And I didn't say another damn thing. I didn't say another damn thing because I understood the vast entirety of everything Rawlings had gone through--a hideous loss, and his subsequent abandoning of all values. His God was killed, killed dead by a pulse from a heavy sonic cannon someplace over the Caribbean, and now he wanders a barren landscape of his own making searching for another master, another cause, some reason to continue living. But he doesn't look very hard; indeed, he has buried himself so deeply within this Mars Security, totally afraid of what might come to pass if yet again he pledges himself to some crusade. He is frightened, afraid of committing again, because this is no ordinary man, this is Jack Rawlings, and Jack Rawlings goes in headfirst firing with both barrels. He has buried himself, in name and deed, pulling on the shoddy garments of Sergeant Jack Nilwar, S-G-drop the "t"-N-I-L-W- A-R--"Rawlings" backwards. By Christ, it is a sick existence, feigning his own martyrdom, his reward a steady thirty thousand dollars a year, a constant barrage of all the things minor and inconsequential which bedevil the average Internal Security sergeant. He looks over the faces of the crowded multitude entering the "Jack Rawlings Building". He practices in the firing range a regulation two hours a week. And he mops the restrooms! The man is surely the wealthiest individual in all of MegaPrime, if not the damned world, and he mops the bathroom tile! Those who say that God doesn't do windows are wrong. For forty some years he had done that, his sorrow dulled by the constant monotony of things mundane. He once dreamed of extending the reign of all things human to the distant stars, but with nobody to claim the throne of his hard labor, he had reverted to what he, in his twisted modesty, had determined to be his right and proper place in the grand scheme--a lowly day laborer, earning his bread and board through the strength of his back. But fickle fate, which so unjustly held him with the living, has called on this masterless samurai once again, bidding him, quietly at first, and now with a furious intensity that even his self-inflicted blindness cannot ignore, cannot shrug aside like everything else in this triumphant march of entropy. Fate beats on Rawlings' door and screams once again, "Bugs." Willfully drowning in the twilight of his sweet, sad life, Rawlings pulls himself from his Caribbean, his sea of tears, and asks "where?" Now he musters the strength of his overgrown empire, forty years of brutality and unfettered corporate excesses, tempering its vengeance and spite and swallowing a leaden helping of pride . . . all for the sake of his old standard. He has heard the bugle call again, and for this reason he awakens. Earth is under duress again. The bugs are back. Revenge and wrath are empty things, made for empty times when men may partake in the decadent pleasures of making war upon each other. This is no such time. The veteran, the bodyguard, the lone wolf screws his eyes tight and hopes that sins past will be forgiven. It is some sort of graft, a transplant of things Rawlings into the hallowed halls of my own brain. My personality remains the same, young, bitter, and resenting this invasion. Fucker had no right to go into my head and order up my neurons into neat rank and file which spell out memories not mine. But a whole hundred and four years, three months, and four days of life lived outside of me, but now utterly transplanted within me, speaks a different story. Rawlings is preparing for something big, some final operation that will, most likely, cost him more than he is willing to pay. That is where I come in. Not being a literary man, or even one to take up the pen or keyboard, Jack Rawlings has never devoted a significant portion of his experiences to paper or optical disk-- Patterson's novels aside. He has barely shared anything about himself, his only communications to the outside world being a few press releases from the early days of Marsec and, obviously, Kamikaze. What he has learned and why he acted the way he did--these are things soon to be lost. Rawlings suspects he is about to die. His actions and attitudes paint a different picture, of someone with not much more on their mind than the annual company picnic. But I know better, I know that every day of his tour of duty with XCOM, Jack Rawlings was prepared to die. He knew that to not be prepared meant regretting the end of his life; to regret that final step, to be unwilling, unsure, unprepared to take it meant hesitation, and in the furious close combat of that first incarnation of XCOM, to hesitate was to be lost. Dead. So these machinations are simply the icing on the cake. Rawlings is ready to die. He proceeds about readying his funeral in grand Egyptian style. He is an emperor of men; all the pharaohs of that venerable and dead land would pale at the amassed wealth Rawlings has come