Hell's Faire

Epilogue

“Sir, General Steuben’s here.”

Mike leaned against the rock looking out at the valley that had once been his home. He had seen the refugees and recon troopers extracted from the hole they had been huddling in and then turned his back and left. That hole had been designed for the express purpose of keeping his daughter alive. And when she needed it, she hadn’t been there.

“Colonel O’Neal,” the general said, touching his arm. “We’re about to lift. We’re needed in Europe.”

“Yes, sir,” Mike replied, turning and holding out his hand. “Thank you for your help, sir.”

“You had the situation well in hand, as always.” The suit turned and looked down across the valley and hills. In every direction there was nothing but an orange nothingness; the very soil had been stripped from the rocks. “I… heard about your choice.”

“Yes, sir.” His voice was cold and distant.

“It was… the right choice, Colonel. I… don’t know that I could have made it, but it was the right choice.”

“It would have been the right choice. But the timing… the Posleen couldn’t have forced their way through to the Cumberland.” Mike stopped. “They couldn’t have from the beginning. Not with you on the way. You would have arrived before then.”

“But to Asheville?” the general asked quietly. “Four million civilians, Colonel. To overrun the SheVa? To wipe out another division of troops? Or two or four or five? And you could not know. It was clear that everything that was known to the Earth forces was known to the Posleen. I don’t know what they would have done if they had known. Perhaps there was nothing they could do. But this one, Tulo’stenaloor, he was too smart. Who knows what he might have done?”

“True,” Mike sighed. “But… oh, God…” He slumped down to the ground and curled into a ball. “My daughter!”

The general looked at him for a moment and then sighed. “I think… Europe will wait. At least for me.”

He reached down and lifted the suit to its feet, taking the colonel by his shoulder and turning him towards the waiting shuttle. “I think, you and I, we will go get very drunk. And cry for the death of a world.”

“This is absolutely unacceptable!” the Tir shouted then stopped, panting.

I wonder if I could drive him into lintatai? Monsignor O’Reilly thought. No, no reason to change the plan.

“How is it unacceptable, my good Tir?” the Jesuit said aloud. “Surely this is a day of rejoicing.” In fact, through the doors to the conference room much rejoicing could clearly be heard; O’Reilly thought he was probably the only person in the entire complex who was actually working. On the other hand, while getting the Posleen off their backs was a good thing, to the Bane Sidhe it was just one step in a more complex war.

“Those forces were not to leave Irmansul uncovered!” the Tir said, firmly but back in control. “There will be… consequences.”

“A Fleet issue, I would think,” O’Reilly said. “As has been reiterated many times before, the Fleet does not belong to the United States, or even Earth, but to the Federation. Any… irregularities in unit dispositions is surely a Federation… irregularity.” The monsignor smiled thinly then made a complicated hand gesture. “I would consider taking it up with your pet admirals, Tir. The United States government has all it can do to handle the sudden cessation of hostilities.”

“So you say,” the Tir hissed. “A Fleet matter. Obviously the Fleet needs to be brought to heel.”

O’Reilly smiled darkly and shook his head. These Darhel were so easy. What the hell had taken the Bane Sidhe this long to trip them up? “That is, surely, your prerogative, Tir. But for now, there’s a victory celebration and I’m missing it.”

With that the Jesuit rapped on the table with his knuckles, stood up and went out to find a bottle of Bushmills. Surely the Father Church would permit him one night of celebration.

And tomorrow it would be back to the wars.

Of course, some people hadn’t stopped.

Tulo’stenaloor blazed a trail through deep woods, showing his oolt’os how to hack open a path. He didn’t know why he bothered; the humans had taken control of the orbitals. Any ship that attempted to lift out was being destroyed. All that he could do was run and hide like an abat. It was humiliating.

He snarled as the oolt’os in the lead stopped, then reached for his rifle. Ahead in a clearing there was a single Indowy standing alone.

“Stop,” Tulo’stenaloor said, waving at the oolt’os to lower their weapons. The green ones were never a threat. But what one was doing here, at this time, was an interesting question.

He stepped forward and gestured at the little being, but the Indowy just waved.

“You are Tulo’stenaloor First order Battle Master of the Sten Po’oslena’ar?” the Indowy asked in Posleen.

