MERCS: Crimson Worlds Successors Read online

  He looked up at the moonless vista above, hypnotized as he often was by the sheer beauty of the night sky. He’d made a hobby of identifying the stars visible from Atlantia’s northern hemisphere, but even that small joy had been marred when he realized half a dozen of them had planets on which he’d fought. He’d been surprised how many of his battlefields were visible with the naked eye.

  His lost comrades sometimes visited him on his walks, though tonight they had been silent. Cain had a few surviving brothers in arms too, James Teller and Augustus Garret among them, but he had buried most of his friends. Darius Jax, Elias Holm, Terrance Compton, William Thompson—the list was long. And he felt guilt about surviving too, always asking himself the question, “Why am I alive, when they all died?” Cain didn’t wish that a bullet had found him on one of his battlefields—it was a far more complex feeling than that. He was grateful he had survived, but there was a loneliness to it he sometimes found almost unbearable.

  He took a deep breath and listened to the sound of the waves crashing against the shore. It was one of the few things he found truly relaxing, and he often sat out on the rocky point and listened for hours. It didn’t put him to sleep, but it did quiet the inner turmoil, at least a bit. He sat for a few minutes, breathing deeply, savoring the cool ocean air. It was a couple hours before dawn, and generally, if he was going to get any sleep at all, that was when it came. Especially after a bracing walk in the cool night air. He was just about to head back when he heard soft footsteps on the gravel pathway.

  “Out here again?” Sarah walked up behind him, putting her hand gently on the back of his neck as she so often did. “I’m starting to think I’ve lost my appeal. It’s getting harder and harder to keep you in bed.” She smiled and sat down next to him on the low stone wall. “I understand,” she said teasingly. “I’m as big as a house.”

  He returned her smile. After all the years they’d been separated, thrust in different directions through decades of brutal warfare, she was the one thing in his life that had never changed. Both Marines, they had been compelled by duty to answer the bugle first and foremost. But even when they’d been apart for years, the instant they were reunited, it was as if no time at all had passed. She was the one good thing that had come from his life at war. She’d been his doctor, and she had somehow managed to put him back together after he’d strayed recklessly close to a nuclear explosion. He often wondered what his life would be like without her, how lost and alone he would feel.

  “I’m sorry if I woke you. You should be asleep.” He looked at her and smiled again. “Especially now.”

  Sarah leaned back, stretching uncomfortably. She was pregnant—very, very pregnant. Indeed, she was due any day. Erik had tried to take her to the hospital in Eastport for a scheduled delivery a few days before, but she’d nixed that idea and declared that she would have the babies—she was carrying twins—when they came naturally. It was hard to argue a medical matter with the best trauma surgeon in the history of the Corps, but that didn’t mean he didn’t try. But Sarah was one of the few people who had ever been able to get her way in a debate with Erik Cain. Over twenty-five years together, she hadn’t prevailed in every struggle, certainly—nothing close. But she’d won her share, including this one.

  Indeed, when they’d decided to have children, her medical colleagues had expected her to artificially inseminate and use an AI-controlled crèche to carry the child to term. As a Marine on reserve status, she had access to state of the art healthcare. But she’d shot that idea down immediately, declaring she was going to do this old style—every step of the way. She was fifty-eight years old, but the Corps’ program of rejuv treatments had slowed the aging process throughout her adult life, and she was the physical equivalent of a healthy, fit woman in her mid-thirties.

  After a quarter century of almost non-stop war, Sarah had declared her intent to slow down and experience a life that didn’t involve constant stress and bload-soaked rituals under the harsh lights of the operating room. She’d seen enough shattered men and women to last a lifetime, and then some. All she wanted now was to live like a normal Atlantian, a peaceful life by the sea, with a family she could hold onto. Erik knew her memories of childhood were as nightmarish as his own, and he was determined that she would finally have the peace she craved.

  “I’d never have married you if sleeping through the night was that important to me.” She laughed softly.

  Cain looked at her and smiled. They’d been together twenty-five years when they’d finally gotten married. Erik hadn’t cared one way or another. He intended to spend the rest of his life with her, and that was all that mattered. Most rituals and social customs meant very little to him. Cain judged people on their actions and behaviors, and he placed almost no value in society’s artificial constructs. But many of the colony worlds, newly freed from the yoke of their parent Superpowers, had begun to revive old social customs, and Sarah was determined to become a normal Atlantian any way she could.

  Their wedding had been a simple affair, with only a few friends. General Gilson had wanted to bring them to Armstrong so the Corps could host a massive celebration, but they had politely refused. Cain’s thoughts were already on empty chairs, places where old friends should have been, but weren’t. He had a way of seeking out the dark side of even the happiest occasions, and he didn’t want to feed that tendency. In the end, it had been a good day, and virtually everyone Erik and Sarah cared about had come.

  “Well, you certainly knew what you were getting by then.” He leaned back and closed his eyes. She had her hand on the side of his neck. Her touch still had the same effect on him, even after thirty years, driving away the demons, at least for a little while.

