Rhodes and the rest of Battalion 1 stepped out onto the Coleridge Station loading dock. A giant Ravager carrier sat parked there waiting to take the battalion to the Emal wars.
The ship’s crew buzzed around loading goods, supplies, and equipment onto the ship. Rhodes and his people had to stand off to one side while the crew wheeled the battalion’s nine capsules on board.
The capsules looked strange outside the barracks. They looked like some kind of alien pods or growth chambers. They didn’t look like anything a human person would sleep in.
None of the Ravager’s crew made eye contact with Rhodes or his people. The battalion followed the capsules on board.
The crewmen anchored the capsules in a separate hold, hooked them all up to the Ravager’s power supply, and left without saying a word to Rhodes or any of his people.
“We’ll need to keep track of the battalion’s conversion cycle schedule,” Fisher pointed out. “We won’t have the Coleridge Station circadian timeline to tell us when to go through conversion cycles.”
“What happens if we get stuck in battle and miss a conversion cycle?” Rhodes asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t want to find out.”
Rhodes didn’t reply. Marvelous. He didn’t know much about what he could expect from this misguided adventure, but he was sure of one thing.
He and his people would get stuck in battle somewhere. They would get separated from these capsules.
The battalion’s schedules would become erratic and unpredictable the way things always got erratic and unpredictable during battles.
Everyone in this battalion would probably become even less stable than they were now. Their ability to cope would deteriorate.
It was too late now because the Ravager was already lifting off with Rhodes and the battalion on board.
The crew didn’t come back to check on the battalion—just in case Rhodes somehow forgot that he was outside the rest of the human race now.
The crew had set up this hold the same as the battalion’s barracks at Coleridge Station. A collection of tables and a computer terminal desk sat opposite the capsules. Thackery sat down at the terminal and checked the screen.
“This says the Ravager is named, Ero,” she announced. “I wonder if the Legion will transport us on this ship all the time now.”
“Of course they won’t transport us on this ship all the time now,” Coulter told her. “It will drop us off at the Emal wars and that will be the end of it. We’ll never set foot back on another ship because we’ll all be dead.”
“Do you mind?” Lauer snarled. “Some of us are still trying to live our lives here.”
“Why bother?” Coulter asked. “You’re dead. We all are. We were dead before we even woke up at Coleridge Station.”
Fuentes squirmed in his seat at the table. “I don’t want to be dead.”
“If you really want to get philosophical about it, you could say we were all dead before we were ever born,” Rhinehart pointed out. “What’s the point in fretting about it? It’s gonna happen someday—one way or the other.”
Fuentes glanced back and forth between them and winced. “I don’t want to die.”
“This says the trip is supposed to take eight weeks,” Thackery announced. “As soon as we enter our first conversion cycle, we’ll stay in stasis until we get there.”
Rhodes headed for his capsule. “Sounds like a plan. Wake me up when we get there.”
“Hey! You can’t just abandon us here!” Dietz exclaimed.
“You’re a grown man. You can handle it.” Rhodes stretched out on his mattress. “You can’t get into any trouble here. If you’re really worried about it, go into your conversion cycle and stay there. Nothing can go wrong.”
Lauer snorted. “Something can always go wrong.”
“All the more reason for me to be asleep when it happens.” Rhodes shut his eyes. “See you all in the morning.”
The prongs locked into the back of his head and the capsule cover closed over him, but he didn’t fall asleep right away. He’d only been awake for a few hours before he boarded this ship.
Fisher magnified himself in front of Rhodes’s closed eyes. Fisher had developed a habit of making himself smaller whenever Rhodes talked to someone else or concentrated on anything else.
Then Fisher would expand himself to take up Rhodes’s whole view whenever they were having a private conversation just between the two of them.
“Would you like me to monitor them through the interface while you sleep, Captain?” Fisher asked.
“No. Leave them alone. They can take care of themselves.”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” Fisher murmured.
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“It’s a figure of speech, pal. They don’t need me babysitting them.”
“What if one of them malfunctions on the way there?”
“Then their SAMs’ programming should wake me up—not that I’d be able to do anything about it if they did malfunction. If anything goes wrong, we’re up the creek either way. At least we’ll die in our sleep—which is more than I can say for dying on the battlefield.”
“You’re starting to sound like Coulter. When did you become so gloomy?”
“I’ve been like this all along. Don’t you remember? None of these people is fit to go into combat and neither am I. If this was a real Legion unit, we would all be locked up for mental disturbance.”
Fisher didn’t answer right away. “You’re right about that.”
“This can only end one way. What’s the point of fooling ourselves about it?”
“Why are you doing it, then? Why do you consent to go into battle?”
Rhodes kept his eyes shut and settled back on the bed even though he was already in it. “If I become too unstable, you can put me down in my sleep.”
“I couldn’t do that!” Fisher gasped. “How can you even suggest that?”
“That’s what a true friend would do. Just put me out of my misery—and pass the word to your fellow SAMs to do the same thing. Just end this nightmare. You’ll save us all a whole lot of time, pain, and trouble.”
Fisher didn’t answer at all, and the next instant, Rhodes woke up from his conversion cycle.
He sensed immediately that it had been a long one—as long or longer than the one he’d woken up from when he first got his implants.
He didn’t remember where he was, but there was one glaring difference this time. No doctors stood by his bed to welcome him back to the land of the living.
