Portal Wars 1: Gehenna Dawn (5 page)

“Tell them to suck my dick.” Blackie didn’t
pull verbal punches, especially not when sitting in base shooting
the shit with Taylor. “How the fuck do they expect us to keep these
little baby cherries alive? Half of ‘em don’t have hair one on
their balls.” Black had less respect for rules than anyone Jake had
ever met, a vestige of the Philly freezone streets, he supposed.
Still, he couldn’t understand how someone with no respect for
authority could make such a good soldier. And Black was one of the
best.

Taylor’s background couldn’t have been more
different than Blackie’s. He was from New Hampshire, a small
farming town no one had ever heard of. Compared to most of the
guys, he’d had it good. Better, certainly than the city rats from
the squalid urban freezones...guys like Blackie. The suburbs were
pretty bad too, except for the gated sanctuaries…and you had to
know somebody to get into one of those. And none of the grunts on
Erastus had ever “known” anyone.

The farms, on the other hand, were pretty
much left alone. They were just too important, especially to the
Admins and other privileged classes. The Blight had taken out at
least half the arable land in the world. The masses might subsist
on the marginally edible output of the huge sea-based algae fields,
but those with some level of wealth or influence wanted real food.
And the small farms were the only source of those once common but
now precious foodstuffs.

The farmers were an odd breed, and they were
held on a looser leash than those in the more populated areas.
There were monitors, of course, but only one or two per family. It
was rumored – quietly - that a different speech code applied to the
Growers, that they could get away with saying things that would get
anyone else sent to a reeducation camp. Whether or not there were
actually any such formal directives, there was some truth to the
innuendo. You could occasionally get something like a little
privacy on a farm.

The tradeoff was hard work. Goddamned hard.
Not many small farms could afford much automation, not with the
heavy taxation and the need to bribe at least a dozen government
officials to avoid crippling harassment. UN Central wanted the
Growers producing the fresh food the privileged classes demanded…it
just didn’t want them getting rich doing it. Crop prices were set
by the government, and they were usually too low to allow much
beyond basic sustenance for the farmers, especially with operating
costs so high. It wasn’t just the equipment; it was the fuel to run
it that was really expensive.

Taylor had never particularly liked farming,
though he hadn’t realized before how much he enjoyed the perk of
eating real food rather than the artificially-engineered products
that fed most of the population. It had been hard for him to adapt
to army rations. He’d grown up on apples from the orchard, fresh
bread baked from newly-milled grains, and the other bounty from the
farm. Now he subsisted on things like chemically-enhanced algae
protein bars. It was months before he could choke one down without
retching.

He’d been born on the farm, and he’d expected
to spend the rest of his life working it. But what Jake Taylor had
really wanted to do was write. He knew that opportunities to earn a
living that way were scarce, but even if he had to work in the
fields all day, he still felt the urge to sit at his keyboard
nights and create something. Even though he knew he’d probably
never earn anything from it.

Writing was dangerous too. It was just about
the most regulated trade, and it was easy to run afoul of the
myriad rules and guidelines. There were more writers in the
reeducation facilities than just about any other profession.

After he got to Erastus, Jake realized how
fortunate he’d been to be born on the farm…and how little he’d
appreciated it at the time. Soldiers in UNFE tended to come from
the lower classes, and the stories of the violent freezones and
decaying suburbs made him reconsider his memories of childhood in
what he now considered the idyllic countryside.

Tony Black wasn’t the first city rat Jake had
met and befriended, but he was the one who came from the worst
shithole. The Central Philly Core was a decent urban sanctuary, but
everything outside its guarded gates was a nightmare. The place was
notorious as one of the worst freezones, a vast slum where violence
and lawlessness were rampant and social services in short supply.
People died every day in Philly. It was considered a good night
when only a dozen or so bodies were in the streets come
morning.

Black had gotten into some kind of trouble
back home, which is why he was on Erastus. He never told anybody
what it was, except for once when he got really drunk. Taylor had
gotten half the story that night, but he’d never shared a word of
it with anybody. Black and Taylor were best friends and, despite
the difference in their ranks and backgrounds, they had come to
trust each other completely.

