Indomitable (2 page)

“Private First Class Molly Starns, present,” came from Promise's opposite side. Starns started convulsing. She ripped her tongue from her throat and threw it at Promise. Starns's head rolled to the side and off of her shoulders. Bits of connective tissue refused to let go.

“Staff Sergeant Moya Hhatan, present.” Hhatan was floating dead ahead of Promise. “All boots present and damned for eternity.” Hhatan's lips curled upward, exposing shaved canines stained with blood.

No, this isn't possible,
Promise thought. Hhatan was trying to swim through the air toward her.
I watched you die. I tried to save you but your wounds … and the enemy was so close. You sacrificed yourself for me. Told me to go and then … I ran away.

“I'm so sorry, Staff Sergeant,” Promise said. Hhatan was nearly on her. “I tried, really. I did my best, I couldn't stop them all.” Promise raised her hands palms-up in front of her and kicked her legs to try to get away. “Please.
Please …
you have to believe me.”

Staff Sergeant Hhatan drew a Heavy Pistol from her holster and took aim. “You don't deserve to live, Lieutenant.” Then something peculiar happened. The staff sergeant's face grew young. Years of experience melted away, the eyes changed from blue to green. “You left me on Montana.” The voice morphed so quickly that Promise barely registered the change. Now complete, Hhatan's appearance was for Promise a looking-glass mirror. “Your time is up. Good-bye, Lieutenant.”

Promise heard her own voice say, “I'll see you in perdition.”

Hhatan's gloved finger tensed around the trigger of the Heavy Pistol, took up the slack. The air cracked in two. Muzzle fire blossomed. When Promise opened her eyes the bullet had traveled half the distance from Hhatan to her. A second later it was a meter away, and then half a meter off. Promise screamed as the bullet pierced her temple, drilled through the crown of her skull, and tore her mind apart.

 

Two

APRIL 14
TH
, 92 A.E., STANDARD CALENDAR, 0549 HOURS

REPUBLIC OF ALIGNED WORLDS PLANETARY CAPITAL—HOLD

MARINE CORPS CENTRAL MOBILIZATION COMMAND

The screams told her
to wake up.

First Lieutenant Promise Tabitha Paen bolted upright, fully alert, First Wave blaring in her mastoid implant. The band was surfing high across the nets with “Alternate You,” a throwback of classic metal and new-groove rage, set against a track of cosmic background noises. Week-one sales had topped all previous records. Promise dropped her feet over the side of her rack and hit the cold polished deck of her government-assigned quarters. Back straight, shoulders squared, and eyes focused dead ahead. She started counting “One, two, three…” as First Wave's lead singer screamed in perfect pitch. “There's another you who's stalking true, better run the 'verse, better strike-back-first!” At forty-nine, Promise fell over, laced her hands behind her head, and stopped when her abs gassed out and her “alternate you” found her “jumping dreams” while her “real self screams.”

“Enough.” Promise shook her head to clear out the dissonance and pursed her lips. “Um … play Chiam's Sonata in G Minor.” Melody flooded her ears as her pulse settled down to normal.

The nightmares are getting worse,
she thought as she rolled again onto her arms, pushed up, and started counting down from fifty.
Forty-nine, forty-eight, forty-seven …
To this point, the nightmares had been a rehash of her battles on Montana. She'd watched her Marines die again and again and again, each death more gruesome than the last.
Forty-three, forty-two, forty-one …
Perhaps it was her penance for failing them, for leaving so many dead on her birth world, or so she thought.
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?
At best that was a hollowed-out truth. What failed to kill you still exacted its own pound of flesh, and not even sleep offered an escape. The nightmares were definitely getting worse.

A jolt of pain caused Promise to cry out at
twenty-nine.
She collapsed onto her side, clutching her hands over her pounding chest. Surely there was a gaping hole in her heart that must have turned black by now. Perhaps all that remained of it was a deathly hollow, carved out by the worst kind of flesh eater. Survivor's guilt.

I know because most of my first command is dead,
she thought.

