The Terran Mandate

Copyright © 2016 by
Michael J Lawrence

All Rights Reserved

For DasAlteSoldat and
the Blue Lions

Phear the Poodle.

Forbidden

Shoahn'Fal watched the man crawl in a
circle and claw at the cold desert sands under the Shoahn'Tu night sky, blinded
to everything but the terror ripping his mind apart. Shoahn'Fal felt his
antennae rippling along the top of his head like two snakes writhing in the
ecstasy that spewed out from his own mind. He glared with bulbous eyes set in a
harsh leather face that protruded into a short snout and let out a low growl.
The man crawling on the ground made a sound as if he had been shot and then
rolled over on his back. His eyes twitched so violently, they seemed ready to
burst from their sockets.

Shoahn'Fal had been a priest once. He
had also been a father and a husband. Did the man kicking away from him know
that? He called up the memory, formed it into a crystal-clear vision and thrust
it into his victim's mind. The man gasped and sat very still for just a second.
Then he let out a wail that reached into Shoahn'Fal's very soul.

"Yes," he said. "That's
what it's like. Feel that? Share that with me."

He pushed his hand into the air and the
man screamed again. Together, they reveled in the terror that had been the
night Shoahn'Fal watched his wife and daughter howl in agony as bullets ripped
through their chests and pitched them to the ground. He wrapped himself and his
victim in the agony of watching his people starve and the despair of losing an
entire world to invaders who fought each other over something that did not
belong to them. Shoahn'Fal embraced it all with every fiber of his being,
feeling the anguish flowing between them, through each other's minds and then
back again.

"You didn't know, did you?" he
asked the man.

The man kicked ferociously with boots
made form a synthetic fabric the same color as the sand. Shoahn'Fal studied the
block lettering over the pockets on either side of the soldier's field utility
blouse. He couldn't read the name stenciled over one of them, but he recognized
the emblem and lettering over the other that said TERRAN GUARD. An ornate patch
with more cryptic scribbling he didn't recognize was sewn into the cloth over
the man's shoulder. He did, however, recognize the motto that adorned
everything these humans seemed insistent on smearing with their language: 'That
they shall survive'.

Shoahn'Fal knelt down, folding his tall
thin frame into itself so he could tap the shoulder patch. "Do you know
who that's for?" he asked.

The man was still gasping for air
uncontrollably. Shoahn'Fal closed his eyes for a moment, concentrating to
control something that he was still just discovering. The man's breathing eased
and Shoahn'Fal opened his eyes. The man croaked, as if somebody choking him had
let go of his throat just in time to let him live a moment more.

"It's for you," he said.

"That's right. But have you ever
seen anybody like me?"

"No." The man was still
pushing at the ground with his boots, but his flailing was becoming less
frantic now.

"No, you haven't." Shoahn'Fal
stood back up and looked at the man. Sadness filled his eyes now as he
remembered what it was to be a priest. Whether it was weakness or mercy, he did
not know, but it had been enough, at least for now. Shoahn'Fal flicked his hand
and the man started to crawl away. He watched the man crawl away until he could
barely see the man's form dusted by icy starlight and could barely hear his
whimpering.

Shoahn'Fal turned away from the man and
leaned on a long stick made from the intertwined strands of the tough sinewy
wood of a cord tree. His shoulders rolled forward and he took a deep breath
through his snout. His antennae lay down on top of his head, as if going to
sleep. He stepped out into the night, heading for another encounter with the
forbidden.

As he walked away, he said, "That's
because you failed."

Fallen

He had lived a life of being nowhere. He
needed little to survive - stealing some of it from the Terran Guard in small
ways that they would never notice. A half-filled bottle of water here or a
morsel of food there would find its way to their compost. He lived on discarded
things - that and the occasional root plant he could find and tuck away in a
bag he wore over his shoulder. Attached to a frayed rope made from strips of
wood from a cord tree, the bag looked like it had been made from rags, just
like the robe he wore.

His life droned on this way, from one
day of wandering in one direction to the next day of turning back and doing it
all over again, never venturing more than a day's walk from the Terran Guard
who had not only failed to protect his people, but didn't even know of his
existence.

Something burned inside that kept him
alive, something he did not understand and knew to keep buried deep. It was
forbidden and echoed from another time when such things rampaged through his
world.

But then he had let it loose. The
Forbidden had come pouring out of him, bursting through the sentries of his
mind who had tired over the years and finally succumbed to the power of that
which all Shoahn' were forbidden to see: themselves.

And now he had tortured a man with it.
His only regret was that he had not done so before - and often. There was
justice in it. But there wasn't enough. He had prayed long and hard, trembling
in the dark, terrified by what he had found inside his own soul. The prayers
didn't last long. The trembling subsided.