Black…and Bear Samuels, Karl Young,
Longbow…they had become a very tight group, even more than usual
among the fighting men on Erastus. Taylor had been onplanet for
five years, and he’d had friends before, but these guys were
something different…something special. Denny Parker had been part
of that group too, and they were all still mourning him. Taylor
wasn’t sure it was smart to get so close to guys who were only
going to die anyway. And they were going to die; he was sure of
that. Everyone died on Gehenna.

From the Journal of Jake Taylor:

My father was a vet. It was
something I never knew, a part of him he never shared with any of
us…not until I was getting ready to leave for my deployment. He
just sprung it on me the day before I shipped out. I was stunned at
first. I almost got mad that he’d hidden it for so long, but I
caught my anger. I didn’t want to spend the last few hours I’d ever
see my father arguing over nonsense that didn’t matter.

He said it was something he hated to
talk about, didn’t even like to remember. There wasn’t time to get
into a lot of detail, but it was obvious he still had some open
wounds from his experiences. He’d served in the old U.S. Navy,
before the Consolidation. He fought in the Mideast War and the
Taiwan Intervention, he told me. I’d heard of both conflicts, but
only vaguely. They were both quarantined topics. Talking about them
wasn’t safe, and there was nowhere to get any information anyway.
Nothing beyond vague rumors. Certainly nothing worth risking a trip
to a reeducation facility.

Never trust the government, he told
me…the bureaucrats who moved the pieces around the board. Keep my
eyes open. All the time. Think for myself, and don’t believe
anything I’m told. “Medals, causes, speeches,” he said, “They are
all worthless. They are as corrupt as the puppet masters who use
them to control men.” Finally, he looked at me with sad watery eyes
and said, “Jake…don’t you ever depend on anyone except those guys
standing next to you when the shooting starts. They are your
brothers…and they are the only ones you can trust.”

I understood. Everyone chafed under
the regulations, the constant monitoring. We were all a little
afraid. Most people knew someone who’d been sent for reeducation.
Or knew someone who knew someone. But it was normal to fear the
government, just as a child fears upsetting a parent. The average
person didn’t comprehend, couldn’t see the whole picture the way
the Admins did. I understood better than my father. My education
had been more modern than his…I’d had the chance to study how
difficult it was for the common citizen to grasp the complexities
of governing a chaotic world. The importance of controlling
damaging speech and limiting freedoms that would only be abused to
the detriment of all. My father didn’t understand any of that…he
just lashed out at UN Central, blaming the government for all the
world’s problems.

UN Central was far from perfect, but
they’d absorbed the failing nation-states and defended us against
the Tegeri and the Machines for 30 years. In all that time there’d
been no war on Earth, no nations left to wage it. All mankind’s
potential, for so long squandered in internecine strife, was
focused to one purpose. To my father’s thinking, we’d lost our way,
our freedom. No one could convince him otherwise, and I’d long
since tired of trying.

He was emotional, struggling to get
out the words he wanted to say. That was a hard day for both of us,
for obvious reasons. I knew my father. I’d heard his rants before.
He hated UN Central, despised what government had become. But that
day was different. There was a rawness to what he said, a
passionate urgency I didn’t pick up on back then. There was too
much else on my mind…and so many of the things I would see and
learn were still ahead of me. I listened to all he said, feeling
strangely that there had been so much about my own father I’d never
known. But I discounted most of his advice, wrote it off to an old
man’s political rants.

That was a mistake.

“I’m afraid Sergeant Lin has been killed in
action on Asgard.” Gregor Kazan sat, looking uncomfortable despite
the considerable plushness of the leather chair. Kazan had an odd
demeanor to him, both physically and in the way he spoke. When he
was younger, it had been called many things, variations on “creepy”
being the most common. As he rose through the UN bureaucracy and
his power grew, those types of comments became less and less
frequent. Now that he was Assistant Undersecretary for Military
Affairs, all he got from most people was obsequious pandering. He
enjoyed that.