to call his own. Forty thousand Earthside employees, peons really, and another twenty thousand working in orbit, on Mars, or out in the Oort. How many other thousands are under his indirect command? When the Elerium shipments don't arrive, how many corporations cease to exist, much less function? Fuck emperor, he is a god. An absentee god, but one who is coming back to lay his head down on his native soil for the last time. He will bring sixty Hawk Air Superiority Platforms. He will bring one thousand specially trained Internal Security guardsmen. He will bring the entirety of his prized Centurion Corps--two hundred stock gene, flawlessly bred warriors. And he will bring himself, dressed in his very finest clothes. Tenth generation powered armor, constructed out of layered cydonium alloys, ceramics from orbital factories, elerium servos and myomers-- hair-thin fibers capable of contracting on electrical impulse. Gravity wave emitters, as on standard Marsec Flight suits, are located on the torso, but Rawlings has also utilized a modification from the original prototype blueprints, stolen out of the smoking ruins of Nevada Base. His suit carries hover units on its legs. I have seen him in action with this armor. The sky was a generic pale blue, the sun only a slightly brighter patch directly overhead. Beneath was the mottled blue and green of perhaps the earth; it was too far distant to make out. "This is where I come to train," Rawlings stated, a memory jammed in somewhere between his eulogy to Jacob and my awakening in that Martian cafe. "This is where I come when the memories become so strong I can't avoid them any other way," he whispered, perhaps unintentionally. Tracers of neon light slid into place, building the spindly outlines of a cube around me--the internal skeleton of a tremendously huge arcology. Green and yellows faded into dull reddish beams of steel touched by rust. Rawlings stood some distance from me on one of these thin catwalks, dressed in a burnished suit of heavy grey armor. His helmet was off, and I could see his tanned, scarred face. He sucked on a respirator, translucent ribbed piping snaking around the sides of his neck. The armor was none that I had ever seen before--not the arrogant reds of Megapol assault armor or the smooth, curved lines of Marsec flight suits. This tuxedo was bulbous, great slabs of cydonium bulging from Rawlings' forearms, shoulder, and calves. A dented pot belly sagged from a wide, webbed belt. A casual observer would call this suit antique, ancient. And then that observer would die. The dents and scratches are affectations, carefully applied to throw the prejudicial; the retro zero's design used in part due to application of the new myomer technologies, in part because Rawlings remembers the days when armors such as this were the rule. He is old fashioned. I watched Rawlings stretch, systematically testing every servo, every myomer, and every connection in his suit. We were in a strange null space--a living painting, a re-enactable memory saved through means psionic--but he still checked his armor for readiness. That is Rawlings way, grateful for his tools but never reliant upon blind faith that they will work. I watched Rawlings and he did not cast an eye back at me. I don't suppose I was actually present for his 'training' session, so he wouldn't have looked in my direction anyways. But as he firmed up his footing, heavy rubber mats under his boots, he focused all his attentions on the far side of the I-beam that he stood upon. A cloud of grey dust coalesced there . . . Matte black, backwards canted legs, two deep pools of compound eyes--and a pair of massive, clicking pincer forearms. Into this the dust formed, a huge, two and a half meter terror that hissed and snapped open and closed its broad scythes. It was a vision of my nightmares, something dredged up from the old shows about XCOM that would occasionally be aired on Saturday nights and fermented within my pre-adolescent hours of sleep. It was a Crab, a visitor from Hell, a monstrous demon killer of men. It is something Rawlings knows all too well. He fought his way through an entire building of the fiends to save a wounded officer. Sometimes he went in alone. Sometimes he was part of an entire assault team--thirteen men--and he was the only survivor. Senator Sakurai told the story so many times and so differently each time that I, at my cynical peak, was convinced that the politician was just telling old soldiers' tales. He wasn't. Rawlings spread his arms as if to welcome back an old friend. Slowly at first the horrid creature placed one clawed foot before another. Hesitantly, cautiously--the steel was but a half-meter wide, thin and rusted. And then, with a hiss, it charged. Rawlings flicked his wrists inwards and seventy centimeter blades flash from his forearms. The creature pounded down the steel towards him; he fell back into a combat stance, blades up