He realized it was a beginning.

The Pyramid, the last of its kind, had
been his temple. There, he had practiced his rituals and prayed for
enlightenment, even though there were no Shoahn' left to guide through the
spiritual necessity of The Way. There was the girl and her mother, who carried
on even after he had left countless moons ago, but they were the last and he
had left them there to pray to each other and wind out the days that led to
extinction. The Pyramid had also been a museum of sorts, guardian of reminders
from the past that The Way was the only path to salvation for all.

But it held secrets. The vast expanse of
the Pyramid's interior was a place no Shoahn' eyes had ever seen. The myth
spoke of Old Scrolls that revealed those secrets and he had pocketed on odd
thing called a Revealer before he had left. Perhaps it was lies, nothing more
than tales to compel the masses to relinquish their souls to the teachings of
the priests. But he had dared ask: what if there was more?  It had been his
first brush with the Forbidden and he smiled now as he thought of how childish
it was compared to the things he had done since then.

There was one last step that had carried
him through the gates of the Forbidden and past the point of no return. He had
ventured into the Fallen - that great expanse of desert that was prohibited for
any to enter. He had studied the myth, had burned every line of its ancient
verse into his mind. It began with a walk under the stars as they turned a
certain way. It began with a walk that took him into the depths of the Fallen.

Shoahn'Fal felt the sands of the Fallen
grind against the thick hide of his bare feet. Most of Shoahn'Tu was desolate.
In most places, scrub clung to the dry clay of ancient seabeds and the wind
chiseled deep grooves in the sandstone rises, but none of it compared to the
sweeping desolation of the Fallen. As far as he could see, Shoahn'Fal saw
nothing but sand. Gusts of wind swept over the ground, brushing lone patches 
of sand that rippled like water on a vast ocean and whirled up into the night.

It was clear that nobody could survive
more than a day in this never ending wasteland, so Shoahn'Fal didn't understand
why it had been drilled into the mind of every Shoahn' for generations that
transgressing the Fallen was akin to genocide. As a child, he was taught that
entering the Fallen would awaken a great beast that would consume the world and
wash them all away in a river of fire. As a priest, he made sure that same
lesson was repeated to every Shoahn' from the moment they came into the world.
He thought of all this and waited for the world to end with each step he took.

The end never came. He hunched his
shoulders against the cooling night and pulled the collar of his robe tighter
around his neck. He had decided that once he had crossed the threshold, he
would just keep walking. Soon enough, he would run out of strength and collapse
to the ground. He would start to hallucinate and his throat would dry up and
choke itself closed. He would lose consciousness and then the wind would cover
him over with sand. He accepted all of that because he had been promised the
world would be swept away in fire. If the Shoahn' were to become a whisper in
the night that nobody would ever hear again, then let the same happen to the
humans. Let the fire bear down and burn Shoahn'Tu bare.

The fire never came. Shoahn'Fal crested
a low rise to find himself looking out over another sweeping plain of sand that
stretched out as far as the eye could see. The first of three moons peeked over
the horizon and washed the land with a thin yellow haze. He studied the stars
and waited for them to turn. He stood there, not even counting time so that it
just stopped except for the turning of the sky. He crouched down and peered
into the vastness above him, holding the picture he had formed from the myth in
his mind, not even knowing if the stars would align themselves that way. He
would wait and the stars would either reveal their secret or he would fall over
and be covered up by the wind and sand. The universe would be just. Or it would
not.

Orders

General Lane, Shoan'Tu Marine
Expeditionary Force, commanding, sat around a green plastic table with the
command staff of his regiment - all that was left of the once vaunted Colonial
Marines.

All eyes were on Colonel Dekker as he
scratched the green resin of the conference table top. "The Enforcer
Battalion can carry the main attack," he said. Looking around the table,
he didn't see many believers. Maybe he didn't believe it himself, either, but
it wasn't for the same reasons they were thinking. "We'll do the right
thing."

General Lane's elbows were propped up on
the table and he looked at Dekker with his chin resting on interlaced fingers.
"What we need you to do," he said, "is follow orders."

Well, there it was. Wasn't it?  After
all this time, the question was still out there: Could Colonel Ben Dekker
follow orders?  Or would he make his own mind up about what was important when
the time came and leave the rest of the regiment in a bind?  He knew exactly
what they were all thinking. They wouldn't be launching an attack on the
Highlands if he had followed orders. The colony would still be tilling its
fields. You bet, and the Paladin wouldn't have any Cataphracts. Where would we
be then?  He stared back at them, thinking he might burn that thought into
there minds if he glared hard enough.

"It's different this time," he
said.

General Lane's eyes glazed over.
"Oh?"

"For one thing, there won't be any
civilians up there."