“I am,” Tulo’stenaloor replied, looking around. Suddenly the bushes in every direction spouted armed humans. They did nothing, though, just waited, their weapons bracketing his bodyguards. He waved at the oolt’os to lower their weapons. “Who are you?”

“I am the Indowy Aelool,” the little one said with a broad and toothy, and very feral, smile. “And I would like to make you an offer you can’t refuse.”

“So what do we do now?” Elgars asked the placement officer.

The officer was short, overweight, balding and apparently harassed. And clearly in no mood for handling troops that had misplaced their units.

“For right now I’ll assign you a BOQ room,” the officer said. “And I’ll put the two NCOs in the NCO’s quarters. Then I’ll send a memo up to DA asking them what in the hell to do with you. Until we find out, just stick around the area.” He handed each of them a slip of paper and waved at the door.

“This seems… I dunno,” Elgars said as they walked down the corridor. The Asheville Corps headquarters seemed to have completely lost its head. With the return of the Fleet, half the soldiers expected to be out-processed immediately and all the little routines were gone. Suddenly, no one knew what the future would hold. In a way, it was better facing the Posleen.

“Abrupt,” Mosovich said, holding the door open for her in a gesture that was chivalrous rather than rank based. “When you work odd jobs you get used to it. Every now and again you get a heap of thanks; usually you just get ignored. The difficulty of the mission or how well you did it rarely seems to have anything to do with the outcome.”

“What now, boss?” Mueller said.

“Well, if the captain can be seen slumming with a couple of enlisted pukes, I suggest we find a bar and get really drunk,” the sergeant major replied.

“Good idea,” Elgars said, looking towards the gates of the compound. “Follow me!”

Mueller chuckled as they headed out, the two males having to work to match her stride. “You seem to be… more whole these days.”

“I feel whole,” Elgars replied with a smile. “I haven’t had a personality pop up in a few days, everything feels… integrated. As if, for the first time since I awoke, I’m myself.”

“And do you know who you are?” Mosovich asked carefully.

“Yep.”

“Who?”

“Anne Elgars,” she said in a definite tone. “Just Anne.”

“Must come as a surprise in the morning, huh?” Mueller said with a laugh.

Mosovich shook his head and looked at the woman for a moment. Then sighed as if for the death of a friend.

“Yep, time for us to get stinkin’ drunk, ma’am.”

Colonel Garcia got out of the personnel elevator shaking his head like a doctor about to tell the family that little Timmy wasn’t going to be coming home.

“There’s not much we can do, Colonel,” he said to Mitchell, looking around at the group. The whole SheVa crew, plus Kilzer and Major Chan, had gathered to hear the news.

“The engineering area is covered in pebbles,” he continued. “It’s as hot as I’ve ever seen. Then there’s the battle damage. Given that most of the SheVas are going to be decommissioned, it will probably be left right here. We’ll pull the MetalStorms off and anything else that is salvageable, decommission the main gun and then seal it up with a bunch of radiation warnings all over it. This whole area is hot enough it will probably be closed anyway.”

Mitchell nodded and sighed, looking around at the devastated landscape.

“I’d hoped for better, but…” He looked up at the mountain of metal that had been their home for the last few days and shook his head. “What now?”

“Get some rest?” the repair commander said.

“Will do,” Mitchell replied. He looked at Indy and Chan then shrugged. “Ladies, I do believe there is an officers’ club in Asheville that is calling our names. Can I buy you ladies a drink? I’m sure we can bum a ride.”

“Hey, what about us?” Pruitt asked, gesturing at Reeves. “You’re just going to walk off into the sunset with the girls and leave us in the middle of a radioactive wasteland?”

“Pruitt, an officer’s first duty is to his men,” Mitchell replied solemnly, holding his arms out on either side to the warrant and the major. “You and Reeves have a four-day pass. Report to the 147^th G-1 in four days. Don’t drink and drive. This completes your pre-pass safety briefing. Have fun.” With that he turned around and started walking towards the nearby vehicle park.

“Well, that sucks,” Reeves growled. “Where the hell are we supposed to go?”

“After them,” Pruitt said, spotting Major LeBlanc striding up the hill. “As fast as we can!”

Kilzer spotted her at about the same time and looked around wildly. She was between him and the vehicles, and going back into the SheVa without a rad suit was suicide. But he considered it for just a moment. He suspected he was going to lose his balls anyway, might as well be to some more or less painless radiation damage.

