Lost Galaxy: The Complete Series (Books 1-6) (Complete Series Box Sets), page 73
“No!” Bowman yelled into the link. “The Pterans are NOT firing. The colonists launched a preemptive strike against the Pterans, but the Pterans are NOT firing back.”
She frowned at something out of sight. “Are you sure about that? How do you know the Pterans didn’t strike the first blow?”
“Check the sensor grid. I’m transmitting the Coyote’s records to you now. We saw the whole thing. The colonists struck first and you can see on the sensor grid that the Pterans are not retaliating even under a full-scale assault by the colonists.” Bowman’s voice shook. “Please, Ma’am. Don’t order the Guard to fire on the Pterans or you’ll torpedo the whole peace agreement.”
She hesitated and then nodded. “I’ll play it your way, Sergeant. What do you want us to do?”
“Tell the Legionnaires to fall in behind the Coyote.”
He only had to check his instruments once to see that they were doing it. Forty ships wheeled out of Ninida and dropped into the Coyote’s wake.
Bowman gritted his teeth and pulled the ship into a sharp curve. He dove between the colonists and the Pterans. The hives sat still. No laser cannon fire erupted from their huge domed surfaces.
The Assailants swirled around them in tight clusters, but they didn’t shoot at the colonists, either. They didn’t even try to stop the colonists from landing dozens of shots at the hives.
Bowman’s hand trembled on the controls. Never in a million years would he have thought he would find himself in a situation where he would fire on Republican citizens, but he didn’t see any other way. He couldn’t let all his efforts come to nothing like this.
He swerved to cut the colonists off from the hives. “Neutralize the colonists!” he ordered into the communications link. “Defend the Pterans!”
He didn’t really believe the Republican Guard or the Legionnaires would do it. Every one of these pilots had spent their lives fighting the Pterans and defending Republican colonies from the invaders.
He expected them to peel away, or worse, to turn their guns on the Pterans, too, but they didn’t. They wheeled in behind him and spread into a fan formation.
All Bowman’s old instincts from his days in the Guard came back in an instant. “Fire!”
The formation pelted into the colonists and repeater fire scattered outward. The Guard destroyed ten ships and the colonists hurtled past them with a clear path to the hives.
“Come about for rear assault!” Bowman ordered.
The Guard responded instantly. Their ships crisscrossed each other’s paths to reform in another deadly wave of gunfire. They raced up behind the colonists and hounded the colonists right under the hive’s noses, but still the Pterans didn’t fire. Whatever Zak was telling them worked. The hives loomed huge and black and silent. Nothing moved down there.
“Open fire!” Bowman ordered and all the Republican vessels cut loose together.
The hives’ enormous bulk unnerved the colonists and they balked. The Guard pummeled them and the rest of the ships smashed to pieces against the hives’ sides.
Bowman pulled out of his dive in time to see more rockets launching from Marth. “Return to the colonies!” he ordered.
The Republican ships obeyed without hesitation. They twined into each other and reformed plunging for the colonies. They made it halfway to Marth and split into three groupings.
Bowman pivoted the Coyote toward Salvenus. Fourteen Legionnaires fell in with him and they all streaked into the atmosphere.
Rockets torched past the ship aiming for the hives. The Coyote dropped over buildings and houses and Bowman spotted individual people down there. They manned giant assault guns the Republican Guard gave them to defend themselves against the Pterans.
Bowman shifted his hand off the helm to the lateral guns. Could he really do this? Could he really shoot at his own people?
An answering boom echoed from out of sight. “The Republican Guard is assaulting the colony on Gillion,” ZAK reported. “They are leveling the colony to the ground.”
That gave Bowman as much permission as he needed, but he still couldn’t bring himself to fire. The Coyote rocketed over the colony and beyond, but the Legionnaires didn’t follow.
They spiraled over the site and devastated it with countless shots. They targeted houses and food warehouses. They blasted the whole colony to smithereens.
Bowman spun back to intervene when one of the gunners yanked his weapon around and took aim for the Coyote. For a split second, Bowman looked down right into the man’s face.
