Enemy (35 page)

     insight.

     WE SHALL STRIKE FIRST.

    
WE SHALL STRIKE FIRST.

     the black closes

     The interface gauntlets slid from her hands.

     A mesh of wires released her body from its brutally silken embrace. Her thin form sat alone in the battle chamber of the Judas Mara.

     Sapphire.

     She let the waves of exhaustion sweep through her, and she shuddered with the emotion of the battle. She began to shake, and she wept.

     In the chamber, she seemed to float in a dizzying field of debris, remnants of the last wave of the Enemy horde. She reached out, as if she could touch one of the shards. The spherical battle chamber holoprojector was far from top-of-the-line, but it was still unsettlingly realistic.

     Forehead on her knees, she embraced herself in the blackness and sobbed silent tears.

     (sapphire?)

     She wiped away the tears. A voice in her mind. Mara.

     “What is it?” Her voice was harsh. Choked.

     (sensors detect an incoming vessel.)

     “Another wave already?” Such pain in her voice.

     (no. it’s a judas. gethsemane jacob.)

     Silence.

     (sapphire?)

     “Dock him. Secure the comlines.”

     (done. jacob requests immediate attention.)

     “Open the line.”

     (*judas gethsemane jacob requests judas golgotha mara commander sapphire—*)

     “This is she.”

     (*pattern identification confirmed. by order of the first circle judas command, you’re ordered to cease operations in this alternity and—*)

     “What?”

     (*all operations in this alternity are to cease. your fleet is being recalled to judas command to await new orders. this altwhen is to be abandoned—*)

      
“That can’t be right… Abandoned? What you’re asking’s impossible.”

     (*your orders are to—*)

     “We can’t leave it to the Black; we’re struggling to keep ahead of them as is. If we leave, everything we’ve fought for for... Mara—how long?”

     (present engagement two years ten months two weeks four—))

     “-days. Exactly. Do you think we’ll just leave all of this?”

     (*i don’t expect you to agree with the orders, but that’s what they are. orders.*)

     “Fuck your orders! We’re fighting a war here. Has Command forgotten about us? For months, you send no word from the Stream, and then when you do, it’s to pack up and let the Enemy take all that we’ve been fighting for—”

     (*sapphire—*)

     “No, we don’t have the flashy new equipment you Stream boys have, but we’re still fucking Judas! You think I like fighting a war with a fleet that’s falling apart, a fleet that needed replacement years ago? We’ve lost three ships this month alone because of pattern destabilization.”

     (*sapphire—)

     “Sometimes I thought that you’d left us out here to die. But we’re covering your asses from the real Enemy. Fuck your orders. If this Altwhen falls—”

     (*a situation’s developed that requires the evacuation of this alternity. do you think i don’t know that the altwhen campaigns are critical? trust me, this situation could eliminate the need for the containment forces.*)

     Sapphire was silent for a moment, looking at her shaking hands. Mara was becoming concerned.

     “Jacob,” gentle, calm, “Please, Jacob. Don’t you see? I—We can’t just abandon this alternity. If they ever broke through... Can’t you tell Command—”

     (*sapphire, i’m sorry, but this altwhen has to be evacuated. it’s critical for you to leave—*)

     “I can’t leave! What do you know about this war? What do you know?”

     She trailed off into bitter, confused tears.

     (sapphire, please. it’s okay. you can go now. i’ll speak to jacob. don’t worry.)

     “Mara, I—”

     (sapphire, go get some sleep.)

     “Mara—”

     (please, ’phire. go get some sleep.)

     She stood wearily, and the floor below her descended from the battle chamber. The Judas sentiences were left alone.

     (*mara, is she… is she fit to remain in command?*)

     (how dare you? she was right. you stream judas don’t know what this war is about.)

     (*we have our own war to fight out there, golgotha. we aren’t cowards.*)

     (of course not, oh mighty gethsemane. you just sit out there and pray that we in the outwhens are able to keep this enemy out of the stream.)

     (*this is sedition.*)

     (sedition? maybe, but i never asked for this... this war, this pain. don’t worry. we’ll summon our fleet. we’ll abandon this altwhen. we’ll go back to the stream, don’t think that we won’t resent it.)