and out. He was going to fight this monster on its own terms. The crab reached striking range and snatched at Rawlings. The soldier parried the thrust, flecks of black chitin drifting from the beast's claw. Another probing strike was similarly warded off. Rawlings bounced backwards and clanged his alloy blades together in a brash, shrill sound, loud and unanswered in this strange no-space. The crab pulled back, tightened its legs, and sprang at Rawlings. His face emotionless, he slid his blades between the creature's outstretched claws, pulled them apart, and kicked the monster in its antennae-waving head. The crab collapsed backwards, the steel slowly bouncing up and down from its impact. It scurried to its feet--but Rawlings was already upon it. Sprinting in on tip toes, he slashed downward with his left across the creature's carapace, its tip painted a vibrant green. His right savagely smacked the crab's head with the flat of his blade. The nightmare nearly fell from the beam. It was wounded and on the defensive; two things it has no genetic knowledge of. It hissed, trying to twist around. Rawlings brought his left back up, avoiding both claws and cleanly sliding its alloy blade into the crab's abdomen. Chitinous exoskeleton cracked and viscera belched out; he muscled the sword so far in that his gloved hand touched the monster's carapace. Squealing in futile rage, the bug tried to bring its claws to bear. It was no use. Rawlings was too close. Shivering and clicking and hissing, the crab looked Rawlings in the face. The soldier swung back his right arm, artificial sunlight glinting off its untarnished, polished silver tip. The corners of his chapped lips rose barely a millimeter. ". . . send a sign to the rest of Kaleta's coalition that mutiny is not tolerated." The angel of death grinned. And Rawlings brought that blade back down, beheading the monster. "Karl gets the window seat," says Rawlings. She moves over one, and I stumble over her lap into the most distant seat from the aisle. Rawlings takes that one. "Say 'Hi', Karl," orders Rawlings. "Hi," I mutter, twisting around in the few spare centimeters of leg room and sitting. There is a whispered exchange as I fasten my flight straps. I stare out the window, taking in a fine view of the sun setting over the rim of the kilometer-wide crater called Nova Cydonia. A hundred assorted spaceliners, tramp freighters, and Marsec security ships fill this cydonium-coated pit, some docked along the circumference of the port, where loading facilities and concourses are built into the dusty red rock of Mars. This is where ninety-five percent of all Elerium bound for Earth is shipped from. This is where thousands of tons, daily, of refined metals are sent "home" to feed a ravenous MegaPrime. This is also where all of the Mars' vital supplies are shipped in, closely guarded by Marsec patrols. A spaceliner ascends skyward now, its antigrav drives focusing on the parabolic dish of Nova Cydonia's machined floor. Ten thousand tons of spaceship flash upwards, headed for Earth, the Moon, or possibly the Oort, all propelled by a bizarre property of cydonium-- its reflectance factor. Weak gravitron waves contained between two cydonium surfaces will bounce back and forth until the original force is magnified many times or bled off. And that, kids, is how sympathetic grav drives work. The conversation to my right ends, signalled primarily by the woman's "Hmm," and Rawlings' announcement that he is needed "up top," were ever that is. I press back in my seat, taking in the various distant vibrations of this ship. An older spaceliner, it is named the "Bounty" and it carries four nuclear missiles, further confirming Rawlings' earlier boasts of Marsec overkill. "So, are you happy?" asks the woman. I crack open an eye. I have just been pulled out of a saline tank, have had the mother of all psionic implants pumped into my head, and now am party to the finest funeral of all eternity. I'd rather sleep. "About what?" But I answer, somewhat out of politeness, and somewhat out of the fact that she is beautiful, as all female strangers should be. Short red hair frames a pretty face with pouty lips and long eyelashes. Her gray and tan jumpsuit bulges at just the right spots, too. She laughs--cackles, really. "About the Mars Workers' Union?" "I wouldn't know a damn about that, I'm afraid," I reply. "I thought you were a devout Marxist." Warning bells go off in my head. I look her over again, spotting the small patch on her left breast that reads "Colonel L. Hierro." "Oh, that's right. You've been . . . out of it for a spot, haven't you?" Colonel of what? I wonder. "Yeah, something happen?" I glance up at her lips and realize that she is about to rant. Shit. "Other than the Union detonating a two hundred kiloton nuke, not much, I'm afraid." I'm supposed to bite. I remain silent. But she continues, so utterly pleased at finding someone who hasn't heard