Bowman’s instincts kicked in and he fired, but the gunner on the ground shot first. The Coyote’s weapons erupted and the assault gun went up in a blooming cloud of fire and searing heat. The explosion rocked the little ship, and the next minute, the rocket hit the Coyote’s side.
The ship twirled and more rockets pounded the hull from all sides. The ship staggered and the engines guttered. Bowman yanked the helm hard to starboard only to get hammered by another barrage coming from port.
So much debris and lead whizzed through the air that he couldn’t see a thing on the sensor grid. He tried to fire, but the port gun wouldn’t respond.
“We’re down one gun!” he yelled over his shoulder.
“Leave it to us!’ Phelps, Akin, and Van Dyke unbuckled and headed for the weapons locker.
“I need your help, too, Maro!” Bowman called. “ZAK…”
“The Assailants are still holding their position in space, Lieutenant. The Pterans are not engaging in the battle at all.”
Maro stumbled into Bowman. “Use the communications link. Call up as many reserve fighters as the Command Council can send us. How many of the Legionnaires are still in the air?”
A bone-crunching blast cut him off. Maro stumbled against the console and Bowman crouched over the sensor grid searching for any target, but he couldn’t make out anything.
He raised his eyes to the window. At that moment, the cloud of dust and smoke in front of the ship cleared and he looked down at another bank of assault guns.
Ten of them pointed up at him and all Bowman’s doubts evaporated. These were his enemies—the people who would stop the Republic from achieving peace. These people would drive everyone back into war rather than put their old hatred aside.
He pulled the Coyote into the Legionnaires’ formation for another pass across the colony. The other ships’ presence calmed Bowman enough that he no longer acted on adrenaline alone.
He knew exactly what he was doing and he took every shot with deliberate accuracy. He smashed every building and every combatant he could see until nothing remained.
The group streaked past the colony’s smoldering wreckage and the shooting stopped. The noise diminished. “Emergency reactivation, Ginger. Authority Bowman Jack Seventh Regiment Four hundred ATXM.”
“Thank you, Sergeant.”
Bowman let go of the helm and the AI swooped the Coyote into the atmosphere on its way back to Ninida. Bowman and Maro turned to the cabin.
The seats lay upended and half the hull had imploded. Sweeney struggled to untangle his safety harness so he could release himself from his twisted seat.
Maro helped him up. Van Dyke pulled Phelps off the floor where her repeater lay wedged through the ventilation ducts to fire outside the ship.
ZAK bent over something near the back wall and Bowman shot forward with a gasp. He dropped on his knees in front of Akin. She lay crumpled between the floor and the wall and a shaft of twisted, broken metal stuck out of her chest. Blood pooled around the wound and spread over her jumpsuit.
Bowman grabbed her shoulders and tried to pull her up, but the shaft pinned her in place. “Akin! No!” Her brutal eyes glazed and she bared her teeth fighting to breathe. “Akin!”
Van Dyke knelt down next to Bowman and ripped open the first aid kit. “We have to stop the bleeding. Use your service laser, ZAK. See if you can cut this shaft off.”
Akin made a bubbling noise in her throat and Bowman looked up to find her staring straight at him. Her eyes snapped into focus and she drilled him with that ferocious rage she always got when she was fighting for her life.
He grabbed her shoulders again. “Hang on, Akin! We’re gonna cut you out of here!”
She jerked against his hold and one of her meathook hands grabbed his arm. She crushed him in an unbreakable grip. “Bowman……”
“Hang on, Akin!” he yelled. “Don’t give up!”
Her expression changed and she started to slacken, but she didn’t let go of him. She bared her teeth as venomously as ever, but her body slumped back against the wall.
“Akin!” Bowman yelled. “Don’t… No, Akin!”
“Bowman…” she husked. “You bastard…”
“Akin!” He heard his voice spike into a shriek. “Akin! No!”
She collapsed and her arm hit the floor. His shoulder burned from her touch, but she wasn’t holding onto him anymore. Her eyes slid sideways and she stared at something to his left.
