Stars & Empire: 10 Galactic Tales Read online

  Third Battalion was destroyed as a fighting force; its survivors would be dispersed to other formations and the unit’s colors cased, retired. Some of us who survived would go on to new battles … the God of War was not done with us yet. But most of the men and women who’d fought at my side and bled with me through those fateful days had seen enough of war. Peace had come, however foully achieved, and with it, most of the surviving Marines of the Third Battalion mustered out to seek another kind of life, one where they could share the opportunities their sacrifices had for so long defended.

  News from the Caliphate came quickly. The lords and generals who’d been so afraid to present the Caliph with the treaty terms now had to explain how they’d been unable to wipe out a small contingent of Marines, despite suffering over 2,000 casualties in the effort. They chose an alternate route, one less likely to end badly for all of them. Caliph Mehmet was strangled in his bath and succeeded by his six-year old son, a pudgy child who had shown no signs yet of the rabid insanity that had so ravaged his father’s judgment. The nobility and military quickly forgot about the disaster on Persis and took solace that they now had a leader who promised to be far easier to control.

  The peace held, despite the fact that the Alliance had reneged on the terms Dutton promised. The truth was a stark one. Neither the Caliphate nor the CAC had the capacity to continue the war. The failure of the Janissaries to crush an outnumbered and beleaguered force of Marines sapped the already shaky morale of the Caliphate military. The elite soldiers themselves were unbowed, aching for a rematch, but the colonial nobility and the line troops were demanding peace.

  The Alliance was in rough shape too, but not as bad as its enemies. The war would have ended on Persis anyway, even without the twisted bargain that sold my Marines’ lives to the enemy. Dutton’s devilish deal had done nothing to change the outcome … except to sacrifice 500 veteran Marines … and to fracture the bond between the Corps and the government back home. That suspicion and distrust would grow over the years, and the Marines would slowly shift their loyalty to the colonies they defended closely and not the Earth government they would come to distrust more and more. That process culminated in the colonial rebellions, when the Corps would side with the insurrectionists, but that was more than 30 years after Persis, and another story entirely.

  The joy of peace was bittersweet. We had paid heavily, both in the war itself, and in emotional impact of the disgraceful affair on Persis. We had all lost so many friends and comrades, it was difficult to focus on the benefits of the war’s end, at least initially when empty chairs and absent voices were so noticeable. The treachery of it all was profoundly disillusioning. To me, it was Persis we lost our innocence. Until then, the Corps considered itself the space-based ground force of the Alliance. But afterward, the colonies began to think of themselves differently, and so did the men and women of the Marines. We had crossed a Rubicon, one that would be decades in realizing its full effect, but a profound change nonetheless.

  General Worthington’s death had been a shock. He’d sacrificed himself to save what was left of the battalion. On a spreadsheet of military effectiveness, his life was a bad trade for the tattered remnants of one shattered unit. But as tragic as his loss was, I can’t imagine a better way for a Marine to die … saving the lives of hundreds of his men and women. He’d only have faced court martial and disgrace if he’d returned, and I can’t imagine a more tragic injustice. Dying a hero was a better end, at least for his legacy … and I think for the man too. Being stripped of his rank and ejected from the Corps—that would have hurt him far more deeply than those hyper-velocity rounds that ended his life. They killed his body on Persis, but the horror of being paraded around as a traitor would have killed his soul.

  I have only come to respect Charles Worthington more over the years. We’d all looked to him for strength for so long, we never considered the toll it took on him. I would come to know that strain myself, the constant pressure of command that hollows you out day by day, year by year, until there is nothing left. But that was still years ahead of me, and it would take another war, larger and more terrible even than the one just concluded, before I truly understood. I’ll always be grateful to General Worthington and will revere his memory for the rest of my life … as a true hero of the Corps and one of the best men I ever knew.

