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= FAR WARS =

a novel in the Empire of Time series

by John Argo

20.

The saying goes: "Send in the army and the police. When all else fails, send in the air marines. When even that fails, and everything is dead and lost, send in the military priestesses. They have such fighting rage or macchia in the name of the Divine, that they will rip the dead out of their graves, and kill them again."

In those gloomy hours, I began to think we were beyond even that. We could fight, those of us who were left. We could slow the Kaarrk down. We could not stop them with out small, outgunned forces. Even our main systems far back were under serious assault, so they had no time or strategy for us. We had been given up as lost. Nobody had to tell me that. I knew it. Nobody had seen the Kaarrk coming. Now we had only a fight to our deaths left. All that in a matter of a few days. I did not have time to ponder the enormity or the suddenness.

We had emergency stations but no fully functioning field hospital. A group of monks from a local university were going to donate their lone standing structure—the chapel—along with their medical students to start a triage hospital. A hotel had underground parking that they proposed to offer as a makeshift recovery ward. A unit of military priestesses had flown in from Moon 3 to take charge of security; they were combat medical technicians, like all of their kind, besides being sacral death fighters; and would be assigned to staff the hotel ward. And so on. Bit by aching, painful bit, we were putting our lives back together while awaiting the next devastating punch from the Kaarrk Swarm.

I had to step back from it and speak with Trask, who arrived in a row of dark green armored flyers along with squads of air marines and military priestesses, all armed to the teeth and talking on hologs with unseen supervisors. Trask entered my GHQ and closed the door. He collapsed in a seat and started crying when we were alone together. His two sons had been killed, and his elder daughter was on her way into space. The husband of his daughter Caliste (the dark, frizzy-haired beauty) had been lost to a Kaarrk patrol over the orbiting moon reefs or lunaroids of Gandeleon, the fourth planet.

Trask Upholder recovered from his grief and said: "There is always something to salvage so we fight on."

"Yes, lord."

"You're holding the fort well, sonny."

"Thank you, sir." Dust floated by as we spoke. There were still occasional explosions. The air smelled of burning; I dared not imagine what. It was a stench you wanted to take pliers and tear out of your nostrils, but it gets imprinted in memory like a horrible nightmare and will never come out. I could not think that far ahead then, but I think back clearly to those hours, those days, every living today.

"I am going to convene the national government at Corduwaine North," Upholder told me as he extended wiry arm covered with gray hairs, and a red hand like the claw of a steel lobster. "Keep up the good work, Ranay. You are now the only son I have left."

"Then you approve of my marriage with Zara." I tried levity, but it sounded flat.

"I do." He pointed a scarred finger in my face. "You have no idea how many of the richest young men on this world have tried to ask for her, and were warned to avoid coming near me. You are the one and only, son." Suddenly overcome, he embraced me with that steely body and those powerful arms. No, he was not secretly a droid or a bot. He was an Upholder. That would scare even a fighting mech into running away.

"We will hold the city together," I promised him as he walked to the door.

He paused, while opening the door to reveal the waiting military priestesses outside. "I like that you say we. If you had said I, I would throw you out that window over there."

Trask, Lord Upholder, was that kind of guy. Nobody was tougher, not even among street thugs. Trask's steely knuckles had gotten everyone's attention. And yet he was respected enough offplanet and outsystem that the Holy Mother herself, along with important generals (the kind who only wear a lot of ribbons, and never actually any fighting) came to celebrate some Upholder family anniversary. They'd been in the Nostra Causa for many centuries and on many worlds. Truth was that there were Upholder septs and clans scattered throughout the Humansh Sea. If they lost their shirts here, the survivors could easily find refuge across far parsecs with blood relatives, and rebuild. But there lay the thing. What made the Upholder who they were. They were at their best when cornered, and loved digging in for a fight to the death. It was their most famous, terrifying, and lovely quality. In case you had not noticed, humankind did not bounce back from a 2,000 year Inversion with kid gloves. We had learned respect and humility. We had become more humane, not to make a pun. We humans are a pack of mythic wolverines, following leaders like Trask when need be. His kind always arise when history needs them. And then we can't get rid of them, but that's a matter for a peaceful, sunny day if we ever see another like it.

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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.