about all the little squabbles fascists seem to find. "Solmine's been having a bit of trouble lately, with the ore veins running out and whatnot. I'm sure you've heard of that." Pause. "So they've had to downsize a bit recently, mainly troublemakers and expendable types. A lot of the bastards didn't go Earthside, though-- some of them took to hiding in the canyons, thieving from the mining operations and such. Annoying, but not all that threatening." Gulp of air. "But the silly buggers couldn't leave it all alone, they had to get their nice little 'Union' going and now the communists think that they can gain a following by demolishing things Marsec. Bloody psychotic, if you ask me." Which I didn't, thank you very much. "The nuke, of course! I was forgetting about the nuke. Last Saturday--it was the fifth, I believe--the communists nearly blew out the bulkheads in half the old facilities. Quite a quake it was; they say that any closer to Nova Cydonia there might have been some serious damage to electronics." I really don't want to listen to any more of this. "Marsec had so many ships up the next day-" Damnit, I want to sleep! "-hunting down the communists in their canyons-" Time for decisive measures. I clear my throat. Miss Hierro--how is that pronounced?-- pauses. "What's your first name?" I ask. "Leah," she answers, adding, "Leah Hierro." Hee-AIR-oh. Got it. "Leah, does it hurt to be so pretty?" A deep shade of red is eclipsing her normally pale face as I turn back to the window. Rawlings returns sometime later, sliding up in the deserted seats behind me. "All buckled in? Good. We're lifting off. And Karl," he begs me, "please try to be a little more sociable with Miss Hierro." He slides out, bound back down the aisle to the short stairway up to the cockpit. "Sociable my ass," I mutter, brushing the sleep out of my eyes. The Bounty shudders awake also, its bulk slowly drifting across the floor of Nova Cydonia, queuing up for its turn at the plate. Twin Valkyries, equipped with heat shielded autolasers, flit past us. "So," I ask, "are you a Marsec Colonel?" "No," she replies, curtly, "I am the Race of Man Colonel." Race of Man. Ouch. We sit in silence for a dozen more minutes. The Race of Man Colonel? Suggesting that there is only one. Wow. I get to sit next to THE Race of Man Colonel. I suppose I should be honored or something. "PLEASE RETURN TO YOUR SEATS AND CHECK YOUR STRAPS. LAUNCH IS IN ONE MINUTE," declares the Bounty's PA system. I make a half-hearted effort of checking my harness. Small monitors built into the spaceliner's ceiling register fifty seconds. I drum my fingers on the back of the seat ahead of us. I notice that it is also empty . . . Why in hell did Rawlings have to stick me in the same row as the nazi? "Aren't you going to ask why I'm here?" she asks, as if on cue. "I could run my tongue raw on your neck alone," I quickly answer. I have no desire to debate politics with a full-fledged racist. I chuckle slightly as the Colonel shuts up like a clam. One of my more despicable vices is talking dirty to female religious fanatics. I learned it in college; either they are so disgusted at whatever crudities I throw at them . . . or they enjoy it. In which case they spend the next three or four hours beating themselves over their pretty little heads for sinning in that manner. Either way, they usually shut up. Lets me get some sleep. Race of Man is pretty much a Cult, I'd have to say. So obsessed with the survival and propagation of the species that anyone or anything which tampers with the gene pool is an enemy. Needless to say, they don't like Xeno Sapiens--grey bloods--none too much. Nor are they big fans of the physically handicapped, homosexuals, or the mentally ill. Dirties up the species, they'd say. Destroy, destroy, destroy. A lot of Megapol people in their ranks, obviously. The Bounty lurches upwards; I'm kicked back into my seat. Spaceliners and fighter ships tend to have internal gravitron generators to reduce inertia strain, but you still get a helluva knee in the groin when you lift off. For the next couple minutes, I am at a loss for words, as the act of breathing becomes a conscious effort on my part. This is the Elevator, the five hundred kilometer jaunt into low Martian orbit that takes about fifty grams of refined Elerium. Next is the Escalator, a similarly massive dish assembly built into Phobos. That will fire us around Mars and back to Earth at a similarly trivial cost in Elerium. Of course . . . if I hadn't been a good boy for the Grand Dragon Rawlings, I'd be going in the other direction--to the lead Trojans, those same damn asteroids that Mommy Dearest claimed, the standard of Oort Ventures in one hand and a red buttoned remote in her other . . . That launch pad is called the Stairway. "Quite the show Mister Rawlings puts on, yes?" asks Leah. "I'll bet your legs are as-" A sharp, sudden pain in my temple flashes stars in my