All is Fair Ch. 02

Jim took a deep breath and turned himself toward the main comms interface, tapping the buttons to prepare a recording to be sent later. He cleared his throat, pressed record, and looked up at the display.

"My name is James Edwards; I work at the Morus I mining facility on the edge of the Hudson expanse. Like everyone who lives and works here, we have spent most of our lives in the dark, mining the raw materials that the Imperium needs for everything from starship construction to home appliances. There are men, women, and children here. There are veterans, rehabilitated convicts, priests, doctors, and families. Some of our children have never seen the sun. We are loyal to the emperor and to the Imperium; we pay our taxes, we do honest, hard work... and we are being murdered by the company we work for, for the crime of asking that we be provided enough oxygen to be able to breathe. We need your help... before they kill us all."

********

Stevo. 14

The haunted faces stared at him, a score of them so far, but every now and then, the guards would bring in another one or two, then reactivate the security forcefields, and leave again. Stevo wasn't staring; Stevo was pacing. His feet were apparently intent on gouging a crevice into the dusty concrete floor with each of the laps of their communal cell.

It had taken about an hour to get from the beach to the rebels' forward command post and another hour after that to get to here... wherever 'here' was. An underground complex several miles away from the landing zone and deeper into the heart of the Island they had landed on. He had no idea of its size or its layout, just that they came through what appeared to be the main entrance cut out of the face of a sunken ravine's walls, left through a guarded security station, and straight into this makeshift holding area. The door and the walls were all surrounded by a powerful and impenetrable force field that was the equivalent of a few feet of solid titanium armor. Stevo had punched it once out of frustration; that had been a mistake.

Each of the new people brought in had survived the same horror show that he and Mac had; there had been three Marines already in there when they had arrived, all of them sat silently and motionlessly on metal-framed cots that had been lined up against the wall. One of them had looked up and acknowledged their arrival; the others had just kept staring at the floor between their feet. They looked broken.

Stevo knew exactly how they felt.

Every blink, every stray thought, every time he let his focus slip for more than a second, his mind was filled with images of his men behind killed. Big G's smile, just before that bolt had vaporized everything above his chest. Rev's quiet stoicism and unbreakable belief that his faith would see him through, one way or another, and his body vanishing in that verdant green ball of fire. Ryan, his cockiness to the point of arrogance, hiding a sharp mind always looking to learn. Stevo had no idea if he was even still alive. But it was Dusky - that look on her face when her terrified eyes found his as she dragged her shattered body to safety - and Angel - her last words as her eyes rolled back - that were the weights he could already feel crushing his normally strong mind. There was no escaping the guilt, the self-recrimination, or the pain. It was a loss he felt down to his bones, and it had cored him. He was a hollow shell of the man who had landed on that beach.

Mac seemed to be doing marginally better, but that was perhaps because he hadn't said a word since they had been captured

There was nothing Stevo could do for him or for any of the other men brought in as the hours ticked by. He was watching, in real-time, men and women succumb to the PTSD that would doubtlessly blight the rest of their lives. What could he possibly say to ease that? There were psychiatrists in the core worlds who lived in very big houses and drove very expensive hover-cars, with more money in the bank than a navy admiral, all of it earned from helping soldiers work their way through years of therapy to overcome the trauma of exactly this type of event. "Snap out of it" didn't seem particularly effective compared to that.

Men and women - marines one and all - stared into nothingness or quietly sobbed at the full weight of what had happened and the magnitude of the fact that they had survived when thousands of their friends and comrades hadn't.

Suddenly, the force field lowered, and an armed guard stepped into the room, standing aside as three more men and one woman were led into the holding cell, followed by two more guards. "I want to speak to your CO!" Stevo barked at the guard who had stepped in first."

The guard, his face plate as opaque as the men who had captured them, turned to look at Stevo. "Captain Warralow is overseeing the recovery effort on the beach, Sergeant. Sit tight. She will be with you in a few hours."

Stevo had been expecting hostility, a brusque, maybe even aggressive response, so he was more than taken aback by the civility of his reply, let alone the almost deferential regard for his rank. It kinda took the wind out of his sails. "Look, I just... I need to know the status of my injured squad mates."