“Mister Kilzer,” the major said, walking up to him and planting both fists on her hips, “a moment of your time?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Paul said.

LeBlanc looked down to where his hands had just naturally fallen to protect his groin.

“I’m not going to kick you in the balls,” she said, with a shake of her head. Then when he smiled and moved his hands aside she did exactly that.

“Oh!” she cried, kicking him again as he rolled around on the ground. “I’m sorry! My mistake! I meant to say ‘I am going to kick you in the balls!’ I don’t know how that ‘not’ got in there! Maybe a side-effect of radiation poisoning?”

“Aaah! I’m sorry! It was a mistake!”

“Yeah, I know you are. Sorry that is.” LeBlanc stepped back and shook her head. “Get up, you look like a baby down there whining and clutching your privates in pain.”

“Are you going to kick me again?” Kilzer groaned.

“Are you going to be an ignorant asshole again?”

“Oh, shit.”

“Get up. I’ll let you buy me a drink.”

“You’re really not going to kick me again?” Kilzer said, getting painfully to one knee. “Promise?”

“Not unless you screw up again.”

“Damn.”

“We have to quit meeting like this,” Wendy said softly.

“You’ve only seen me, what, once before in the body and fender shop?” Tommy said from inside the tank. He was fully submerged in a red solution, but a bubble of air was open around his mouth and nose. He grinned through the nannite solution and pointed to where a darker, more opaque cloud was worrying around his shoulder. “Hey, if only they could increase the size of my cock!”

“You don’t need that,” Wendy said, looking at the tank and suddenly seeing it as old technology. It was practically magic to most people, able to regrow limbs and heal almost any wound short of death. But she had seen real magic, for which even death was not an impossible barrier. And she really wondered what in the hell was going to happen when someone figured out what she knew. The world was already a very dangerous place; she didn’t need non-random enemies.

“I’ll be out in a couple of days,” Tommy said, when she seemed to have drifted off. “I’ll have some leave coming and with the Fleet back, well, I’m not sure what they’re going to do in the way of forces. Anyway, I was wondering… you wanna get married?”

She looked at her boyfriend and shook her head. “You can’t kneel in that condition and it would be hard to hold out the box and then put the ring on my finger. So, under the circumstances, I’ll accept the method of proposal!” she said with a broad grin.

“Great!”

“What about Fleet? What are they going to say?”

“Fuck ’em. What are they going to do, send me on a suicide mission?”

“Not anymore, love,” Wendy said quietly. “No more.”

“Well, I’ve got to do something,” Tommy said in a worried tone. “They’re talking about cutting back the Fleet and even Fleet Strike. I might be a discharged lieutenant with no training and no future. That wouldn’t be fun to be married to!”

“We’ll cross that bridge when or if we come to it,” Wendy said. “But I’d be just as glad if you weren’t working for Fleet, to tell you the truth.”

“Well, I’ve got to do something.”

“I’m still trying to get straight if you guys are white hats or black hats,” Papa O’Neal said, taking a sip of coffee.

The meeting room was apparently deep under ground. Now that he had seen what a Himmit ship could do to rock, he was not surprised. What he had been surprised by was the briefer.

“The Bane Sidhe would, I think, qualify as white hats,” Monsignor O’Reilly said, quietly. “You’ll be told some of our history and background. You of course understand the term ‘need to know.’ You will be told what you need to know. For the rest, well, we’re the people who saved you. We have done favors for your son as well. This is in our interest, you understand. Michael O’Neal is one of several possible paths to victory over the true enemy in this war. And it is for that that we saved you, in the hope of recruiting you to this great task.”

“Uh, huh,” Cally said. She had a Coke in her hand but so far she hadn’t touched it. “Who is the real enemy, then?”

“The Darhel, of course,” O’Reilly said. “It is they who waited until the last minute to warn Earth. It is they that, when it was apparent humans were going to be even more inventive than they gave them credit for, slowed production of essential war materials both off-planet and on Earth. They have supplied the Posleen with critical intelligence, without the Posleen’s knowledge by the way. On a personal note they forced the choice of commanders on Diess that nearly got your father killed, hacked the Tenth Corps data net and did various other things, including sending an assassin after you when you were eight, to make your life less pleasant than it could have been. The only personal loss that is not directly attributable to them is the loss of your mother. Random chance does play a role in war. And even there… she should have been in command of a cruiser, not stuck with a half-finished, poorly constructed, poorly designed frigate. This, too, could be laid at the door of the Darhel.”