  “I certainly did.” She smiled for an instant, and then her eyes widened and she moaned softly. She put her hands on her belly and turned and looked over at Erik. “Ah, not to interrupt the conversation…but, in my expert medical opinion…it is time…”

  Cain leapt to his feet. “I knew we should have had you in the hospital,” he stammered, putting his hand on her arm and leading her up the path. He was nervous, tense. His combat reflexes were responding, and he could feel the adrenalin pumping through his blood. “Let’s go.”

  She laughed softy. “Relax, General Cain. This isn’t a Marine operation. People have been managing this for a long time.” She turned and walked slowly back toward the house.

  Erik followed closely behind. Through all the years at war, he had never imagined this day would come. In a few hours he would be the father of twin boys. He thought about what they would be like, who they would become. He imagined many men dreamed of their sons following in their footsteps, but that was Cain’s worst nightmare.

  Please, he thought. Let them be doctors or scientists or engineers…or let them drive a truck. But not a life of war, a life like mine. Anything else.

  * * * * *

  Augustus Garret stared out the viewscreen. Pershing was a mighty vessel, a testament to the herculean efforts men could put into war. And she had served well, in the struggle against the First Imperium, and later against Gavin Stark’s Shadow Legions. His eyes were fixed, his mind lost in old memories, as he bid a final farewell to the vessel that had been his last flagship.

  He knew three of her sister ships were out there too, but they were too far away for him to see with the naked eye. It was a fluke that Pershing was the closest to the station, but Garret was grateful for a last look at her.

  “Saying goodbye, Augustus?” The voice was familiar, and Garret turned abruptly.

  “Yes, I suppose. In my own way.” Garret nodded to Roderick Vance. “I want to thank you for your help with this, Roderick. “There’s nowhere else we could do this, at least no place secure enough.”

  Vance looked out the viewscreen toward the hulking battleship. “They were a great design. Even after we built Sword of Mars and John Carter, I always thought ton for ton the Yorktowns were the toughest warships ever built.”

 
Roderick Vance was the head of the Martian Confederation’s spy services, and a member of its ruling council. He’d been an ally to Garret and the rest of the Alliance military for some time, though less so with the Earth-based Superpower itself. In the years of warfare leading up to the final battle, the Alliance’s navy and Marine Corps had grown into quasi-independent organizations, as answerable to the colonies as to the Earth government.

  None of that mattered now. The Alliance was gone, along with all the other Earth-based Superpowers, consumed in the disastrous nuclear finale of their last war. Earth was a ruined planet, poisoned, radioactive, its cities utterly obliterated. Vance’s people had estimated that 90% of the population had died over a 36 hour period of intense atomic warfare, a figure that had left Garret speechless the first time he’d heard it.

  It was almost impossible to account for the further losses from sickness, starvation, and fighting that had occurred in the three years since, but the best estimate was one to two percent of the pre-war population was still alive—fifty to one hundred million people scattered around the globe, eeking out some type of marginal existence. But no one thought that would be the final figure. The population was almost certainly still declining, and only the wildest guesses could be made about the long term effects of radiation exposure on longevity and fertility. An entire population was difficult to eradicate, but Earth was still teetering on the edge.

  “I just wish we could keep more of your fleet in space. Everybody is fought out right now, but we both know there will be new disputes.” Vance’s voice was sincere. He’d been an unemotional man when Garret had first met him, almost robotic in his demeanor, but the sacrifices of the last few years had changed him, and the former Alliance admiral could feel the empathy—and the pain—in his friend.

  “Well, you can’t afford that now, any more than we can. Mankind took it to the edge, and now we need to scale back. I don’t think two-kilometer long battleships are necessary for prosperity and economic growth, and without any Superpowers to fight, they are an extravagance we simply can’t afford.” Garret felt torn. He was disgusted that humanity had fought one war after another, building ever greater engines of destruction to hurl at each other. That side of him welcomed the drastic reductions in armaments compelled by the destruction of Earth’s industry. The colonies couldn’t come close to supporting on their own the vast military organizations the terrestrial powers had built.

  But he himself was a creature of those wars. His career, his fame, even his own image of self-worth was tied up in the persona of the great Admiral Augustus Garret. He had sacrificed everything to his duty, and now he had nothing else. War had been his life. That didn’t make him proud, but he couldn’t deny it. He’d been busy seeing to the downsizing of the massive war machine he had led, but he wondered what would happen when he was done. Would there would be a place for him with no war to fight?

  Vance sighed. “That may be true, but we certainly can’t build anything like this anymore…and I suspect it will be a long time before we have that kind of capacity again.” His eyes narrowed, and his voice deepened, became more serious. “And we both know there are greater dangers out there than colonial disputes.”

  Garret nodded. He knew, perhaps better than any living being. Man’s first contact with another species had been disastrous. The war against the First Imperium had been a holocaust, and humanity had only escaped destruction by the barest margin. But the enemy was still out there, somewhere, and it was only a matter of time before they returned. And no one knew what other horrors existed in the depths of unexplored space. But, whatever was out there, men like Garret and Vance were determined to be ready.