He seized her shoulders. “Akin!”
She didn’t answer. He tried to shake her, but she didn’t respond. She couldn’t be gone. She couldn’t be.
Someone squeezed him from behind, but he didn’t see who it was. He heard sniffing, but he couldn’t turn around. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from Akin’s face. He kept waiting for her to say something else.
Sweeney folded onto his knees next to Bowman, bowed his head, and burst into tears. He sobbed unashamedly, and for once, no one told him to shut up.
Bowman’s vision swam. This couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t lose Akin, of all people, on the very threshold of peace. What kind of world was Bowman living in that a blow this could fall now?
The engines whined. “We are landing at Ninida, Sergeant. Brigadier Longley…”
“No!” Bowman’s voice sounded far away. It didn’t sound like it belonged to him.
“Excuse me, Sergeant? Did you want to fly to another destination?”
“Take the ship to the repair yard.”
“Republican Guard protocol dictates all ships that suffered casualties in battle to report to…”
“Take the ship to the repair yard!” Bowman shot to his feet and hustled back to the console to make sure she carried out his order. He was finished with Republican Guard protocol. He was finished with everything.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Bowman stared down at three freshly dug graves in the Guard of Honor Graveyard outside the Republican Guard headquarters on Alleria. He still struggled to believe he was reading these names carved in granite.
Zara Akin, Posthumously Awarded the Rank of Captain.
General Theodore Van Dyke, Posthumously Awarded the Rank of Admiral.
Nathan Bowman, Posthumously Awarded the Rank of Brigadier.
Life was a cruel taskmistress if it took these people and left Bowman alive to suffer their loss.
The rest of the mourners left the graveyard a long time ago… or maybe it wasn’t that long ago. Maybe it was only a few minutes ago, but it felt like an eternity.
Bowman should leave, too. He’d already spent too much time on Alleria. He had no more reason to stick around.
The Command Council arranged for him to get fitted for a prosthetic arm. It chaffed him under his uniform and cut into his skin. After all the trouble he went to getting used to having one arm, he had to remind himself to use the prosthetic. He kept forgetting it was there.
He spent his spare time on Alleria checking to see if Onaeki called him back to Naopra, but she didn’t. She didn’t really need him. No one did.
Maybe he hung around this graveyard because he was hoping Akin, Nathan, and the general would come back to life. What if they weren’t really dead and he wasn’t here to see them when they came back? He knew that was a stupid way to think, but he still couldn’t bring himself to leave.
He came back from destroying the rebel colonists to hear the news that his brother was dead. The head injury Nathan suffered in the Pteran invasion turned out to be worse than everybody thought.
Nathan left the hospital just long enough to watch Bowman receive the Hoxley Prize. Then Nathan collapsed and died while Bowman was bringing Akin’s body back to Ninida. Nathan should have been buried on Zhima Station, but Alden, Maverick, and Cameron didn’t want to offend General Sutter.
Most of the Republican Guard aspired to get buried in the Guard of Honor Graveyard. Bowman aspired to nothing more when he first enlisted in the Guard. What a dope he’d been back then.
A distant clanging noise startled him out of his thoughts. He kept jumping at random noises, but when he listened, he realized it was coming from the Constabulary repair yard. He wasn’t in danger. He wasn’t even armed.
He turned away…and stopped when he found he wasn’t alone after all. A single figure stood several feet behind him. Van Dyke gazed down at the graves with the same flinty squint.
Bowman slumped when he saw his friend. Van Dyke wore his dress Constabulary uniform and the crisp blue hat covered his burned scalp. Van Dyke looked almost normal like this… except for the distant hard glare in his eyes.
Bowman strode over to him and stood next to Van Dyke. They both stared down at the three graves.
“She belongs here,” Van dyke croaked. “She belongs here more than anyone.”
“She was a true hero. She died bringing peace to the Republic. Who am I kidding? They all did.”
“Are you gonna be okay?”
“Sure. Why not?”
