Warrior Chronicles 3: Warrior's Realm (24 page)

“Uh...uh…no, sir. I’m sorry sir. I just...I uh…” the young man stammered.

“I need someone to spar with, Private. Are you volunteering, or you going to stop staring at my wife’s chest?” Cort asked.  The boy turned and left as quickly as he could walk. Once he was out of earshot, Kim put her burger down and slapped Cort’s arm with her free hand.

“That was cruel,” she said. “Funny, but cruel.”

“It’s bad enough I have to share them with Dalek. I will
not
share them with my Marines.”

Kim’s voice softened. “You called me your wife.”

“You are my wife. We don’t have the paper, but you are my wife.” Cort watched her reaction. “Do you want the paper, Kimberly?”

Kim regarded Cort for several seconds, then looked down at Dalek. The contented child was swallowing peacefully. Coke’s head was on the edge of the blanket, and Zandra was laying at Kim’s feet. Kim looked past her to Bane, who was still watching in the direction the private had retreated, then her eyes went back to Cort. “Yes. Yes, I want the piece of paper. It’s the only thing missing, baby, and I want the whole package.”

“How do they do weddings these day?”

“What’s a wedding?” Kim asked.

“Seriously? They don’t have wedding ceremonies anymore?”

Kim laughed. “Gods, you are easy to mess with. Baby, as long as little girls dream of being princesses, there will be lavish weddings. It is how we are wired.”

Cort rolled his eyes and looked at their son as she broke Dalek’s seal with her index finger. “When is it my turn?”

“Want to go home, or back to my office?”

“We’d better go home. It’s been a while,” he said as he started refilling the backpack.

--

“It is good to have you back, General,” Lex said as he and Cort sat down in Cort’s office with fresh coffee a week later.

“It’s good to be back, Lex. What have I missed?”

“H’uum is consolidating the bugs well. He has ordered them all to stand down until he ‘assesses the state of the empire.’ There are still a few planets he hasn’t heard from yet. Mostly older colonies. I am of the opinion we have to assume those planets are still hostile. Admiral Jones agrees with me, and has a task force ready to go. We were waiting until we heard from you.”

“Never do that again, Lex. I wouldn’t have turned things over to the two of you unless I trusted your judgement.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you talked to H’uum about them yet?” Cort asked.

“Yes, sir. He is being very cooperative. He does not want to lose those people, but I think he also sees it as a bit of good luck.”

“How so?”

“He knows that he has to move everyone to one planet. So having a few billion that he doesn’t have to accommodate is almost a blessing to him,” Lex replied as he stood and walked to the coffee pot. “Want a refill, sir?”

“Yeah, thanks. We can’t force him to take them all on 641. I know that was our plan, but the structure of their society, and the cooperation we have gotten from H’uum and Heroc put me in a bind. I just can’t make them have a lottery. We need to find a different solution that will achieve the same effect.”

“To be honest, sir, we have been thinking the same thing. No solutions yet though. We cannot let them keep those planets, but we also cannot show weakness. Not on a stage this vast.”

“Agreed. Okay, when we are done here, I want you and JJ to follow through with your plans for the rogue planets.”

“Do you want to go over those plans, sir?”

“Do I need to, Lex?”

“The plans are straightforward sir. We are going to blow the planets one at a time until the others capitulate.”

“Sounds good to me, but that’s not what I asked.” Cort paused and sipped his coffee. “Lex, listen. You have two problems. Number one, you aren’t willing to go out on a limb. If you are going to command Marines, you have to be willing to do what you think is right. If men are willing to die for you, you have to be willing to accept the responsibility of ordering them to those deaths. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, sir,” Lex sighed. “But if I fuck up and people die, I have to carry that around forever. That is a heavy burden.”

Cort pulled a bottle of scotch from his desk and added a jigger’s worth to each of their cups. After taking a drink of his own, he said, “Lex, I am the sole survivor of the attack on 322. And I am the sole surviving ground defender from Atlantica’s attack on Mars. Three hundred years ago, I was the sole survivor of an attack that I led against a third world drug lord who thought he could stand against my country. There were others before that. So I understand what you are saying better than
you
understand it. But if you are more interested in covering your ass, than you are in doing what needs to be done, I don’t want you in my Marines.”

“Are you asking me to resign, sir?” Lex couldn’t look at Cort while he waited for an answer. Instead he took a drink of his coffee and stared at the cup as he put it down on the general’s desk.

“No. I am telling you to get over your fear of failure and do what it takes to protect our allies. Dar told me what you did to protect our pack on Earth. He has no doubt that you are solely responsible for how many of our people survived that day. And guess what? You condemned several of your team to death that day, too. What’s the difference?”

Lex remained silent for several moments before answering, “They were family. I did what it took to save our family.”