  “It was hard to convince some of the other officers, but I finally managed it. The First Imperium put a hell of a scare into them, and it hasn’t worn off yet.” No surprise there…those robot legions were the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a nightmare from hell. “None of them could argue we didn’t need to be ready. Besides, they were all facing the same option—scrapping the ships instead of entrusting them to your care. Still, there is much suspicion, even between allies. Most former Alliance officers don’t like the idea of ‘giving away’ our most powerful ships.”

  Garret had led humanity’s united forces against the First Imperium, and in the aftermath of the final battle on Earth, he’d gathered the naval commanders of the former Superpowers to a summit meeting. Even after the horrendous losses of the final war, they had far more vessels than the economic output of the colonies could support. And the political bonds between those worlds were rapidly dissolving. Without the oppressive Earth governments, planets were declaring independence everywhere. The surviving military forces were quickly finding themselves without nations to serve.

  It had taken weeks of debate and negotiation, but Garret was still a larger than life figure, renowned by all as the man who had saved humanity from the First Imperium. He had always been uncomfortable with the share of credit he’d been given for a victory won by the sacrifice of thousands of men and women, but he was a master tactician, and he didn’t hesitate to use the adoration to gain acceptance for his plan. In the end, he’d won widespread approval, and it was agreed that hundreds of mothballed vessels—battleships, cruisers, destroyers—would be stored on the Martian moon of Phobos, a reserve against the day when all mankind would again face the prospect of doom at the hands of an alien enemy.

  It was an ideal location. The Sol system was deep in human-controlled space, insulated from any hostile future contact. Mars was the last Superpower, and though the destruction of her four largest cities late in the war made her power a shadow of what it once had been, she still wielded far greater strength than any of the colony worlds. The Martians could defend the stored vessels, ensure that no rogue parties took control of them. Though the Confederation had sided openly with Garret and the Alliance Marines in the last war, her history had been one of cautious neutrality. The Confederation was the natural choice to be custodian of mankind’s surplus weaponry.

  “I will do everything in my power to keep all of this safe, Augustus. And ready.” Vance sighed softly. “For the day we need it again.” There was sadness in his voice, but not a shred of doubt that day would come.

  * * * * *

  “Three days isn’t much of a honeymoon, is it?” Jarrod Tyler was sliding his neatly folded clothes into a small duffle bag. The room was pleasant, a small bungalow on one of the tropical islets that dotted Columbia’s equatorial zone. Tyler had known Lucia his entire life, but it had been much more recently he’d realized he loved her—and even less time since he’d discovered she reciprocated his feelings.

  “Indeed it is, my love, but duty calls. A soldier like you should know that. The election is less than three months from now, and I can’t spend my days basking in the sun while Walker and his people slander me mercilessly, now can I?” She lifted her head and gave him a warm smile. The sun had lightened her normally dark brown hair, and her nose and forehead were dotted with pink, peeling skin. Three days in Columbia’s searing equatorial sun had certainly been enough to give her a sunburn.

  “Like you can lose. I’m not even sure why that fool is running against you.” Lucia had been the president of Columbia before the final war against the Shadow Legions. She’d yielded her powers to Tyler, in accordance with the crisis provisions in the planetary constitution, and the erstwhile general—now her husband—in turn yielded his dictatorial mantle as soon as the enemy was defeated. Lucia had spent most of the past two years struggling to hasten the recovery of her battered world. Indeed, even her wedding had been delayed, continually postponed to make way for her herculean workload.

  “You can always lose, my love. Neither one of us should ever forget that.” Her voice was pleasant, teasing, but there was a nugget of seriousness there too.

  “What were you up in the last poll? Forty points?”

  “Forty-one,” she replied. “But people are fickle, Jarrod. A smart politician takes nothing for
granted.”

  Tyler made a face. He detested politicians with a roiling passion. He’d never thought of Lucia as one, but of course that was foolish. She’d been a politician for years, and an enormously successful one at that. And one of the very few he’d ever seen who always seemed to stay focused on the good of the people and not the accumulation of personal power. He couldn’t imagine the population turning on a leader like that, not when most of the others were corrupt and focused on their own political gain above all things.

  He glanced down at the chronometer on his wrist. “You don’t have anything scheduled until tomorrow, right?”

  “No,” she said, some confusion in her tone. “Why?”

  “Well…” He moved quickly across the room. “I thought maybe you could squeeze in a small—very small—political rally down here…”

  “On this island?” She stared at him questioningly.

  “In this room.” He slid up behind her and slipped his arms around waist. “After all, you will be wanting my vote, won’t you? How do you plan to earn it?”

  She turned her head and leaned back. “Oh, so is that how it is?” She leaned back into him, a wry smile on her face. “Well, I suppose I can spare twenty minutes for a loyal voter.”

  He pulled her closer and kissed the back of her neck softly.

  “Ok, ok,” she said softly. “An hour.”

  Chapter 3

  Outskirts of Petersburg

  Planet Karelia, Gamma Hyrdus II

  Earthdate: 2317 AD (32 Years After the Fall)

  “With all due respect, General Akeem, over fifty of my Eagles are missing, and contract or no contract, we are not leaving until I know what happened to them.” Cain stared at the Raschidan officer, not even trying to mask his contempt.