The guard looked at him, then glanced around the cell at the rest of the captives and sighed. "You seem to be the senior ranked officer in here..." Stevo bit back his usual 'I'm not an officer; I work for a living,' retort and kept listening. "...If you can maintain order in here, I will see what I can do." The guard finished. Stevo looked back at the other Marines and nodded. "Good, what are their names?"

"Corporal Angel Vasquez and Flight Lieutenant Emylee Almark were captured with me, and Private Ryan O'Malley lost a leg not far from the water line on the West side of the beach."

The guard nodded and shouldered his rifle before lifting his arm to look at the holo interface on his vambrace, tapping a few times with his fingers. "Vasquez and Almark are both in surgery; that was the last update two hours ago. They were both still alive then. I'll know more next time the medical staff updates the system. I don't have anything for O'Malley."

Stevo sighed and nodded, "Thank you."

The guard glanced around the cell again. "If any of the others have names they want me to check, tell them to pass them to you, and I will see what I can do next time I come back. But the medical staff don't update the system very often; they're a bit busy, and not all the wounded can be identified. Body recovery won't start until all the wounded are brought in, and that's gonna take a while. If you can sit tight for a little longer, I will have food and water brought in for you."

"I would appreciate that, corporal," Stevo nodded gratefully again after taking note of the chevrons on the man's arm. To Stevo's utter astonishment, the guard saluted him.... actually saluted!... turned on his heels and left the room, the force field reactivating a few seconds after he had gone

"I... I have a name," A soft voice came from behind him,

"I do, too," another said. Stevo turned back to look at the cautiously hopeful faces of his fellow captives.

He nodded. There was nothing else he could do other than wait for more news about the rest of his squad, and these Marines were just as worried about theirs as he was about his. Helping them didn't seem to have a downside, killing time and putting a few frayed minds at ease, or at least keeping them occupied for a little while. "Okay, one at a time. Give me what you have."

He sat down on one of the cots, offering the closest thing to a smile he could manage to the first of the Marines to approach him." I... I watched them all die," the young man before him said, unable to reach his eyes. "Only two of us got through that first barrage. The Sarge, he... there were pieces of him all over me... he was just gone. We ran, we left them there, there was nothing we could do..."

"I know, son." They weren't just platitudes; Stevo had done the exact same thing to the remains of the four squads under his command. Running away from a fight was one thing; leaving your men to die was unforgivable to a Marine, but bailing on an area where your comrades were already dead, making sure the same didn't happen to you... there was neither shame nor dishonor in that. "You did the right thing," Stevo nodded to the distraught-looking man. "If you had stayed, you would have been killed too; everyone here got the fuck out of dodge when the bombs started falling. None of us would be here if we didn't."

"You ran?"

Stevo shook his head softly, suddenly noticing that he had the undivided attention of everyone in the room. "A Marine doesn't run, not when his brothers and sisters need him. But they were already gone; there was nothing we could have done for them, and I don't know about your sergeant, but I would have been waiting in the afterlife to beat the shit out of any one of my men who sacrificed their lives for the sake of my corpse."

The young man snorted. "Yeah, he would've been pissed if we got ourselves killed for nothing," he frowned. I... Thank you, Sarge. I hadn't thought of that before now."

"So there was more than one of you that got out of there? Sorry, I didn't get your name."

The young Marine nodded. "Yeah, it was me and another guy, Malcolm Malone. We were just running, one blind turn after another, explosions all around us. I turned around, and he was just... gone. I went back to look for him, I tried to find him, but I got lost in those fucking trenches. Next thing I knew, about fifty rebels had me pinned down, and I had to pull out. I don't know if Malone was hit, or if he got turned around, or if he took a different trench to me... I just..."

"It's okay, Son," Stevo nodded, "Same thing happened to us. And I still didn't get your name."

"Sorry, Sir. Private John Walker."

"It's good to meet you, Private. I'm Sergeant Steve Taylor, but everyone calls me Stevo."

Mac snorted, "He calls himself Stevo; everyone else calls him Sarge."

Stevo chuckles. "That's Dylan McCaffery or Mac. He was my heavy gunner." Mac offered the gathering group a small wave.

