It was hard to imagine the world changing much, for the loss of a single person.
Jack laughed to himself, lifting his head and breathing in the cool sea breeze that rushed over him. The waters of the strait sparkled in the brilliant sunshine, and he glanced around the park. It was a good thing none of the passers-by could read his thoughts—that last one sounded a bit suicidal.
But what difference did a single person make, anyway?
His hometown hadn’t changed much since the war started. Some things were harder to find in shops, but in general people in Vancouver just lived their lives like always. They went to work, raised their families, worried about taxes. The usual. His folks were thrilled to see him, as always, but this time he just couldn’t stomach being paraded around to all their friends. He wasn’t some hero—he was just a tired guy who wanted a rest.
Coming down to Bridge Park had been a good idea, he decided. Leaving the crowded mass of the city behind, he’d ridden the train south through the razed land and out onto the delta. Rice paddies stretched to every horizon, blurring the line between land, river and sea. And then, in the shadow of the ruined supports of the bridge, the park rose like a garden oasis. He wasn’t the only person who’d had the idea today, either, and the park was lifted by the shrieks of children playing on the fun zone behind him.
Sitting on his bench, Jack took in the sights and sounds of his little corner of the world. In the distance over the water he could see the dark, low shapes of the islands, and there was the constant movement of skycraft heading to and from Vancouver’s big sister Victoria, the city located on the largest island. He sometimes wondered why the State didn’t build a new bridge to the islands, but then he glanced up at the massive towers of ancient concrete looming over him, and realized that a new bridge might cheapen the sacrifices symbolized by the old.
A man sat down at the other end of the bench. He returned Jack’s polite nod.
“Beautiful day,” he said.
“Welcome to the West Coast summer,” Jack replied. “Should be like this for the next, oh, three months or so.”
A smile stretched across plain features, eyes casting around in appreciation before returning with a sudden interest.
“We’ve met before, I think,” the man said, turning slightly. “Is your name Jack?”
“Uhh, yeah.” He studied the man anew. Middle-aged, middle-build, nothing remarkable about his face—but he did look vaguely familiar.
“I’m Sasha Korolev,” he said. “We met in Normandy, during the Sirius campaign.” His face split in a good-natured smile. “You stole my seat for a briefing, I think.”
Jack laughed as the memory came rushing back. He really had been the personification of a “dumb subbie” in his day. He made to rise from the bench.
“Am I stealing your seat now, sir?”
Korolev chuckled and waved him back down.
“There are no uniforms here, Jack. I’m just another citizen enjoying the day. I don’t mean to disturb you, either, if you were looking for solitude.” He shifted as if to leave.
“No, no, please.” Jack motioned for him to stay, realizing suddenly that a fellow veteran to talk to might be just what he needed. “What brings you to Vancouver?”
“I travel all over Terra with my job.” He shrugged. “I had a meeting here and figured I’d come down and see the great bridge.”
Jack cast his eyes up again at the massive stanchions towering up out of the waves. Any sign of the old bridge deck had long since fallen away or been removed, and all that remained was the pair of towers that had once supported the soaring arc stretching from here all the way to the first of the islands on the horizon.
“It’s a beautiful place,” Jack said, “and I’ve been here tons of times, but it still moves me.”
“It’s hard to imagine such a peaceful place being the site of such a great sacrifice,” Korolev agreed.
“From what I’ve seen, most places are peaceful until we get there.” It was a cheeky statement, Jack knew, and he was relieved to see this senior Corps officer simply nod. They sat in silence for a long moment, the breeze gusting over them.
“Are you with one of the ships right now?” Korolev asked.
“Admiral Bowen. I was in Frankfurt, but she was destroyed over Thor.”
“Sorry to hear that. Lifeboats aren’t fun.”
“Oh, I wasn’t even on board when it happened. I was extracting some of your troopers from the surface.”
“Did you successfully retrieve them?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
The quiet earnestness of Korolev’s expression made Jack pause. He thought back, trying to recall if Korolev’s name had been listed as one of the senior commanders in the Valhalla theater.
“Were they your troopers?”
“No… but every soldier is valuable, Jack. Any time one lives instead of dies, it’s a good day.”
Jack’s mind flashed back to images of Master Rating Daisy Singh. She’d had a great laugh, but every time he tried to remember it he was flooded by the image of her dead face, frozen in mouth-open shock from the slug that had torn through her.