Colonel Mason, a warrior of African
descent that Dekker respected more than the rest - except for Major Walker, of
course - stared at him with half closed eyes. He put his own hands on the table
and interlaced his thick fingers.

"Yeah, we know."

Dekker closed his eyes and let the air
in his lungs out through his nose, but he couldn't help it. He stood up and
brought his fist down on the table hard enough to shake it. Everyone flinched,
but nobody looked away or moved back. Lane held the table down with his elbows
hard enough to keep his end of it from shaking.

"I was right, goddammit,"
Dekker said. He looked around the room and settled his gaze on Major Walker.
The commanding officer of the Cataphract company knew what he was talking
about.

"You ran a good Foot Guard,"
Walker said. And that's all he said. Dekker watched the thought float around
the room. There were orders, and then there was mission. Did they get that? 

"Sit down," General Lane said.

Dekker eased back into his folding
plastic chair and folded his hands on the table. Lane gave him a minute to
settle down his breathing and then said, "I just want to make sure we're
all on the same page here."

Dekker fumed inside. The General had
pushed a button and Dekker had barked just so he could be put in his place.
Again. It wasn't enough to ascertain that he would follow orders. No, they all
had to hear, one more time, how he was an inept Marine still on probation for
something that happened before General Lane was even appointed the MEF
commanding officer. And yet, he was the one who was going to carry the attack.
It was true: there was a difference between orders and mission. It was also
true that there was a difference between giving those orders and genuine
leadership.

General Lane reached for a green plastic
box sitting on the table in front of him and pushed one of its buttons. A video
screen hanging on the wall blinked to life to reveal a tactical chart of the
Highlands.

"The mission is a deliberate attack
to take back the Highlands, 500 meters beyond the MEF perimeter here."
Lane worked the cursor on the monitor and swept it across the top of the map.
"Colonel Mason will take his first battalion with a platoon of armor
attached and pin the left flank. Colonel Quadish will do the same on the right
flank. Colonel Dekker will push right up the middle here and break the line.
Once that's accomplished, the flanking forces will enfilade the enemy and push
them in towards the middle. At that point, the Guard will either have to wither
while we turn their flanks or they'll have to withdraw. Either way, we should
hold the Highlands when it's over."

Lt. Simmons cleared her throat.

"Oh, right," Lane said.
"Simmons will take her recce platoon and scout the right flank to screen
for any Terran Guard forces we aren't already aware of."

Dekker eyed Lt. Simmons. Her bonnet of
red hair that bounced just above her shoulder - and a chest that filled out her
field utility blouse in a way that no man could ignore - distracted him from
the fact that she was the most capable recon leader he had ever known. But it
only distracted him for a moment. He knew better. She was as deadly as she was
beautiful and reminded him of what, in the simplest terms possible, they were
fighting for. That didn't mean he could trust the new commander of Bravo One
Nine to keep the enemy situation up to date. That had yet to be proven. He
wanted to say something about it, but he had his own merits to prove. He just
blinked and looked away.

General Lane snapped off the monitor.
"Any questions?"

They had been over the plan already.
They had rehearsed the plan in the tacsims. Then they had discussed the results
of the plan. What nobody had done was mention how bad the plan was.

Major Walker said, "Sir, if we
could bring up the Cats and support the middle, I would feel a lot more
confident about breaking that line."

"Negative. We've been over this,
Major. You will keep your Cats in reserve. I'll assess the situation as it develops
and call you up if we need you. I don't want to expose your Cats to unnecessary
risk. They're the only ones we have."

A very bad plan. Dekker's neck ached as
he strained to keep from shaking his head.

General Lane stood up. Everyone around
the table stood up with him. "Alright then," he said. "We're off
the LD tomorrow at zero six. Dismissed."

Everyone eyed Dekker as they filed out
of the room, but the look in their eyes had changed. Looking back at Colonel
Mason, Dekker could almost hear him say, "Sorry, man." It wouldn't
have been an apology - more like sympathy for the man who was stuck in the
middle of a plan they all knew wasn't going to work.

Both Dekker and Major Walker remained
standing where they were and sat back down after the others had left.

"You can't let him get under your
skin like that," Major Walker said.

"I know. That guy just rubs my fur
the wrong way." Dekker let his hand drop to the table with a slap.
"What is it with you, anyway?  You're not exactly Johnny Eagle Scout when
it comes to following orders and he doesn't seem to notice that."

Walker smiled. "It's because I have
the Cats."

"So, basically you're saying he's a
chickenshit."

"Something like that."

Dekker drummed his fingers on the table.
"Well, ours is not to question why -"

"Ben." Walker's voice was low
as he fixed his gaze on Dekker. "Be careful out there. If you need to call
me up -"

"I know," Dekker said. "I
know."