Fisher blinked into view in front of Rhodes’s eyes. “Welcome back, Captain,” Fisher began in his smooth, calming voice. “You may feel weak, nauseous, and disoriented at first, but that should pass in a few minutes.”
Rhodes groaned. “Where am I?”
“You’re on board the Ravager Ero en route to the Emal wars with Battalion 1. The rest of the battalion is waking up. They’re talking to their SAMs now.”
Rhodes raised his hand to run his fingers through his hair. That’s when he felt his implants. His metal fingers touched the skin of his face….and he remembered everything.
He groaned again and rolled onto his side trying to block it all out, but it wouldn’t go away.
At least the feeling of his implants eating into his bones didn’t drive him to insanity the way they did at first. He understood that sensation now.
He eventually dragged himself up into a sitting position. He was the first to sit up.
Rhinehart’s and Henshaw’s capsule covers were both open, but neither of them had their eyes open.
Rhodes sat slumped on the edge of his capsule waiting for his thoughts to clear.
“The Ero is in orbit over the planet Ohait,” Fisher went on. “The Emal have secured half the planet. They’re driving the Legion back toward the beach on the Bazaid continent’s east coast.”
Rhodes rested his head in his hand. He knew enough about the Emal war to know what he’d be facing down there. He didn’t look forward to doing it all again.
Rhinehart and Henshaw finally sat up. The other members of their battalion started to stir.
Rhodes got to his feet. He still felt weak, groggy, and sick to his stomach, but he wanted his people to see him standing up. Someone had to.
He checked the terminal and confirmed everything Fisher told him—not that Rhodes doubted it. He just wanted to see it for himself.
Thousands of Emal teemed across the rest of the continent. Their base ships occupied strategic intervals across the whole expanse. The aliens could retreat there or launch new swarms from any of those ships.
The Aemon Legion occupied a thin stretch of beach all the way on the continent’s farthest eastern shore. Dusters, Predators, and a few Ravagers hovered there to give the ground troops cover.
The Legion bombarded the Emal exactly the way they did on Luluna. Every shot of fusion fire, Viper missiles, and rattler guns took out dozens or even hundreds of Emal.
Nothing the Legion did made a dent in the Emal’s numbers. Rhodes didn’t even see the Emal releasing additional numbers. They already had enough people on the ground. The Legion couldn’t even get off the beach.
It was even worse than that. Legion Ravagers descended over the ocean trying to lift the troops off. The Ravagers couldn’t find room to land without crushing the troops they were trying to rescue.
If this went on much longer, the Emal would drive the Legion troops right into the ocean.
Rhodes groaned and covered his eyes again—and not because of the disorientation of waking up after such a long conversion cycle. This was as bad as he feared.
“Should we come up with a battle plan?” Fisher asked.
“We can’t do that until we report to our superiors on the ground. We’re deployed with the regular Legion. Whoever is running this nightmare will have some idea of what they want us to do.”
“Are you sure?” Fisher asked. “I don’t think anyone outside the project even knows that Battalion 1 exists.”
Rhodes’s head shot up. “You mean…..no one knows we’re coming?”
“I don’t think so. Battalion 1 is classified at the highest level of Legion security. No one on the battlefield has that kind of clearance.”
“Jesus Christ!” Rhodes snarled.
“You okay, Captain?” Rhinehart asked.
Rhodes forced himself to look up. “Sure. I couldn’t be better. How are you feeling?”
Rhinehart nodded. “I guess I’ll live.”
Rhodes made one last check of the battlefield. A certain General Kaufman was in command of the Ohait campaign. Three colonels under him supervised the platoons on the ground.
One of the colonels was Merriman Jenner, the same colonel Rhodes served under on Luluna. They knew each other personally off the battlefield.
Rhodes went through a confused jumble of emotions when he saw the man’s name on the command roster—and then Rhodes saw something else that made his heart stop.
“Is something wrong, Captain?” Fisher asked.
“The 249th Platoon is here. It’s my old platoon…..and so is the 278th….and the 217th. I fought with all of them on Luluna. I was fighting with them when I got hit. They’re the last people who saw me….”
He stopped himself from saying they were the last people who saw him alive. He didn’t even know what that meant.
Was he not alive because he got hit on the battlefield? Was he not alive because he was a robot or as good as one? Was he not alive because everyone he knew and cared about thought he was dead?
Which of those made him not alive? He’d been telling himself all this time that he was still human.
He felt less human the closer he got to real people. Spending time with the battalion in their barracks at Coleridge Station—that was easy compared to this.
He didn’t have to even read his former comrades’ names on the roster. He knew almost every man in all three platoons. He’d fought and bled with them. He lost his life trying to save them.
Fisher interrupted his thoughts. “The Ero captain Parker Ackerman is indicating our descent onto the beach. He says we can deploy as soon as we touch down.”
“Where will he be when we need to go through conversion cycles?”
“I’ll have to let him know to make himself available. The ship’s itinerary indicates that it will remain in orbit while we’re on the ground.”
Rhodes compressed his lips. Brilliant. That would introduce another layer of complexity to an already chaotic mission.
He didn’t say anything about that to the rest of the battalion. He went through the hold checking on all his people, interfacing with their SAMs, and making sure everyone was functioning well enough to deploy.
End of chapter 23.