“And we can believe as much of that as we like,” Papa replied.

“We’ll give you some bona fides eventually,” O’Reilly said dryly. “I think that after you get to know us the truth will become obvious. And the appearance of Michael O’Neal, Senior, or Cally O’Neal will be cause for some comment. Given that they are presumed most thoroughly dead.”

“I doubt that telling them the truth would be a good idea, huh?” Cally said.

“Not particularly. The Terran authorities would take you for nuts and the Darhel would have you silenced in very short order. We have a need for well-trained, highly motivated and self-directing special operations experts. You, Mr. O’Neal, have a long track record of such things and Team Conyers was most impressed on their brief visit.”

“I wondered when that was going to come up,” O’Neal said, nodding.

“And, with the exception of the experience part, the same goes for Miss O’Neal. If nothing else, the Bane Sidhe have been, from time immemorial, believers that ‘blood tells.’ And you are of the finest… stock imaginable. I cannot imagine you failing to be a fine operative, can you?”

“No,” Cally said with a grin and a shrug, finally taking a sip of the Coke.

“Both of you have a need, new identities, new lives and… trust me, protection in that anonymity. If the Darhel got wind you were alive… We have a need, and you are two of the best examples of a round peg in a round hole I have seen in quite some time.”

Cally sighed. “What the hell, I’m in. As long as the missions make sense.”

“You won’t need to worry about missions for a while young lady,” the monsignor replied. “You’ve got quite a bit of schooling, of all sorts, ahead of you.”

“School?” Cally asked, aghast. “You’re joking, right?”

“No, he’s not,” Papa O’Neal snapped. “You need to get an education. Even if you’re doing this… whatever it is, for the long haul, you still need an education.”

“School,” Cally grumped. “Great. I bet they’ll take away all my guns.”

“Only to put them in an armory,” O’Reilly said with a smile. “As I said, ‘of all sorts.’ Just… try not to kill any of the nuns?”

“Better and betterer. Nuns.” But she nodded. “As long as they don’t bang my fingers with rulers, I’ll let them live.”

“Okay, Cally’s taken care of,” Papa O’Neal said with a frown, staring at the priest. “And I’ll come on board too; I’ll hunt your Sidhe for you. I’ll be the best darn hunter of Sidhe you’ve got, a fucking Wild Hunt all on my own self.” He paused and flexed his jaw as if preparing for a fight. “But I have one condition…”

Shari stood in the line of refugees, waiting in another drizzling, cold rain, to get processed into the Knoxville tent city.

Most of the children had already been taken away by social services. After all that sweat and all that suffering and all that fear they had just been… whisked away with a disapproving snarl as if it was her fault that they had been in the damned Urb or gotten into the middle of a nuclear war. At least they were alive unlike… God… Everyone.

Wendy had gone to the hospital to see her boyfriend, and Mosovich and Mueller had disappeared to wherever it was that troopers go after the fight, leaving her with just Billy and Kelly and Susie. And another tent city. Another batch of frightened, shell-shocked strangers. Another beginning.

She squished forward a few more steps, holding onto Kelly and Susie’s hands and keeping one eye on Billy. He seemed… better since the whole episode, as if reliving the nightmares had somehow cleansed him instead of making him worse. He probably would do fine. It would have been better if…

It would have been better if the Posleen had never come. It would have been better if Fredericksburg had never been destroyed. It would have been better if two million people hadn’t died in the Urb or five billion scattered across the globe. So thinking that it would have been better if one worn-out old man had not died was just…

“Hey, lady, wanna dance?” a voice whispered in her ear.

She spun in place, furious, and let go of Kelly to slap the ignorant, pig-headed bastard across the face but stopped, arrested by his eyes.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” the stranger said, smiling and holding out his hands. He was a little too tall, and far too young and his hair was fiery red and long instead of short, thinning and gray. But there was something about the eyes, about the cheekbones… Something about the huge wad of chewing tobacco in his cheek.

“Pity,” he said, taking her hands and starting to sway. “I’d heard you liked to dance. ‘Oh it’s a marvelous night for a moon-dance with the stars up above in our eyes…’ ”

Shari didn’t know how she found him through the tears, but she managed to get her arms around him and after that everything was going to be okay. Somehow, beyond hope, beyond reason, it would all be okay.