  Colonel Thomas survived his wounds, and he retired to a new colony world settled primarily by Marines mustering out of the service. They’d named the place Tranquility, and I’ve never been sure if that was supposed to be a hopeful prediction or just an inside joke in the Corps. I never knew exactly what transpired with Thomas after the battle and, even years later, I never asked him. I know the Commandant had intervened with Alliance Intelligence and the government on his behalf. In the end, his part in Worthington’s actions cost him his career. But he was discharged honorably and avoided prosecution. And the general’s reputation was intact, his insubordination—treason to some—washed away in the sanitized records. Alliance Gov had more to gain from the worship of a dead hero than the memory of a disgraced traitor.

  Admiral Clement had rounded up a hundred Alliance Intelligence operatives and held them captive while he launched the rescue operation. I know there was talk of prosecuting him, but nothing ever came from those rumblings. I suspect Dutton would have like to see Clement punished, but it simply wasn’t worth the trouble. The admiral was old, and as disillusioned as we were by what had happened. He served another year, mostly overseeing the mothballing of part of the fleet and the return to a peacetime footing. Then, sure his retiring naval personnel had received the benefits they’d been promised, he also mustered out, immigrating to a beautiful new colony called Atlantia. It was peaceful world that resembled his original home along the Maine coastline … or at least what that had been like centuries ago, before mankind had ravaged her natural beauty. Near the end of the Third Frontier War, I got word that he had died, at home and of natural causes. He’d spent the nearly thirty years of his retirement walking the rocky coastlines and exploring the peaceful blue oceans of his adopted homeworld. Clement had been a sailor his whole life, whether he navigated the salty ocean spray of Atlantia’s seas or the frozen blackness of space.

  But my clearest memory of Persis … the face I will see for the rest of my life, the true image of the brutality and disillusionment of those days in hell, is that of Danny Burke, crying in agony, calling to me in bewildered fear as his lifeblood poured out through the breeches in his suit and into the yellow sands of an enemy world.

  He died young, far from home, terrified and in pain. I remember the feeling of futility, the miserable lack of comfort I had to offer that boy. I will have those memories until the day I die. For me, that lost private will be an eternal reminder of the darkest side of what we do … of the horrendous cost of holding the line, so our people back home can live their lives and watch their children grow on a hundred different worlds. If mankind is to have a new beginning among the stars, it will not come cheaply, for we are our own enemy and bring our demons with us as we have done throughout history. The forces of conquest and oppression will always be there, wearing down the resolve of men, creatures so easily led and manipulated. When that line is held; when civilians sit in their homes and enjoy the freedom so dearly bought, I hope they think of Danny Burke and the thousands like him, at least occasionally while they build their lives and families … that they appreciate the sacrifices that other men and women make every day to preserve all they value.

  But whether they do or not, we will guard that line, my brothers and sisters and I, and all those who come after us; it is not for gratitude that we do what we do. I came close to retiring myself in those terrible days after Persis. I was disillusioned and angry, despairing of truly making a difference. It was Sam Thomas who convinced me to stay. My work wasn’t done, he said simply. I had more to give, and it was my obligation to those Marines who had come before me, who had given their all on Persis and a hundred world
s before that, to stay the course, to follow my destiny.

  The Corps Forever.

  ----o0o----

  PENNSYLVANIA:

  PART 1

  MICHAEL BUNKER

  -o0o-

  BONUS!

  “BECOMING EAGLES”

  (A Short Story)

  PENNSYLVANIA:

  PART 1

  MICHAEL BUNKER

  © Copyright 2014 by Michael Bunker

  All rights reserved.

  o0o

  CHAPTER 1: Old Pennsylvania

  “Explain it to me again, brother. How do you get from here to there?”

