Republic JumpShip
Unity
Prefecture VI
26 October 3110
After a period of gray fogginess during which voices came and went, saying things that he didn’t understand and couldn’t concentrate on long enough to force into meaning, Jonah Levin woke up. The fog hadn’t receded completely, but he had an awareness of himself now that he hadn’t before, enough to tell that he hurt all over, and that there was something he was supposed to remember. That he was supposed to ask, to know.
He wet his lips and tried to find his voice. “…the troops… off planet?”
“Shh. You need your rest.”
“No.” He couldn’t rest, not in the middle of a battle. If he’d fallen—he was lying down, so he must have fallen—then he had to get up. He struggled to rise, and collapsed again under the weight of sudden pain. “Sergeant! Sergeant Turk!”
“It’s all over now. You need to lie still so you can heal.”
He wanted to lie down. He was tired, so very tired, and he hurt all over. But he couldn’t rest. Not yet. “Sergeant, we have to—”
The grayness rolled him under again like a giant wave, and he knew nothing.
Much later, he opened his eyes. His mind was awake and clear, and he knew at once that he was lucid for the first time in a long while. The inside of his head felt empty and unused, like a room with its furniture missing. He still hurt all over, and was aware of needles and tubes binding him, holding him down. He couldn’t have moved even if he’d been strong enough.
He wasn’t on Prospect Hill any longer, but in a windowless, high-ceilinged room. Somewhere outside his range of vision, quiet machinery hummed and beeped.
“Good to see you awake again, Captain.”
That was Sergeant Turk’s voice, off to his right. With considerable effort, Jonah turned his head in that direction on the pillow. Turk sat in a wheelchair by the bed with one leg out and up, encased in orange casting plastic. His right arm ended in a bandaged stump just above where the elbow had been. He was pale and thin, but smiling broadly despite his injuries.
“It’s good to see you, too, Sergeant.” Jonah’s voice came out faint and thready, but he pushed on anyway. It was important that he know. “The company… we pushed Ma-Tzu Kai back? Held the line?”
“We held the line, Captain. They were confused by our rush, and the Republic troops took advantage and smashed through. Ma-Tzu Kai broke when we hit the ammo dump. By the time they pulled themselves back together, everyone was on their way out. We all got off-planet in a hurry. And now we’re back in The Republic.”
Jonah experienced a tremendous relief, like a lightness running all through him. He felt thin and insubstantial, as if he were scarcely present in his body at all. His eyes watered, so he closed them and waited for the feeling to pass.
“Captain?”
He opened his eyes again with an effort. “It’s all right, Sergeant. I’m just… tired, is all. What hit us, there at the end?”
“Rocks, Captain. Lots and lots of rocks.”
“Rocks?”
“Ma-Tzu Kai long-range laser strike blew up a boulder close to where we were standing. We kind of got in the way of all the pieces.”
Jonah pondered that for a moment. Pummeled by a ton of rocks. That meshed pretty well with the way he felt. “Ouch,” he said.
“No kidding, Captain.”
“Where are we now?”
“Prefecture VI. Not far from Kyrkbacken, actually. You were out of it for quite a while.”
“So I gathered.” His throat and mouth were dry; he swallowed, trying to ease it. “And the rest of the company? What were our losses?”
“Sixty-two dead, 220 wounded.”
Staggering. Eighteen people came out of that battle unhurt. Eighteen. Echo Company no longer existed as a fighting force. It might eventually be brought back up to strength with new recruits, but that would mean re-creating the unit from scratch. With those casualty figures, not even enough able troopers remained to make up a training cadre.
And what of the rest of the militias? Their losses can’t have been that severe, Jonah thought—they weren’t standing between Ma-Tzu Kai and their goal, like we were. But the losses still had to be heavy. How many more hundreds lay on Kurragin, forever out of the reach of their mourning families?
But still, it was a miracle. More than two hundred of them still lived. Outmanned, outgunned, and ordered into a suicide charge, and most were still alive. He felt the pain of each death, but marveled that it hadn’t been more.
He closed his eyes again, feeling moisture well up in them, and letting it flow. “What a troop,” he said. “What a bloody good troop.”
“Roger that.”
“Bunch of rookies. Probably didn’t even know they should all be dead.”
Footsteps sounded in the hall outside. A medic came in, all brisk efficiency. “Time to change your dressings, Sergeant Turk.”
He wheeled Turk away, leaving Jonah alone and empty, staring at the sterile white light above. He wasn’t alone for long before he heard more footsteps, two sets this time.
The footsteps turned out to belong to a woman he didn’t recognize, in the uniform of a Knight of the Sphere, and a civilian man in a well-cut suit. The civilian had a vaguely familiar face, Jonah thought… had he seen it before on the tri-vid news? He didn’t know, and trying to remember was too much work.
The Knight was smiling. “Captain Levin! It’s good to see you awake at last.”
At last? Jonah wondered silently. How long was I—
The civilian spoke before he could say anything. “The Republic owes you a very great debt, Captain.”
Even when healthy, Jonah would have been pressed to come up with a good response to that remark. In his current condition, there was no chance.
“If you hadn’t held the hill,” the Knight said, “House Ma-Tzu Kai would have controlled the whole valley. They would have smashed into us as soon as they could. It would have been a rout.”
“It—it was…” He ran out of words, uncertain what he was supposed to say to a statement like that. “Orders,” he said finally. “We had orders.”
The Knight said nothing, but she nodded, and he saw from her face that she understood. “I am Lady Maya Avellar,” she said. “And this is Senator Geoffrey Mallowes from Skye. He is here to convey The Republic’s thanks in person.”
“Indeed,” said Mallowes. “We had some quite vigorous debate, you might like to know, on the question of exactly how the Senate should honor your valiant defense of Prospect Hill.”
“‘My defense’ …my company, you mean. I wasn’t the only one up there.” Jonah pushed the words through cracked lips.
The Senator continued as if Jonah hadn’t spoken. “There was considerable discussion as to what decoration might be appropriate—there was even some controversy over whether a member of a planetary militia, even one on loan to The Republic for a specific campaign, would be eligible for any of The Republic’s awards—but in the end the Council of Paladins trumped us.” Jonah heard a strange note in Mallowe’s voice that, had his mind been sharper, he might have been able to recognize. “They have recognition for you that is likely beyond anything the Senate can offer.”
He turned to Lady Avellar, his expression seeming to sour. She spoke. “The Paladins of the Sphere are pleased to offer you thanks for your heroic actions, and to inform you of your appointment as a Knight of the Sphere.”
Jonah’s face hurt, his throat hurt and his lips hurt, but despite all that he almost laughed. Reward? Becoming a Knight, with the heightened profile and notoriety that came with it, seemed as much curse as reward.
“My company,” he said, stifling a laugh in a way that looked like he was choking a sob. “Reward my company first.”