Her dead wouldn't stop coming to her mind.
The Skipper is dead, Lance Corporal Tal Covington shielded me from that blast and got hero-dead, Staff Sergeant Hhatan is dead because I left her behind, my mother—dead, father—dead, all turned to dust except for me.

Tears pooled in her eyes. “Sir, if you're so good, how could you have let this happen?”

Promise willed herself up off the floor and on with her morning. She had a busy day ahead of her. The gunny was expecting her in less than an hour. She didn't bother drying her eyes as she force-marched herself to the head, shedding clothes as she went. “On.” A bad memory flashed across her mind. Promise drowned it out by turning on the water as hot as she could stand it. A quick dunk under the faucet rinsed most of the night terrors away. She blindly felt for her towel on the wall. Dried. Stood up straight and punched her reflection in the face. Crack. The woman in the mirror was familiar except for the glass fractures—same eyes colored like sparkling ocean, same pale skin—but where Promise's hair was short, the reflection's was long. Where Promise was angles the woman in the mirror had curves. She was old enough to be Promise's mother.

“Warn me next time.” Promise forced herself to breathe.

“Sorry, munchkin. I came as fast as I could.” Sandra Paen was dressed in a silk robe with a low neckline. An ornate tail curled over her shoulders, and coiled around her heart. Promise drew a circle around her breast, mimicking the coil of the dragon's tail in the mirror.

“You remember.” Sandra's hand was over her heart.

“How could I forget?” Of course Promise remembered the robe. It was the same one her mother had worn shortly before her death.

The gold band on Sandra's hand caught the overhead light. The band symbolized a bond that was supposedly unbreakable. Life had proven otherwise.

“Look, Mom. Now is not the time. My unit has morning PT. I'm needed out there. I have to go.”

“The gunny can handle it.” Sandra dared Promise to deny it. Sandra reached out of view and came up with a towel. “You need to talk about the dreams,” she said as she dried her hair.

I already have. BUMED cleared me for duty,
Promise thought. She didn't feel like discussing this particular matter. Besides, her mother was adept at reading minds. Well, hers anyway.

“That's not what I meant and you know it. You told the psychobabbler what he wanted to hear, not what's really going on inside of you.” Sandra hung her towel on her side of the mirror and folded her arms.

Promise glanced at the empty hook on the wall and knew she was going mad.

Sandra cleared her throat. “Correct me if I'm wrong.”

I told them enough … and I didn't lie. A Marine never lies, but that doesn't mean I have to tell the whole truth either. I've got this.

“For how long?” Sandra asked. “We both know you're running on damaged cells. What happens when they fail?”

I'll survive.
Promise knew it was a lie. She was as close to lying as she had ever been comfortable with.
It's just a thought.
I'm not responsible for every thought that crosses my mind.

How long could she hold it together? The question was unanswerable. Promise had started seeing visions of her deceased mother shortly after her father's murder, just before she'd enlisted in the Republic of Aligned Worlds Marine Corps. Raiders had hit her birth world, Montana. Her father's pacifism had gotten him killed. She'd been too young, too inexperienced, too far away, and too frightened to help him. She'd tried to outrun the pain ever since.
How's that working out for you, P?
She never knew when her dearly departed mother would appear and read her like a well-worn book, but it was always at the most inconvenient of times.

Look, I need to get in my morning run. If I swear I'll talk with someone will you let it go?

“Yes.”

Good. Talk later.

Promise turned away from the mirror and opened a drawer on the opposite wall. She selected a fresh pair of skivvies, and her PT uniform. After dressing, she removed the two polished onyx bars of a first lieutenant from the small box in the corner of the drawer, and pinned one to each side of her collar. When she turned back around she nearly jumped out of her skin.

“I love you, munchkin, you know that, right?”

“Yeah, I know,” Promise said aloud.
And you know I hate being called that. I'm tired of telling you because it never makes any difference.
She heard her mother's laughter echoing in her mind, and then Sandra was gone. Promise couldn't help smiling, and she shook her head. “Don't stop laughing” was one of her mother's mantras.