“That is unfortunate. He was our top
prospect.” Undersecretary Keita leaned back, taking a long puff on
the cigar he held gingerly in his massive hand. Unlike Kazan, Anan
Keita looked entirely at ease, with the serene confidence of a man
totally assured of his own power. “I presume you have reviewed the
remaining candidates and brought me a recommendation.” It wasn’t a
question. People didn’t waste Anan Keita’s time.

The view behind Keita was extraordinary. The
Undersecretary’s conference room, and the large adjoining office,
had floor to ceiling windows offering a kilometer high panorama
across the Arve River to the snow-covered peak of Mont Blanc in the
distance. The UN headquarters in Geneva was the largest building
ever built, an architectural triumph. No expense had been spared in
its design or construction. It was a monument to the government of
a united Earth, and it rose almost two kilometers above the mostly
low-rise structures surrounding it.

“Yes, Mr. Secretary.” The form of address
wasn’t technically correct. Normally only the Secretary himself
would be referred to by title, not an Undersecretary like Keita.
But Secretary Patel was old and sick, and his hold on the office
was largely ceremonial. Keita was effectively acting-Secretary, and
he was almost certain to take over the office when Patel died or
formally retired. Besides, Anan Keita was a vain man. Kazan was
aware he’d see through the blatant pandering…but he knew he’d like
it anyway. Any favor he could cultivate with Keita could only help
his position. “I have selected the top six.” He slid a small tablet
across the table. “Though I feel the first two are substantially
better choices than the others.”

Keita put the cigar in a large ashtray on the
table, knocking off a clump of ash as he did. He scooped up the
tablet, scanning the two names at the top. “Sergeant Jake Taylor
and Sergeant Pedro Sanchez.” He was focusing on the glowing pad,
reading the summaries Kazan had written about each man. He stopped
after the first two. He didn’t have any interest in the secondary
candidates. Filtering through the backup choices was Kazan’s job.
“Do you have a preference?” His eyes were still on the tablet as he
spoke. It was hard to tell from his tone if he was really
interested in his subordinate’s opinion.

“Well…” Kazan paused. He hated being put on
the spot. A successful career in government usually meant avoiding
as many decisions as possible, at least at his level. He didn’t yet
have enough patronage or support to withstand a major mistake, but
Keita certainly did. Still, he knew he’d get scapegoated for any
errors, whether they were his or Keita’s. “…Sanchez has a longer
service record than Taylor. He’s been on Argos for almost seven
years.” There was a hesitancy in his tone.

“I can sense a ‘but’ in this.” Keita’s
impatience was clear, his tone annoyed. “Don’t waste my time,
Kazan. Just make your point.”

“I do not believe this direct comparison
tells the whole story.” Argos was an ocean world dotted with small
islands. It was a difficult planet on which to wage war and manage
logistics, but it was nowhere near the hell that Erastus was.
“Sergeant Taylor has been on Erastus for five years, which I
believe indicates a higher relative degree of resiliency and
toughness. The five year survival rate on Erastus is 1.2%.” That
was the lowest of any world where UN forces were deployed.
Casualties were high on all the Portal planet battlefields, but a
posting to Erastus was generally considered a death sentence.
“Additionally, Taylor came from a farm, while Sanchez grew up in
the violent slums of the Mexico City Freezone.” Kazan’s point was a
tricky one, but Keita understood immediately. Taylor had been
almost comically ill-prepared for the violence and deprivation he
faced on Erastus, yet he had adapted magnificently and survived
against the odds.

Keita leaned back in his chair, reaching out
and moving the cigar back to his lips. “Yes, I tend to agree with
your logic.” He glanced down at the tablet again. “Personal
toughness and adaptability are primary considerations for the
program.” He looked up at Kazan. “Have you reviewed the records of
the troops under each man’s command? That is a perspective we
should examine as well, particularly since we are looking for an
entire strike force, not just one man.”