“Okay, I accept that. But Lex, things are different now. Every human alive is a member of our pack now, and every enemy of the Collaborative is an enemy of the Ares Federation. That means you have to go out on a limb to protect our allies. If your plan is good, don’t wait for someone else to okay it. Just execute it. And as long as you were acting in a way that you believed was necessary to protect the pack or our allies, I will back you up, even if it goes wrong.”

“And what about the men and women I get killed?”

“They signed up for it. Every single one of the people in your command understand that they may have to fulfill their oath by laying down their lives. Remember I said there were two things? The other is this; If I didn’t trust you, I wouldn’t have given you Cuplan Prime for the assassination ops. And I wouldn’t have put you in command while I was out.” Cort pointed out his window in the general direction of the Marine academy and said, “I could have put any one of those people in command, but I chose you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I assume your reluctance is why JJ didn’t blow the rogue planets on her own?”

“I asked her to wait. Yes, sir.”

“Don’t ever do that again.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What else do I need to know about my time off?”

Horticulture Dome Complex, Mars

“Thank you for coming, Speral," Jeff Pence met Speral’s ship at the landing pad. When she stepped into the dome, he added, “You do not need your tank in the dome. It matches your atmosphere, so we need to adjust. Your species does not.”

“Jeff Pence, thank you. I do not mind my breathing tank, but it is nice when I do not need to wear it.” Speral disconnected the strap and removed the tank from under her breasts. After removing the tube from under her nose, she looked up at him and smiled. “I also think that without the tank, there is less effect on human males.”

“I can understand that, Speral.”
But you still have the effect on me, little one. What the hell is wrong with me?

“Jeff Pence, I brought you many more samples of our flora. I am not sure how vital they are now that the threat from the Cup… H’uumans has been eliminated, but our people on Earth and here on Mars will benefit from them.”

“It will also ensure the plants are safe. If there were to be any kind of plague on your planet, our seeds would be used to restore them. And for us, they can be beneficial, too. We can use the samples to adjust our biosynthetics to make your plants edible to us.”

“Jeff Pence, that is a good idea. Our native plants are very poisonous to most members of the Collaborative.”

As several humans unloaded Speral’s ship, Jeff walked her into the dome. She watched as he donned a breathing apparatus that would alter the atmosphere inside the dome just enough to make it safe for him. As they continued on, she looked up at the top of the great dome and watched as wisps of clouds swirled and danced in the cap of the structure. Jeff found himself following her gaze, and remembered his own marvel the first time he had realized the dome was so large that it generated its own weather.

“Jeff Pence, how many botany domes does Mars have?”

“We have twenty domes this size, currently. Over the next Ares standard year, we expect to build double that number. Ultimately, I will have two hundred domes. May I ask you something Speral?”

“Jeff Pence, you may.”

“Why do you always say my name before you speak?”

“Jeff Pence, it is our custom to address those from outside our tribes or clans thusly.”

“You do not have to use that custom with me, Speral,” Jeff said almost bashfully.
What the hell I am doing?

“Jeff Pence, we must use that custom with all outsiders. It is our way.” Speral stopped and touched a flower that was just opening with the coming dawn. She looked up and watched as the system’s sun appeared over the horizon, its warmth palpable, even through the multiple domes it had passed through to find her here.

“I see. That is too bad.”
Why do I care?

“Jeff Pence, does the custom bother you?”

“No, Speral. Not at all. But I hope someday to move beyond it. I do not think of you as an outsider. What does your species call itself?”

“Jeff Pence, among ourselves we are known as Nill. Why do you ask?”

“Only because we have always called you ‘Speral’s people.’ I wondered what you called yourselves.” The two of them arrived at the airlock leading to the administrative area and passed through it as Jeff added, “The Nill. It has a beautiful sound to it.”

Bergh Station

In the first two weeks that Cort was back on full duty, he found that Kim, Lex, JJ, and Dar had kept things well in hand. There were things Cort had to handle, but there were fewer of them than he expected. Among them was what to do with the H’uumans still living away from the only world they could legally occupy. Heroc was on Solitude to help Cort with that decision.

“Heroc, I have to follow through with it. Your people cannot remain on the planets they invaded.”

“I understand, General. But our new homeworld cannot support that many, even with your support and the necessary infrastructure, which does not exist.”

“I don’t want to kill them all, but I may have to.”

Heroc considered her next words carefully. The man in front of her had killed trillions. She herself had witnessed him killing and torturing members of her own team on Government World. She was surprised that he was even discussion the matter with her. “General Addison, may I be blunt with you?”

“You may. That is why you are here. I want your help in resolving the matter.”

“I watched you dismember one of my friends. I have every reason to trust your claim that you have killed trillions of my species. You destroyed Speral’s entire fleet.”

Cort interrupted her, saying, “Heroc, I also returned all of your queens to you. I could easily have destroyed them and let the war drag on for years.”