"You both got out?"

Stevo nodded, "Yeah, my sniper, too, Angel. She was shot when we were captured. We pulled a pilot out of a downed Broadsword, too. She was in a pretty bad way, though, they were who I was asking about."

"You gave three names, though." Another voice said from somewhere in the group. Stevo smiled a little weaker. "Yeah, Ryan. Ryan O'Malley. He was a rifleman; Mortar took his leg off right after we got off the dropship. We left him in cover while we advanced; he was stable and manning our comms. We haven't heard anything from him since they went down."

"What wave were you in?" A third voice asked, someone sitting closer to Mac and behind Stevo.

"First wave, extreme left flank. Right on the end of the line."

"We were in the center, first wave." Walker nodded.

"We were on the left, too, but the third wave," the third voice said. "Attached to 4th battalion headquarters. I was there when the Major was hit."

"Major Jennings?" Stevo asked, turning to face the third voice. Another younger man, although not as young as Walker. The man nodded. "We were headed your way when we got captured."

"The first hit landed right on top of him," he said, his eyes looking at some invisible spot on the ground. "I don't remember much after the second hit; I must have been knocked out. It was dark when I woke up. I was the only one left, and rebels were already checking the bodies. I didn't even get a chance to fight."

"What's your name, Private."

The third man smiled, "It's Jennings, too. Mark Jennings."

Mac blinked. "The Major wasn't..."

"No," Jennings shook his head, pre-empting a question he must have been asked countless times. "No relation, just a coincidence, but everyone called me Little Jen because of it."

"Well, Little Jenn, Do you have any names for me?"

He shook his head. "I don't know if anyone got out, short of giving them every name in the unit..."

Stevo nodded in understanding.

"Why are you helping them?" A sharp voice echoed from further back into the room. "They are rebels, they're traitors! They Killed our friends, and you are playing nice with them! Why aren't we trying to break our way out and get some fucking revenge?!?"

The sergeant sighed. This is what he was afraid of. "What's your name, Son?"

"I'm not your fucking Son!" The soldier barked as he leaped to his feet. "You are conspiring with the enemy, and that makes you a God-Damned traitor, too!"

"Hey, asshole!" Mac stood to match him. "Don't..."

He was cut off with a single raised hand from Stevo. "It's okay, Mac. He's right. I am cooperating with the rebels. Given our situation and the fact that I know they have two of my Marines in their custody, apparently rendering medical care, I don't have much of another choice." Stevo said calmly. "But let's hear it... Corporal," he said, after checking the rank on the man's arm. "What's your plan? We don't know where we are; we don't know the strength of the enemy forces in this base, let alone in the area around it, we don't know what weapons they have, we don't have any, we are trapped behind a forcefield, and they still have our friends. But go ahead, I'm all ears." He finished with a gesture toward the standing Marine.

"I don't fucking know!" he raged. "The next time that asshole comes back, we overpower them and take their weapons."

Stevo pretended to consider this for a moment, then looked around the room. "There are twelve of us, and so far, there have only been three of them each time; all three of them are armed. How many of your brothers here are you willing to sacrifice to get your hands on those weapons? And let's just say you get them, then what?"

"We are fucking Marines, they are weekend warrior rebels. We could easily fight our way through them, find a comms uplink, and call for support!"

There was silence around the room.

"He doesn't know," Jennings said quietly.

"What? Know what?" the man eyes Jennings suspiciously. "What don't I know."

"Well, I guess that brings us to the big fucking elephant in the room, then, doesn't it? What's your story, Corporal? How did your invasion go?"

The corporal glared at Stevo, seemingly having the wind in his sails challenged by Stevo's utter refusal to rise to the accusations being levelled at him, even if they were made in ignorance and frustration, but he eventually started to speak. "I was with the tanks, third wave, right flank. We were having electronic issues before we even left the carrier, by the time we landed, our comms were shot, but we got on with our mission anyway. We advanced up the beach until we got to the first line of Marines and started laying down fire support on the bunkers. My commander said we needed to reestablish comms with the infantry and ordered me to track down a Marine officer. One of the logistics squads could lend us a working radio for the rest of the mission."

