Chapter XXI: Getting Caught Up
Becker felt weary as he heard the words spoken by the Commissar, his granddaughter, who
insisted on being called Amber rather than Star.
"No one knew what happened to your unit," she said, continuing the tale of what had
happened in his absence. "An unknown psychic anomaly occurred, then nothing. Shortly after, the fighting ended because the Eldar withdrew. They did a lot of damage before leaving.
"That was fifty-six years ago. Now the Eldar are back again, and they have been for about a year. There's something in this city they want, and they've fought like hell to get it. We've been trying to drive them off, but have so far been unsuccessful. The Eldar have inflicted heavy losses on our troops. I arrived seven months ago with the Median II, who were assigned to this particular battle because the Median IV were so instrumental in the first victory."
"What happened to the rest of the regiment?" Becker asked.
"They went on to Hirta, Joli I, and finally Cervin. There, they helped beat off an Ork invasion and settled in to
re-colonize the world. Not many were left, either of them or the other regiments in the army sent to liberate Cervin."
Becker nodded. "Okay. Next question. What's the deal with the large bomber we saw? Is that some new sort of attack craft?":
Amber smiled. "It's the Drake bomber. Carries a
tremendous payload, enough to flatten a few square kilometers. And I mean flatten it entirely, leaving nothing but dust and splinters. It's a new toy brought in to give us another strategic option, the ability to destroy massed armies from high in the sky. A sort of flying artillery battery, if you will."
"Ah. Sounds nice."
"It is, but the Eldar have managed to get interceptors up high enough to attack them. Even with all the weapons on those bombers, the occasional bomber gets shot down. They take a lot of Eldar interceptors with them, though."
Becker stretched. "Now, I need to ask a personal question. Is my wife, your grandmother, still alive?"
Amber frowned. "No. She died of a cancer five years ago. It made Mom very upset. But
Grandmother was never all that happy. She seemed lost."
Becker nodded. "I wish I had been there for her. I don't know what happened myself. But whatever it was, you have me and my troops ready to make the Eldar pay for it. They took away my life. I'm going to make sure they find out exactly what that's life."
Amber turned away, silent. Becker couldn't tell, but it almost sounded as if she was crying.
* * *
Paul swung his fist, connecting once again with the dummy. Its head snapped back, then slowly moved back to its proper location.
Bill
whistled, then said, "You know, I don't think that dummy's done much to you. Why so mad?"
Paul's voice was hoarse as he tried to speak. "I... I know..."
Bill cocked his head and gave his friend a questioning look. "What?"
Paul turned to Bill. There was sorrow in his eyes, a deep, heart-wrenching sorrow. "I know how you feel now, Bill. About losing Lisa."
"How so?"
"Think about it! Remember Kim?"
"Yeah. You and her were going to get..." Bill broke off as realization hit him.
"That's right, Bill. We were going to get married. But that was fifty six years ago. What am I going to do now?"
Bill shrugged, feeling helpless. "I don't know. I wish I could help."
Paul sat down, resting his face in his hands. "I loved her. I wanted to share a future with her so bad. Now it's gone. It's gone, take away from me."
"We both lost hose we love, and the
futures we planned to share with them, because of this war with the Eldar. I'm going to make them pay, if it's the last thing I do."
Paul looked up. "Do you know how horribly
cliché you just sounded?"
Bill blinked. "Now that you mention it, yes. But how about it? You with me?"
Paul nodded. "I'm there, man. We're going to kick those aliens' asses back to the hell that spawned them."
* * *
Mel looked out the window, seeing the broken city in the distance. The building now being used as a barracks by the Imperial military was outside of the range of the fighting that had taken place both fifty six years ago and recently.
He sighed, then turned to look at Jessy, lying on the bed. "It feels so wrong."
"What does?" Jessy asked.
"One minute, we're in the year 902, then all of a sudden it's the year 958."
"It is a change for all of us. What's bothering you so much?"