Promise took a deep breath and told herself that the morning could only get better.
I'm sure some of my Marines talk to their ancestors too. I know some of my boots pray to them. This isn't as weird as it seems. I'm doing fine. Right.
Promise raked her short-cropped hair. A swipe of gloss completed the battlefield makeover. She grabbed a pair of socks and her boots and headed for the door.

Hold's rising sun peeked over the horizon as she stepped outside, inhaled the cool morning air kissed with a hint of rain. She reached over and activated her minicomp, which was strapped to her arm above the biceps, flicked to the next screen, and selected a preprogrammed sequence called “Dawn Up”:

One—molded soles for running uneven terrain.

Two—activate Stevie.

Three—send Stevie for the usual: extra-hot caf with cream and sugar, and egg and chorizo roll.

“And turn the music off. I want to hear what I'm running through.”

The soles of her boots morphed for light trail running, the sides with extra support for her ankles. Promise set off at a modest pace and looked left, nodding over her shoulder. “Right on time, Stevie. Stay on me.” Stevie's humanoid metal carcass dropped back on her six, and settled into a slow hover on a plane of countergrav. It cradled a thermos of extra-hot caf in one hand and a breakfast roll in the other, fresh from the chow hall. Promise's pulse rifle was slung over its back, the muzzle pointed skyward.

In the next seven and a half minutes, Promise covered two klicks to the Saint Sykes training field, over hills, through a light patch of woods, and past Great-Grans's house. The RAW-MC's old lady was actually Lieutenant General Felicia Granby and her house was the RAW's Central Mobilization Command. CENT-MOBCOM wasn't much of a house either, just an unpretentious four-story seated on a foundation of one hundred underground levels. Grans was something of a legend in the Corps. She was pushing eighty and hadn't deployed in over a decade but still rated expert with heavy weps, and she held the record for most orbital insertions by a RAW-MC officer. Two hundred sixty-eight … and counting. Grans was lethal in a mechsuit. Out of mech she owned a near-vertical side kick and twelve grandchildren who didn't mess around. Eleven were Fleet Forces: eight Marines and three Sailors. The twelfth was the black sheep in the family. Johnny. He'd become a man of the cloth and was now a bishop in the Episcopal Church. The general's scarred hands had molded the RAW-MC over the last two decades, and more than one boot had assumed the position and taken a wallop in the ass from Lieutenant General Felicia Granby.

Promise sighted the open window in the upper story's northwest corner—Great-Grans's office—and Grans's personal ANDES standing watch below it. Only the truly brave approached the stoic sentinel and made a bet with Great-Grans. Promise slowed to a jog and fast-walked to the ANDES. She raised her sunglasses so the mech could scan her eyes. “Morning, Lieutenant Paen,” said the ANDES in a perfect imitation of Great-Grans, grizzled voice and all. “Want to play Great-Grans says?”

“I'm game,” replied Promise. Grans liked challenges and she liked to hand them out too. If you volunteered to play, Grans came to you on her terms, and it might be tomorrow and it might be a month from now. The record was five years.

“Grans will comm you at her convenience,” the ANDES said.

Right.
“Thank you, ma'am,” Promise said, and pulled down her shades. “I'm off to the range.”

As Promise took off, a gravelly voice boomed from the heavens. “Ooh-rah, girly—send one downrange for me.” Promise almost ran off the path and into a patch of basil thornwood. Grans herself had been listening.

Promise arrived at the earthen track feeling at ease, limber, ready to face her Marines. The hulking girth of Gunnery Sergeant Tomas Ramuel crested the hill a moment later. Victor Company was struggling to keep up with the veteran senior noncommissioned officer. And, Promise noticed at once, the gunny looked pissed.
Uh-oh.

Ramuel and Victor Company jogged past Promise and circled the field. Her Marines were dressed in PT uniforms with pulse rifles cradled in their arms. All except one. Private Atumbi had forgotten his, again.

Promise's eyes narrowed and zoomed on the Marine's face. “Figures.”
Why can't he remember his wep?

*   *   *

As Victor Company circled
back to Promise's position, the gunny called out his first preparatory command. “Company, double time, march!” The company dropped out of a steady run and into step with the gunny, at a slight jog. A squat Marine fell out of formation and promptly threw up.