Van Dyke glanced up at him, but before Van Dyke could argue back and call Bowman a liar, footsteps approached them from behind. Phelps moved in front of Bowman. Her eyes told him she knew as well as Van Dyke did that he wasn’t okay. Would he ever be okay again?
“Sweeney and Maro are getting ready to leave. They want to see you two before their transport takes them back to the Cedes Colony.”
Bowman and Van Dyke followed her inside, but they didn’t talk. Bowman knew this parting would come eventually and he wasn’t looking forward to it.
They entered the loading dock, but Maro and Sweeney were the only passengers waiting. Most of the transport’s seats had been removed to make room for extra cargo.
Maro managed to smile when Bowman approached him. “Thank you for everything, Sir. I… I don’t know how to thank you.”
“You just did.” Bowman pulled the young man into a hug. “I’m glad you’re going back. You deserve the best.”
Maro returned Bowman’s hug and then Bowman turned to the hardest job yet. Sweeney had been inconsolable since Akin’s death. He never smiled and rarely spoke. He kept bursting into tears at odd moments.
Bowman gripped his shoulder and emotion overwhelmed him when he hugged Sweeney. “Take care of yourself. If you need anything, you know where to find me.”
Sweeney peered up at him through pools of tears. Sweeney’s features had slouched and turned grey in a matter of days. “She… she admired you. You know that, right?”
“Yeah,” Bowman choked. “I know.”
“I just don’t want you to think… because of what she said… right at the end, you know. She didn’t mean it. She meant… she was trying to say…”
“I know what she was trying to say.” Bowman started to give Sweeney another squeeze and wound up patting the little man’s unshaven cheek. “I know what she meant.”
Sweeney’s tears spilled over and ran down his cheeks. “You know, Bowman…”
“You don’t have to say it. I already know.”
Sweeney opened his mouth again and stopped himself. His lips twitched like he might smile, but he held himself back from that, too. He nodded and turned away.
Maro rushed Bowman one more time and threw his arms around Bowman’s chest. He hugged him too tightly. Bowman patted him on the back with his left arm. He didn’t want to hug these people with a dead hunk of metal.
Maro finally broke off. He and Sweeney entered the transport and waved one last time before the hatch closed.
Bowman, Van Dyke, and Phelps stood aside and shielded their eyes while the transport lifted off and vanished into the sky. This parting struck one more vicious blow to the bare threads of Bowman’s connections with everything he knew, but the insults weren’t over yet.
The transport’s departure left a clear, unbroken line of sight across the platform to where the Coyote waited to take Bowman back to Zhima Station. He had no more excuses to stay.
Words failed him when he turned to Van Dyke and Phelps. Tears poured down Phelps’s cheeks and her mouth spasmed in all directions. Van Dyke held out his hand, but when Bowman took it, Van Dyke pulled him into a hug.
Van Dyke’s arms closed around Bowman and all his defenses crumbled. He rested his forehead on Van Dyke’s shoulder and the tears he fought to restrain all this time unleashed. He didn’t have to hide them anymore.
Phelps materialized at his side and hugged both men. Bowman relinquished the pain he’d been struggling to cope with through his whole ordeal. Phelps and Van Dyke could take it for him. He could leave it with them. He didn’t have to carry it anymore. He left it dissolved in the tears that dampened Van Dyke’s uniform.
He pushed back to find both of them smiling through tears. For some reason, that combination fit this moment better than he ever imagined…and he smiled. He was going to be okay. He knew that now.
He gripped Van Dyke behind the neck and shook his friend. Even hugging Van Dyke couldn’t express how Bowman felt about him.
He turned to Phelps and kissed her on the forehead. All the things he wanted to say to both of them somehow existed beyond words. They existed in some collective well of togetherness that communicated through the airwaves.
He couldn’t stop smiling at both of them, but it was time to go. Hanging around didn’t feel right anymore.
He let them both go and strode across the platform to the Coyote. He stepped into the cabin and Lucky’s familiar drawling voice greeted him. “I’m ready to go when you are, Jack.”
Bowman wiped his sleeve across his face. “Take us out, Lucky. Let’s get out of here.”