"What isn't bothering me?" Mel asked. "We've lost a lot of years in an instant. And we're practically the only ones. In the time we just blasted through, all the people we know outside the platoon have experienced over five decades. Our parents are probably dead, our siblings married with kids, maybe even grandkids. Our world may not even look the same. Whole sections of space will have fallen or been reclaimed. Thousands have died and been born on this very world."
Jessy frowned. "I understand how you feel, Mel. But worrying about it won't do much good."
"It may not, but I can't help but feel bad. Think how our families must have felt."
"Devastated."
"Exactly. They don't know what happened. For all they knew, we died. All those years of not knowing..."
"Yeah," Jessy replied, quietly. She stood up and walked to the window. "But just the same, we don't know what's happened to them in that time."
Mel didn't respond.
That had been the most serious thing he'd ever heard Jessy say. Words didn't offer themselves, so he silently walked up behind her and put his arms around her waist, staring out the same window she looked out, but not really seeing the world around him.
Instead, his mind reeled through memories of how his life used to be.
* * *
Bob looked down into his drink, and felt a profound sadness.
Janet looked over at him, worry on her face. "Are you alright, Bob?"
He nodded slowly. "I guess so. I just... I dunno, I feel kind of hollow inside."
"I think we all do."
"How could this happen?"
"What?"
Bob took a sip of his drink, then turned to face Janet. "All of it. We left our world, to fight for the Imperium. So many of us died. And now those of us still alive get yanked through time, tossed forward into the future without a choice. Our pasts lie behind us, in ruins. No one knows we're alive. They all think we're dead. Our whole world's moved on. They've probably put our believed deaths behind them, and carried on, no longer mourning us. It's gone, all of it. In one night, we lose it all. Families, home, friends."
Janet squeezed Bob's hands. "Not everything."
"What's left?"
"Each other."
"How can we replace a life that's been lost in time, Janet?"
"We can't. But together, we can start a new one. And we can help our friends start again."
Bob nodded, then lowered his head, feeling an unfamiliar sensation.
It took him some time before he realized he was crying.
* * *
Becker looked down the streets, seeing the tanks rumbling up and down their lengths.
He prayed for their success. For the entire army's success.
If it took every last fiber of his being, he vowed that he would make the Eldar pay in blood for their callous destruction of his life.
* * *
Bill sat on the rooftop, trying to let the cool wind take his worries and blow them away. It didn't work. It just made him feel even more cold inside.
He heard a door open and then close behind him. He didn't bother to turn and see who it was. Whoever it was, it didn't matter. He didn't need their sympathy, their help.
Soft footsteps approached, and finally he saw a pair of long legs standing before him, dressed in soft black pants and a pair of dark brown shoes.
The person to whom those legs belonged, Amber Becker, knelt
down in front of him. She wasn't wearing her Commissar coat. Instead, she wore a loose-fitting blue blouse above her black trousers. She looked worried, and it took Bill a moment to realize it was him she was worried about.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"I'm a morale officer. Your morale seems to be low. Want to talk about it?" Without waiting for an invitation, she sat down.
Bill shook his head. "No, not really."
"Fair. Do you mind if I sit here and talk, then?"
"If you want to."
Amber stretched out, and Bill found himself looking at her for an overly long amount of time. Ashamed, he looked away. Amber began to talk, as if she hadn't noticed.
"Fifty six years seems like such a long time for someone to lose. I can't imagine it. But thankfully, I don't have to. All I've known about my missing grandfather was that he disappeared in some battle some thirty six years before I was born."
Bill looked back at her, surprised. "A Commissar, at twenty?"
She grinned back at him. "You'd be surprised at how pro-Imperial I've been. I was pegged as a natural. I wanted to get back at the aliens who'd caused me not to have a chance to know my grandfather. I suppose that's a bit like some of the people in your platoon feel."