     (*why does this altwhen mean so much to you?*)

     (it matters nothing to me, but it’s everything to sapphire.)

     (*why?*)

     (this was her when before the enemy splintered it into this hell. she lost her family. her friends. her world. then she became one of us.)

     (*and?*)

     (and today, before we stopped the black’s advance, we lost two golgotha and seven thousand droptroops. seven thousand patterns, gone forever. that’s just in one day. we’ve been here for almost three years.)

     (*so what was so different about today?*)

     (today sapphire’s twin sister was killed.)

     silence.

     Scalding steam billowed from the shower stall, creating a fog that encompassed the frail figure within.

     Sapphire.

     She stood under the jets of water, hoping that somehow they would wash her pain away. Her hair hung in her face as the rivulets streamed down her body, bent in exhaustion.

     She had won the battle, but lost her sister.

     It wasn’t her fault, but somehow... it was.

     Sapphire lapsed into a semi-sleep.

     (*i’m sorry. i didn’t know.*)

     (exactly. no one in the stream knows what we go through out here. we fight a different enemy. we fight ourselves. we’re expendable.)

     (*the golgotha aren’t expendable, mara.*) 

     (don’t condescend. i’ll alert my fleet.)

     (*you’ll accompany me back to the stream?*)

     (yes.)

     She had been the youngest person ever to be the captain of a Judas, achieving that honor at age fourteen.

     That had been only two years before, but to her it felt like an eternity.

     Sapphire was sixteen.

     Command had much respect for her abilities, but had had some reservations about placing a teenager into a battle situation in a position of command. So they had given her the com of the very fleet she had saved from destruction in a nondescript alternity.

     It may have been an unimportant Altwhen for Command, but it was personal to Sapphire. It was an alternity of the When in which she had grown up, a world in which she had lived, loved. Her world.

     So long ago, when the Enemy had swept upon her When, a solitary Galilee Judas had come from the sky. Her parents placed the twins Sapphire and Jade aboard the vessel and remained behind. There had only been room for the children on board, or so they had been told.

     Rising through the atmosphere, the vessel was rocked by an explosion as the Enemy tore into one of its weapons nacelles. Sapphire and Jade were placed on an emergency escape vessel with several members of the crew. The pod jettisoned, and slipped through the Enemy forces undetected as the Judas was consumed by the damned.

     She sensed motion below her, around her.

     “Mara? Are we shadowing?”

     (yes, sapphire. i’m sorry.)

     “So this is it? We’re just leaving? Aren’t we even going to leave a skeleton crew here? Someone, anyone, just to make sure they don’t—”

     (i’m sorry. the fleet’s been recalled.)

     “But the Black will—”

     (i know.)

     It seemed like a lifetime ago, the rescue from the senseless darkness of space by a fleet of Judas. Her escape pod had been tractored into the docking bay of a Gethsemane-class vessel named Magdalene, and the twins’ new life had begun.

     From their temporary refugee quarters, the sisters watched on a viewscreen the world they had known being fought for by two unspeakably powerful forces.

     Magdalene weaved throughout the war zone, avoiding enemy fire, but doing little damage against the indomitable foe. In the end, the Judas were slaughtered by the monstrous black entity that came from beyond the stars and between times.

     With a hail of the purest white light, Magdalene broke through the Enemy line into safety.

     (((how can this be?)))

     (we received the orders directly from gethsemane jacob. command ordered us to abandon this when.)

     (~why?~)

     (jacob offered no explanation.)

     (((can we trust them?)))

     (of course not.)

     Shocked. Confused. Shattered.

     Their parents were dead. Their world was no more.

     Rescued from certain death, barely nine years old, they were drafted into the service of preventing a Purpose they could not possibly comprehend.

     They eventually recovered from the despair caused by the horrifying events tearing their reality apart and set about the task of pursuing the beings from the future that had killed their parents and their world, the Enemy. The Black.

     “Mara?”

     (yes, sapphire?)

     “Do... Do you think that...”

     (what, sapphire?)

     “Could she still be alive back there with... with the Black? What if they captured her group? What if—”