  Jed pushed his forehead into Zoe’s flank to make certain that she didn’t kick. She didn’t do it often, but she’d nailed him before and he wasn’t anxious for a repeat of that performance. He exhaled in mock annoyance at his little brother’s questions, but the truth was that he loved talking about the journey. He just pretended to hate it. Talking about it made it seem more real, but somehow less imminent in a way that he wasn’t sure he understood completely. He’d explained the whole pilgrimage and the colonization process to Amos a hundred times, at least, but Amos wasn’t going to stop talking about it until his older brother was gone.

  “An airbus picks me up there,” he pointed up the long, winding drive, “and we fly to the Columbia checkpoint. From there, I board an English airbus that takes me to the Speedwell Galactic Transport station out in the desert in far West Texas. From there, all the pilgrims will board a ship bound for New Pennsylvania.”

  “You’re really going, Jed?”

  “I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t. I’ve already paid for my ticket, all except the monitoring. Nothing has happened that would change my mind, so I’m going.”

  Jed finished stripping out the final teat, and the last squirts of milk buzzed into the bucket, which was now almost overflowing. “Our people have been pioneering for a thousand years or more. When our ancestors came here to Pennsylvania, they came on fearsome and incredible ships, traveling in ways that were strange to them at the time.”

  “I felt sure you’d change your mind; just sure of it,” Amos said.

  Amos was fourteen, fully four years younger, spry and witty, and he was not old enough yet to go through the initiation and orientation process that was administered to anyone interested in pioneering in New Pennsylvania.

  Jed finished wiping down Zoe’s udder with warm water mixed with a light and mild soap, and then he stood, hanging the milking stool on the post with practiced dexterity.

  “Once we get on our way…” He paused. This was the hard part to explain. “You see, Amos, New Pennsylvania is very, very far away—outside of our galaxy—in a place with another sun altogether. Anyway, once we board the ship, the passengers go to sleep in these things called ‘pods,’ and, according to the paperwork, we’ll sleep for nine full years. But—and this is the tricky thing—when we wake up, we won’t have aged any at all.”

  Amos had heard this explanation from his older brother many times before, but he still whistled at the thought.

  “And it will be that nine years will have passed according to the ship’s time. But all in all, to the passenger, it will feel like a journey of just a few hours!”

  “I don’t understand it, Jed,” Amos said, screwing up his mouth and shaking his head. “I don’t know why the elders have approved of it.”

  “What else can we do, little brother? Where can we go? We’re running out of land here, and no one can afford to buy any more. The government is pushing us out. It’s always been this way. The elders approved of this migration for the same reasons that many centuries ago they approved of our migration from Europe to here. Without it, we’ll be erased as a people. It’s already happening, Amos. Almost everyone we know works in town in the factories. Our population is exploding, and our way of life is dying out. But this isn’t the first time this has happened.”

  “No?”

  “No. It’s happened many times way far back in history, but it happened during Grandfather’s time too, when the wars came, and the population of the English dwindled, and after that, we had room to spread out more.”

  Amos shrugged and his shoulders dropped. “Right. And this time, there is nowhere to go. But why must you go all the way to another planet? And why must Mother and Father never hear from you ever again?”

  “When our people left Germany, Holland, and France to come to Pennsylvania, do you think they kept in touch with the old places after that? They didn’t rush home for weddings or funerals, Amos. It was too far away, and the travel was too expensive and too dangerous. There were no phones, and letters were expensive. Our people were never much for those forms of communication anyway.”

  Jed looked at his brother and slapped him on the back. “Once I leave for New Pennsylvania, I’ll be in a place where it’s impossible to communicate back to here. The ships that take us there, they never come back. It’s a one-way voyage because those machines travel millions and millions of miles while we just sleep away there in the pods.” Jed looked at his brother and smiled. “Don’t be sad, little brother. It will only be a few years before you can come too. In fact, if the Lord wills it, when you start on your own journey, you’ll already be on your way by rocket ship before I even get there! Hopefully I’ll have a place set up for us by the time you arrive, and we’ll work the farm together.”