"It is," Bill replied, leaning back. "If you don't mind my asking, how did you end up with the name Star Amber Becker?"
Amber laughed. "My mother had said, as a child, that she was going to name her first daughter Star, for whatever star her daddy was fighting at. She kept that promise."
"I don't suppose many people kid you about it."
"Not since I took advanced combat courses."
"I see."
"I've heard that you... lost someone you cared about. Is there something I can do for you, make you feel better in some way? I could arrange a special ceremony or something."
Bill closed his eyes and said, "That's kind of you, but no thanks. I don't want to make such a big fuss over it."
"I understand how hard it is to lose someone. You don't have to try to keep your pain bottled up inside."
"I'm not."
"Then where is it? I know you're feeling it, because no one just automatically pops back from an emotional blow like that. You have to have some way of dealing with it."
Bob opened his eyes and stared at Amber. "Not always."
"Yes, always."
"Since when did you become a supposed expert on human feelings?"
She pointed to the small black Imperial eagle attached to her belt. "Morale officer, remember?"
Bill snorted. "So that's what they call the people in black
trench coats that like to shoot people in the back these days."
Amber stared, horrified. "I... I never... I... I didn't mean to..." She began to choke up, then buried her face in her hands and began crying, sobbing so hard that her whole body shook.
Bill blinked. He began to wonder if something he'd said had been of some significance to her, something he didn't know about.
He sat for a moment, not knowing what to do. Then he remembered some long-forgotten advice, something said to him in the past by a friend. "Give in to your feelings, don't hide them."
Not knowing why, he pulled Amber closed to him and lifted her face to look her in the eyes. It was so strange, to look in those glowing orbs that suggested a soul that had been forced to be both cruel and kind, that had known depths of joy and
sorrow in tremendous amounts. She gave him a look somewhere between bewilderment and fright, the tears in her eyes still not slowing.
Ignoring everything but how his feelings directed him, he leaned down and gave her a kiss. He was surprised to find her lips soft, and her return embrace nowhere near as strong as he'd expected. Somewhere in the hard exterior of a Commissar, he decided, there may well be a soul worth redeeming.
Amber quickly retrieved her arms and pushed Bill back. The sudden motion caused him to topple off of the block he'd been sitting on. He fell to the cold, hard roof, then looked back up at Amber.
"This... this isn't right," she said, wrapping her arms around herself. "This is against regulations. A morale officer can't have relations with... with a uniformed soldier..."
Bill gave her a look of mock reprieve.
In a change that was so quick he didn't expect it, Amber stood and stepped up to him in one sudden movement, and in another she had off her blouse and was working on her belt. "To hell with regs," she snapped. "It's time I worried about how I feel instead of everyone else."
* * *
On the corner of the roof, in a shaded spot where no one could see what lay within its depths, Bob
sat and watched. It had been an interesting conversation, if it could be called such, between his friend and
their lieutenant's newfound granddaughter. Even more interesting was the fact that they were right now having a very passionate love making session on the roof, in weather that wasn't well suited to having one's clothes off.
Bob shook his head. This wasn't at all what he expected from a Commissar. But expectations were often wrong. He'd also expected that his friend would take more time healing his emotional wound. But then, this could be part of the process.
Absently, he began to wonder why he had never ventured to be more passionate with Janet. He blinked that thought away. One didn't need to mesh one's body with another to have passion between the two. It was just another form of expressing mutual love. Or something like that. It seemed to be an urge that came to some quickly, and others not so quickly. He supposed he was in that latter category.
He leaned back against the wall, not wanting to disturb his friend. If that was the way he chose to heal, such was his concern, not Bob's. It was best if he didn't do anything to
make his friend uncomfortable or embarrassed.
He smiled. And while he was sitting here, trying not to break up the moment for the two people on the far side of the roof, he'd also be taking in everything he saw. It would certainly make an interesting story at some time in the future.
End of Chapter XXI
Continued in Chapter XXII: Rush
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