a few pages. "About 30 days, sir."

"Close enough," the Paladin
said. "Make sure the men get fed first."

"Yes sir."

It was a ritual after every supply
delivery for the men who maintained the Cats, provided security, cooked and
performed all the mundane tasks that kept his company running to eat the first
meal from the new supplies. More than any unit in the MEF, the Cataphracts
required a substantial support infrastructure to keep them running and ready to
fight. Now that they were on their own, the men who took care of them were even
more important.

"And keep the numbers to
yourself," Walker added.

Captain Holt ducked in to join them.
"This is the last one," he said, dropping a small burlap sack of root
vegetables on top of the pile.

"How are the colonists holding
up?" Walker asked.

"Pilot says they're looking pretty
bad. I get the feeling they're giving us more than they can spare."

Walker rubbed his chin and let out a
short sigh. "What did you tell him?"

"I told him to leave half behind
next time."

"That's good, Captain. Work in a
supply run to MEF -" He stopped himself short. Both Captain Holt and the
Company Sergeant toed the dirt with their boots. "Yeah, right,"
Walker continued. His shoulders sagged as he studied the pile of sacks and
crates, remembering there would be no more supply runs from the MEF.
"Whatever happens needs to happen soon."

"Top, would you excuse us?"
Captain Holt asked. After the Company First Sergeant stepped out of the tent,
Holt turned to Walker and asked, "What do we do when this runs out?"

"I don't know." Walker bent
down with a grunt and pawed at the supplies.

"Are we sure we're doing the right
thing here?" Holt asked.

"We're not going anywhere,
Captain."

Captain Holt studied Walker for a moment
and said, "I wish you would reconsider."

"Are you kidding?'' Walker asked.
He winced as he tapped the wound on his leg. "There's nowhere to go."

"I'm just thinking of the men,
sir."

"So am I."

Walker stepped out of the tent and
turned to look at the Pyramid. Everything on Shoahn'Tu was unremarkable once
you got used to the idea that it was new. He imagined the original colonists
disembarking from the Exodus Fleet to find themselves in a new world, a place
full of promises and dreams - a future. How long had it taken them to grow
weary of the endless deserts, the stanchions of cord trees and a future that
brought nothing more than a daily struggle to just survive?  How did a man
carry on like that, knowing it wasn't going to get any better? 

But the Pyramid, that was different.
With its pulsating blue glow and its peak reaching to the heavens, it was the
one thing that said Shoahn'Tu was very much another world. And although it
hadn't provided the colony with anything useful, he couldn't help but hope that
somebody besides himself felt a sort of spiritual boost from its presence. If
the promise of tomorrow wasn't something he could believe in, there was at
least the promise of some day.

Except now he knew better. The Pyramid
was something that went back to a fundamental truth: they didn't belong here -
even if they had nowhere else to go. In its own way, it was a sentinel against
intruders. There was something more here - something that he knew had to remain
locked behind the slopes of the Pyramid. Whether or not the colonists decided
to survive was their choice. His mission was to ensure they had the option.
What, exactly, that mission was, he still didn't know.

Captain Holt stood next to the open flap
on the command tent, watching him. "Maybe this isn't our fight, sir,"
he said.

Walker lowered his gaze from the slopes
of the Pyramid and looked at his Executive Officer, a man he had trusted with
his life more times than he could count.

"Maybe so, Captain."

Something about him had changed, though.
Ever since their arrival at the Pyramid, Captain Holt had seemed reluctant to
be there, almost as if there was an option right in front of Walker's face that
nobody was willing to say out loud.

"Or," Walker said, "maybe
it's everybody's fight."

Puzzle

In a just universe, the honor of men
like the Paladin would prevail. But Captain Holt knew better. He did not live
in a just universe. As the rest of the camp slept, he walked towards one of the
pilots pulling sentry duty along the perimeter. With a rifle slung over
shoulder, the sentry snapped a hand salute as Holt got closer. Holt returned
the salute and said, "How does it feel to carry a rifle for a change,
Marine?"

"Every Marine a rifleman," the
pilot responded.

As he passed by, the sentry said, "You
have the password, sir?"

"You bet. You need it in case you
don't recognize me?"

"Well, now, I wouldn't be manning
my post properly if I let somebody through who looks like the XO but is
actually the enemy in disguise. That's what passwords are for."