“I wish we had more good days.”
Korolev was gazing up at the bridge, but he turned at that.
“Do you want to talk about it, my friend? No ranks, no roles. Just two guys shooting the shit, as they say.”
“I guess you’ve seen your fair share of shit.”
“Yeah, I was a troop commander in the Dog Watch, and I did a bit of time in Special Forces.”
“Really? Can I ask what you did in the ASF?”
“You can ask…” Korolev’s grim smile said the rest.
“I get it,” Jack said, leaning in. “Not so much the details, but can I ask you another question about it?”
“Go ahead.”
“How did you deal with it? I realize that it’s our job to go into harm’s way, and I guess I’m okay with that. But the shit we do sometimes… And lots of people die.”
Jack already guessed that he wasn’t going to get the standard hoo-rah speech from this Corps officer, but even so the response surprised.
“It sucks, Jack. It really sucks.”
A cloud drifted over the bridge towers, and the wind suddenly carried a chill.
“But how do you deal with it? You’ve been in for what, thirty years?”
“Thirty-seven.”
“How have you not taken your assault rifle and put it in your own mouth at some point?”
Korolev pulled his jacket closed, nodding thoughtfully.
“I’ve had enough troopers do that, Jack, and it makes me want to do it myself every time, but I never have.” His eyes rose to hold Jack’s with their quiet intensity. “Because I’ve always had other troopers who are still alive and relying on me. I could never turn my back on those people who are relying on me to get them home.”
Images of the wild descent to the shattered base on Thor flooded Jack’s memory. Of taking out the ground batteries, of dodging fire, of landing on the roof and getting the troopers on board. He hadn’t known it at the time, but Thomas had been one of those troopers he’d saved. Thomas Kane had been relying on him—Jack Mallory—to get him home.
Yet so had Daisy Singh.
“I guess what really gets me,” he said suddenly, “is just how much we rely on luck. We get all this training, and all this equipment, but even if we do everything right, sooner or later some lucky shot snuffs us out.”
“When I was a young officer I heard my troops call that ‘Athena’s Whim’—named for the bitchy Greek war goddess.”
“We pilots just call it bullshit bad luck.”
“Well, I guess you don’t get the same training in classical literature as the Corps.”
Laughter burst forth from his throat. It must have been audio books, since it was widely assumed most troopers couldn’t read. Although, he considered, his old friend Katja had been an opera singer before joining the Corps.
“All that good training, gone with a single bullet.” Korolev sat back. “The war is such a huge thing—it’s hard to think that any one of us can actually make a difference.”
Jack couldn’t believe how similar his own thoughts were to this senior officer’s. Maybe he wasn’t crazy… or traitorous… after all.
“But rising to a senior rank must help,” he said. “Now your decisions can affect much bigger things than just a lone grunt in a trench—or a pilot in a Hawk.”
“In one sense, yes, but in another, I’m powerless because I’m not the one who actually takes action—I just direct others to do so. I might set events in motion, but I can’t control how they turn out.”
“Great, so if I survive my time in the cockpit, then I have years of second-hand guilt to look forward to.”
Korolev sighed, but his expression was sympathetic.
Jack looked out at the bridge again. It was a monument he’d seen since childhood, but now he looked at it with new understanding.
“I wonder if they knew just what they were doing when they blew up the bridge.”
“You mean, did they know they were saving the entire human race?”
“Yeah. I wonder how those people felt when they actively killed their fellow citizens and doomed millions more to death.”
“I think they knew that they weren’t dooming anyone, Jack. The mainland was contaminated, and the virus was spreading fast. Cutting off the islands was the only way to ensure that anybody survived at all.”
“I know, but I wonder if they knew.”
Korolev glanced up at the bridge, then back to Jack.
“They were probably scared to death and hating themselves, but it was an act of tremendous courage that they knew was the right decision, no matter how hard.”
Jack had always been proud to live near the site of the event where humanity’s battle against the MAS outbreak had finally turned. Blowing up the bridge had isolated Victoria and the essential bio-research centers, and allowed work on the vaccine to continue. The act had shocked an already panicked world, but it had given others the courage to do the same. The guns of Kristiansand in Norway had stopped the thousands of boats fleeing continental Europe, and the pilots of Hokkaido had cleared their skies of refugees. Because those sacrifices had been made, the vaccine had been developed in time to deploy and save the lives of billions.