  Amos shuffled his feet, his eyes down and his voice lowered, almost in a mumble. “Why can’t Mother and Father join us? Why don’t we all—everyone in the community—travel together at the same time?”

  While they talked, Jed poured the milk into a stainless-steel vat, closed the lid, then unhooked Zoe from the tether that kept her in the milking stall. He backed her out and then walked with her out of the barn and into the southwest paddock. Amos followed with his hands thrust deeply into the pockets of his black broadfall pants.

  “You know the answers to those questions, Amos. They want young people. Eighteen to twenty-five only. They need people to work the land, and the pioneers who go will need every advantage they can get. It’s going to be tough starting out. The new colony cannot yet afford to take care of the elderly and the infirm. Besides, Mother and Father don’t want to go. This has always been their home, and though they support us going when it’s our time, they agree with the elders: only those who are needed should go.”

  Jed unhooked the lead from Zoe’s halter and she walked only a few steps away before she started grazing on the lush grass. He folded up her lead and stuck it in his front pocket, and as he continued trying to soothe and placate his troubled brother, the two walked across the paddock.

  “Eighteen to twenty-five is the perfect age, anyway. The younger children can work the farms here, and those who emigrate are the ones who would be just starting to look for their own land and new farms. Well, there aren’t many farms to find any more, so pioneering is the new thing. But it’s not new. Like I said before, our people have been doing it since the beginning. There’s nothing really new in this at all.”

  Amos looked up as he followed his brother to the pump near the paddock fence. Jed pumped the handle, and when the cool, clear water came bursting forth, Amos scrubbed the milk pail under it until it was spotless. The grass grew thick and lush around their feet, and the water that splashed over it formed into glassy droplets on the blades and made the grass glisten.

  “What if something bad happens to the ship along the way? What if it crashes or you die?”

  “What if we were both struck by lightning right here in this field? Everyone dies, Amos. Zoe might’ve kicked either one of us in the head just now, and it would be over—just like that.” He snapped his fingers.

  “Well, I think taking a spaceship to another galaxy is a little more dangerous than milking Zoe, brother.”

  “Maybe, but we wouldn’t be here milking Zoe if our ancestors hadn’t braved the voyage to a new world. They came to escape religious bigotry and persecution, and to find new
lands to farm. That’s the same reason I’m going to New Pennsylvania.”

  “Are you all ready to go?”

  “I am. They don’t let you take much, so I don’t have to pack. Basically you get there with what you’re wearing and not much more. They expect me to buy everything new when I arrive. That’s why I’ve been saving money.”

  “And you won’t change your mind?”

  “I will not.”

  “Okay, brother. Then I’ll come after you. Four more years and I’ll be old enough. Besides, I’d like to see Matthias again. It’s been a year since he emigrated. It’s funny to think that he’s been gone a year and he’s not even there yet. It’ll be nice to see him again.”

  Jed smiled and popped his brother’s hat up, then pushed it back down on his head. “Well, we’d better go eat. The airbus will be here in an hour.”

  -o0o-

  It was hard to say goodbye to his mother and father. They both masked their emotions as much as they could and smiled a lot, but he knew his mother wanted to cry because her eyes were damp and sparkled when the light hit them just right. Abraham Troyer, his father, shook his hand firmly, and then they all prayed together before Jed walked up the long drive to where the airbus would pick him up.

  As he walked up, he thought about the journey, and what might lie before him. Jed couldn’t help but think about the Plain People who had first come to America to farm and tame the wilds of this Pennsylvania. When he reached the last bend in the drive, he turned slowly to look back at the farm, and his boots crunched the gravel as he rotated. A soft spring gust blew up through the paddock and past the split-rail fence, and it jostled the felt brim of his hat. The breeze carried the fragrance of foxglove and touch-me-not growing wild just outside the fence of the paddock, and the mingled scents—of the wildflowers, of soil, of horse manure and moist grass—framed for his memory the smell of home.