vision. "What was that for?" I bark. Turning to her, I see a pain just a intense in her eyes. "What?" I repeat, rubbing the side of my head. I can feel the mark where her nail clipped me. "Don't . . . talk to me like that," she demands. "I had a very bad experience with a man who spoke like you do." Is it possible that the Colonel of Race of Man is about to cry? "Look, I'm sorry if I reminded you of something bad," I apologize, "just don't sick your little fascist buddies on me. I mean, I've got a lot of problems already, and I don't need any more people gunning for me-" Rawlings laughs from behind us. I can feel his bare elbow jabbing me in the neck. "I can see that you're getting along quite nicely." "Shouldn't you be floating?" I ask, annoyed. "No, internal gravity fields. Think before you speak, Lifetree boy." "Sure," I mutter as Rawlings shuffles off. I turn back to Leah. "Ugly son of a bitch, isn't he?" "Jack Rawlings is a great man," she responds. "And please don't swear; you sound like a slummer." It's my turn to roll my eyes. Fascist bitch. "You know," I slur, "the last right-winger I slept with swore all the time. 'Fuck this,' 'fuck that,' 'Shut the fuck up,' seemed like every other word out of her mouth was a profanity." "A limited vocabulary is a sign of limited intelligence," states Leah. I laugh, long and loud, doubled up, my stomach contorted by pain and humor. Wiping the tears from my eyes, I answer, "That's exactly what I told Casey." Leah looks at me and frowns. "Casey Grocke?" she asks. "Yes. You know her?" "I worked with her." "Vice Squad?" "You are disgusting," she frowns. "No, I did not work with her in Vice. I was in Narcotics. Vice usually gave us tips on where to break up major transactions, and Casey mailed in a few of them." We are silent for a long while, the low hum of the Bounty's anti-grav drives growing by barely perceptible increments as it powers into the Escalator. Rawlings does not return; I glance around the cabin for him. He must be up front with the flight crew. "Why are you Race of Man?" I ask. It's a good question, a question that I should have posed to the rest of my acquaintances. Why are you what you are? Why is Wolf SELF? Why is Hap Church? Why is Nat Diablo? I have answers, but to hear a response from the subject of that question would have been pleasant. To simply hear their spin . . . I would like to continue my own internal dialogue, but Leah graciously interrupts me with four words that aptly derail my own train of thought, putting me on another track entirely. Her answer: "Because I was XCOM." "Let me clarify. They don't call it XCOM any more. Not after the First Alien Wars incredible victories . . . you could never tag another cast of men and women with that moniker. It would curse them to incompetence and failure, laboring under all that past of glory and sacrifice. "Now it's the Megapol Civil Defence Force, the Minutemen or Bureau Ten. They usually call it Bureau Ten, not because it's the tenth bureau of some Senate department, but because they like putting the Roman numeral ten on all their equipment. You know, the bloody 'X'. "But it still is XCOM . . . because they kill aliens, right? That's what I thought. Kill the aliens, save the Earth, all that fine stuff. You probably think that's propaganda, don't you?" "No," I reply. She is quiet, pondering this. "Why in God's name did you quit?" I can barely believe the level of emotion I put into this question. I'm not XCOM; with my lack of physical activity, I'd never qualify. So then why am I asking this, incredulous that anyone would ever turn down the chance to throw away their live defending all that is . . . "I couldn't stand the corruption," Leah replies. "A budget of quarter million dollars a week and they still were shaking down little old ladies for change. It was bloody disgusting." I focus my eyes on hers. She doesn't blink. "Casey's in XCOM now, I think," I murmur. Leah smiles slightly. "She's in good company. Did they have to stun her?" "No." I pause. "They stunned me." "So you've seen them? You've seen what they do?" Casey's body tensing up. Andy placing his hands on the tiled floor of the Juventus building. La Paloma crashing to the cement, sparks flying and blood gushing from Hap's wound. Carlson, dying in the corner, an incendiary grenade in his fist. Casey on the floor crying. Flannery praying. The janitor's blue eyes. "Yes," I answer. "I've seen what they do." "That's why I quit. That's why I went to Race of Man. XCOM is too busy abducting people and misappropriating funds to protect the Earth. Someone has to fill the gap, has to meet the bugs head on." "Bugs?" I reply. Leah squints at me. "You really have been out of it, haven't you?" I am about to reply yes, when Rawlings' voice pours from the PA. "STRAP IN, WE ARE TAKING EVASIVE. THE BOUNTY IS UNDER ATTACK, THE BOUNTY IS UNDER ATTACK . . ." 7/6/98
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