“At least,” Jack said thoughtfully, “the bridge sappers knew why they were doing what they did. It isn’t always the same for soldiers like us.”
“That was definitely the best part of being Special Forces,” Korolev replied. “We knew we were making a difference, and why. Even if the mission was simple and isolated, we knew why it would make a difference. That helped a lot.”
“If only I knew how to apply for Special Forces,” Jack scoffed. Nobody knew where these elite, secret soldiers with their amazing powers came from. Jack had only ever met one—that he knew of—and Suleiman Chang had been one scary individual. He wondered idly if he could find Chang in the network.
“No one applies,” Korolev said. “They’re selected.”
“Oh, well, I’ll just wait then.” It was a joke, but Korolev didn’t laugh, or look away. He continued to regard Jack with that same steady, kind expression. A dawning suspicion swept over Jack.
“So… does anyone ever leave Special Forces?”
“Not really. Sometimes we go back to the regular Fleet or Corps for career postings, but it depends.”
“You were a colonel the last time we met. Has that changed?”
“My rank changes weekly, Jack, depending on what I’m doing, but my real rank is brigadier.”
“What rank is the highest member of the ASF?”
“Brigadier.”
Jack wasn’t sure whether to feel flattered, suspicious, or afraid.
“What was your meeting here in Vancouver?”
“To talk to you, Jack.”
“Why?”
“Special Forces has kept a file on you ever since your little science experiment in Centauria. Your ability to think laterally is remarkable—you have a knack for making connections between things that no one else can see. And, let’s not kid ourselves, you’re just about the most unorthodox pilot in the Fleet.”
Jack stared at the man sitting next to him. Dressed in regular civilian clothes, graying brown hair over nondescript features, with the gentle expression of a professor or a favorite uncle, he was the head of Astral Special Forces—perhaps the most powerful individual alive. And he had come looking for Jack. The surreal nature of this conversation sent a chill through Jack’s body.
“Am I in trouble, sir?”
“Not at all. I just wanted to meet you in person. I wanted to get a sense of who you are.”
“Sorry I’ve been such a downer. This last patrol was tough.”
“I know.”
Of course he did—he was the head of Special fucking Forces. Anger suddenly burned through Jack.
“What do you know?”
“I know that your ship discovered the Toronto derelict. I know that you personally saw some close-in combat with rebel ships. And I know that you lost your crewman.”
“Do you know her name?”
“Yes. Do you want to talk about her?”
“No,” he said firmly. “It’s not like she was my sister, or my friend, or my lover or anything. But she was my responsibility!”
“And bullshit bad luck took her.”
“How the fuck do I deal with that?” Jack suddenly realized that he was shouting, and he noticed the glares of nearby parents. His hand gripped the wooden back of the bench. He felt like screaming at those self-righteous civilians. What the fuck did they know? About anything.
“I was tortured nearly to death,” he whispered, “and all the worlds saw it in their living rooms. I’ve killed hundreds of rebel sailors in their stealth ships, and I created the Dark Bomb—and somehow, sir, I can live with that. But I’ve lost too many people who put their trust in me, because they thought I was capable of keeping them safe. Singh wasn’t the first, but I hope to God she’s the last because if she isn’t, I might be the next one putting an assault rifle in his mouth.”
Silence fell over the bench as Jack stared down at his hands. He could see Korolev’s knee where the brigadier sat facing him.
“I don’t think,” Jack said finally, “I’d be a very good Special Forces person.”
“On the contrary,” came the soft reply, “I think you’re exactly what we need.”
Jack blinked tears from his eyes as he looked up.
“Special Forces,” Korolev continued, “isn’t necessarily what you think. You wouldn’t have to storm enemy positions, set bombs, or assassinate people—leave that for the movies. I need people who have the ability to do remarkable things, and the convictions to make the right decisions for Terra.” He gestured over his shoulder at the bridge monument. “I wish I could have had some of the folks who blew this up.”
“But instead, you got me.”
“I have the entire Terran population to choose from, Jack, and I chose to speak to you.”
“Why would I want to listen to you?”
“Because I’m offering you the chance to make a difference. As just one man, to really make a difference. This war is out of control and too many people—across all human systems—are dying for no reason. I have a plan to end the war, and to help me you won’t need to kill anyone. I need someone with your unique abilities, and you’d be part of an elite team who are as talented and dedicated as you are.”
Jack brushed the moisture from his eyes.
“Are you interested, Jack?”