Holt chuckled. "Good man. I'll be
back in a bit. Just want to take a look around."

"Be careful, sir."

The sentry's voice drifted off behind
him as Holt picked up his pace and walked away from the camp. When he got far
enough away that he couldn't be heard, he scurried into the dark expanse beyond
the perimeter until he was beyond the range of any radio equipment that might
pick up his signal. Even if they intercepted it, they wouldn't be able to
decipher its contents, but it would mean a lot of questions he wouldn't be able
to answer when they discovered the source of the signal was in the palm of his
hand.

He punched a small button on the
transmitter and held it in the air so it could take a random sample of the
minute fluctuations in air temperature. A green light flickered, confirming
that the device had enough samples to generate an encryption key he would use
to scramble the transmission and a corresponding key the recipients would use
to decipher it. He tapped the button again and it faded to a steady yellow
while his radio and the receiver at the other end exchanged a flurry of data
and instructions used to establish the encrypted link. The light switched back
to green and he keyed the small microphone.

"Tiger One Tiger Papa One. Message.
Do not answer. Immediate. Skyrider egress 12 hours Victor two three one Papa
Delta India offset three nautical miles. Further route unknown. Out." He
punched a button to transmit the message and waited for the green light to
flicker one more time and then go dark as the transmitter deleted the
encryption keys it had generated for the message. He closed his hand around the
device, looked up into the night sky and let out slow breath. He stuffed it
back in his pocket and walked quietly back to camp.

The Terran Guard operator at the other
end recorded the message, stripped the call signs and then forwarded it to the
S-2 listening post at MEF headquarters. Colonel Harris rubbed his chin as the
message scrolled across the monitor.

"Where did we get this?" he
asked the operator.

"Came directly from the Terran
Guard, sir."

Harris closed his eyes as his mind
struggled to untangle the logic of the meaning behind the message. That there
was a pilot heading for a navigation beacon that somebody thought they should
talk to was clear enough, but his business was about unraveling the meaning
behind
the meaning of things. He couldn't find any layers to strip away, only that the
Terran Guard was helping him with information about something that probably had
to do with the ceasefire and the ongoing hunt for the Paladin. None of it
settled into place where he could catalog it in his mind as one more piece to a
puzzle. The message itself was the puzzle. The only question he could think of
that was worth answering was, how did they know?  And why didn't he know it
before they did?  What bothered him most was that the message didn't come from
somebody he knew, and yet the Terran Guard wanted him to know about it. The
word crawled into his awareness and danced in his mind: setup.

"Forward it to Bravo One Nine and
have her meet whoever this freighter pilot is."

"Yes, sir."

"And keep a lid on it. I want to
see if anybody comes snooping around about this."

"Yes, sir."

Harris stretched his arms and yawned,
then stepped out of the listening post. He traipsed through the compound until
he reached the smear of blackened dirt where the Paladin had fired his plasma
round. Marines shooting Marines, Terran spies passing information back to the
MEF - it was all becoming a mess that somebody didn't want cleaned up. The
question was: who?

His immediate thought was General Lane,
but the man wasn't smart enough to make two trips around a tactical board
without getting lost. It was too bad the MEF had too many officers who were
well suited for analyzing logistics tables and not enough with the skills
needed to make good decisions. It occurred to him the General could have been
considered a traitor, but the man wasn't even smart enough for that.

The other side of that equation was, of
course, General Godfrey. Misguided but sincere, he understood that all she ever
wanted was control so she could run things the way they were supposed to be
run, if The Way was something they could all agree was the right way. Which
they did not. She didn't trust Lane as far as she could throw him, which proved
she was at least smarter than he was. But Harris wasn't about to believe that
she was ready to just give the Exodus Colony free reign of the Highlands and
put General Lane into a comfy political post. That was most definitely not in
accordance with The Way.

Harris scuffed the edge of the scorch
mark, scattering clean dust along its edges. The Paladin had been smart enough
to get clear of all this before it had even started. Well, most of the way. If
he hadn't been laid up with a wounded Cat, he would have made a clean break.

Harris stopped walking and rubbed his
chin when he realized it was Major Walker who had made the first real move in
this little dance. Which meant he knew something. Lt. Simmons already had
orders to report the moment she and Dekker found the Paladin. When they did, he
would have to pay the good Major a visit. Until then, he would have to do what
he hated most, but sometimes was the most important skill for a good S-2. He
would have to wait.