"You were the gunner?" Stevo asked.

The man shook his head. "I was the driver. The tank couldn't go anywhere until we got more orders anyway; the commander was picking out targets, and the gunner was shooting, so I was the obvious choice to go get the coms unit. It took me ages to find someone who could help. The fourth wave was landing when I was working my way back to the tank. With the backup from the rest of the armored brigade, our whole crew got to work on patching the coms unit into the tank systems. Something went wrong, though; one of us must have shorted out the electronics cos the tank suddenly lost all power and hit the deck. It even fried the new coms unit. The commander decided that the tank was a loss and ordered us to link up with the Marines on the ground, help the wounded, or whatever.

"We grabbed our gear and bailed. I don't think it was thirty seconds after we got to the trenches that the artillery hit. It seemed like every tank other than ours was hit; the bombs seemed to jump over us, skip us entirely, and then start hitting the trenches ahead of us. By the time we got up there, there were only a handful of Marines left. Then the rebels attacked... there were so many of them... the three of us each picked up a rifle and started shooting. We fought for hours, but they just... kept coming. Marines started to go down, one after another. Micky, our driver, was hit in the face; there was a Marine corporal there, he had taken command when the sergeant was killed, and he ordered us to withdraw. I followed the others, stopping at every trench line to provide cover to the men still pulling back... I .. I never saw the commander after that. We just kept running and shooting, men dropping all around us.. Until I was the only one left. They cornered me in a dead end..."

"And you surrendered," Mac finished for him, having sat back down to listen to the man's story.

"Yeah," the dejected-looking marine followed his lead and dropped back onto the cot.

"So you have no idea what actually happened then." Stevo sighed.

"What do you mean?"

"Your tank didn't lose power 'cause you shorted it out," Mac started. "All of them went down at the same time."

"There were these... fuck, I don't know what they were," Walker carried on for him. "Like these pylon things that had been buried in the sand. The colonel landed and ordered all ground forces to activate their pings. As soon as that happened, those pylons rose out of the beach, hundreds of them... they released some sort of energy burst. Knocked out all comms, shields, the electrics on the tanks..."

"The shields and long-ranged comms on the air support as well," Stevo added. "And it didn't 'knock them out,' it shut them down. Completely."

"What, you mean like an EMP?" The stunned-looking corporal asked.

Stevo half shrugged. "Yeah, I guess. Except it didn't affect the HUDs in our armor, and our weapons still worked fine. The fighters could still fly, too; they just didn't have shields and couldn't talk to anyone outside their own wings. But we all know that our gear is all EMP-shielded."

"It wasn't an EMP," the owner of the second original voice said softly. The rest of the group looked at her. "Sorry, Lance Corporal Michelle Cameron, I was one of the comms officers with 1st Battalion headquarters; I was at LZ four, between the center and right flanks."

"Good to have you with us, Lance Corporal." Stevo nodded to her. "You were saying about an EMP?"

"Yeah, sorry, but you're right, it wasn't an EMP. Even if our stuff wasn't shielded against them - which it all is - that isn't how EMPs work. They would have fried everything. Even the powered joints in your armor would have stopped working, not just the computer systems. The planes would have been falling out of the sky, and not just ours, but theirs too. No weapon on the beach aside from ballistic ones would have worked, and the rebels were sure as shit shooting at me. EMPs are indiscriminate; they would have fucked their systems just as much as ours, and it's impossible to target them against a certain side.."

"I feel you have a theory knocking around in that head of yours." Stevo prompted as Cameron fell silent.

She sighed and nodded. "I think it was a forced shutdown pulse." She looked around at the group, but Stevo was sure that his face displayed the same unfathoming expressions as everyone else's did. "Look, we all know how shields work; they absorb energy from incoming rounds and feed it into the capacitor systems. Take too many hits, the capacitors overload, and the shield shuts down until that energy can be vented, then the shields can be recharged. But if the shields didn't shut down, the capacitors would burn out and would destroy the shield system completely." She looked around again to make sure everyone was still following her. "I think that the energy spike released by that pulse was designed to completely overload our shields and fry the shields."