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Authors: Jean Johnson

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BOOK: Theirs Not To Reason Why: A Soldier's Duty
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Her eyes
were
open. She was sure of that much. But in the grey glow of predawn, brightened occasionally by the usual morning electrical storm, her bedroom looked out of place: banal and slightly surreal compared to what she had just seen. Crowded, but banal.
There were actually two beds, a narrow one for herself and a broad one that her brothers shared in quiet sleep, with a meager aisle between them. A long counter underneath the window served as part desk, part bureau. Every toy, every book, every datachip was tucked in its place, because there was literally no room for a mess. Neat and tidy. Innocent.
Behind the evidence of her eyes, this whole building—her parents’ small but prosperous restaurant—lay in smoldering ruins. Inside her head, she could see the broken plaster boards, scorched plexi tiles . . . and the body of her birthmother, sprawled and bloodied, eyes open but unseeing.
No . . . no!
Covering her eyes, elbows braced on her knees, the girl on the narrower of the two beds tried to shut out the images. She couldn’t banish them; she could only shove them aside. When she did . . . others took their place. Her elder brother fighting to survive, her younger brother dragged away by brute force, a laser bolt shaded in cruel dark orange arrowing for her own throat.
No! No, no, no!
She shoved harder at the images, tried to force her way around them, but it was like wading through a muddy river, a hard, cold, murky struggle that swept her relentlessly downstream. It didn’t matter which fork she chose, the flow of Time itself dragged her inevitably to the end. To the horrific images of an inevitable end, where rapacious invaders tore whole worlds to shreds. Her world, and the others. Choked by the roiling, cold waters, she couldn’t see the right way to go, the best path to survive, a way to escape the lifeless, frozen wasteland lying ahead.
. . . NO!
There
had
to be a way out. She refused to accept that this . . . this
vision
was unbreakable. That it was unstoppable, inevitable. Clasping her arms around her knees, squeezing her eyes tightly shut, she forced her inner self to climb
out
of the waters sweeping inexorably onward to their ugly end. To climb onto the banks of the river—the banks of
all
the rivers in her mind, to stop herself from drowning in the ice-cold waters of Time itself.
There has to be a way out. There
has
to be.
Determined to find that way, some path that could be followed through the tangle of lives and possibilities, she searched through the stream-scattered plains. She didn’t stop to check each creek; instead, she leapt from bank to bank, looking for the point where all the rivers turned into rivulets, where all of them ran into a dried, barren, hopeless desert. It was hard to see, though the more she moved and searched, the more light there was in this dark, grey, foreboding place inside her head.
Slowly, as the grey of twilight changed to the amber gold of dawn, she found a thin trickle, a single stream . . . a thread of hope that led through a tiny hole in the barrier of the desert, expanding into an oasis of triumph and beauty beyond that frightening wall of inevitability.
Here—this is the path! This is what I want . . .
But when she looked back, the complexity of the path confounded her. It stretched well past anything she herself could affect in her own lifetime—and not just her own life-
time
, but her own life-
place
, tying into yet more rivers and streams that ran through fields beyond this single, visible plain. Cautiously tracing her way back, she found nodes of influence, little nudges, artificial canals and bolstering dykes, levees built up to prevent the flooding of failure, and aqueducts bringing in knowledge from other realms. Twists and turns, knots and braids artificially plaited into the naturally woven strands of what should have been reality.
Along every centimeter of the intertwining streams she followed, images flickered in the waters, showing her meager glimpses of the way to make that one slender stream of a chance survive.
Make
, not just help.
My God . . . This will take
more
than a lifetime to make happen.
She hurried back toward her entry point, only to stumble and fall to her knees, seeing the drastic changes wrought in her own future, just to make all of it possible.
No . . . no . . . No, there
has
to be a better way. Some side-stream I could take . . . some other option!
Scrambling to her feet, straining to see through the shifting, flowing waters, she searched the currents in the meadows stretching out to either side. Time did not have the same meaning in this place as it had out there, beyond the boundaries of her mind—she knew her brothers were now awake, that they were quietly getting dressed for breakfast and for school, somewhere out there beyond the edges of her consciousness—but she couldn’t stop searching. Couldn’t stop looking for an escape. For a way out.
There wasn’t one.
Not for everyone.
With eyes that were learning to skim the images rippling and shifting in the lengthy tangle of waters crisscrossing the plains, she saw there was no safe path for herself. No quiet life to be led. No escape from her fate; not from what she had to do, not with this radical of a departure from all of her childish dreams and expectations. No avoiding what would happen to herself, nor what would happen to her family, to her friends and neighbors if she ignored this single, meager thread of possibility.
Worse, when she turned to look back at the future, looking out across the other rivers and their subsidiary streams, the way they dried into curdled, cracked mud and crumbled into sand . . . there was no other hope for anyone else.
Not a viable one. Nothing that would bear fruit. Just the one, rivulet-sized chance to avoid that distant, inevitable, widespread desert of destruction. One chance to stop everything from turning into nothing. One chance to avoid annihilation.
But . . . if she redirected all those streams and rivulets, gouging out a new set of paths for the waters to take . . . If she changed the riverbeds of all those lives, both here and elsewhere, fighting to redirect the course of everything, there was hope. If she drastically altered the flow of her own life, she could have a chance at saving the rest.
. . .
Most
of the rest. Some could be saved, she realized; many, in fact. But not everyone.
Not everyone.
It was a horrible, terrible choice for a fifteen-year-old to have to make.
CHAPTER 1
 
Thank you for allowing me this rare opportunity. I don’t have a lot of time to spare—I’ve never had a lot of time, to be honest—but there are certain things I’ve always wanted to share. Indulging your request will give me the chance to review some of the things I’ve done, and explain some of the reasons why I did them. Like a stage magician revealing how the trick is done, I’ve wanted to communicate the whys of my actions, but I haven’t always had the opportunity before now. And, now that I finally have the time, I feel the need to speak. So I thank you for your offer to interview me.
I won’t waste your time with the trivial details of my childhood. I was happy for the most part, well-loved by my family, had a reasonably good education, and usually had good food to eat and clean clothes to wear . . . the usual, and therefore boring. Instead, I’ll start with the day I joined the military. That’s not the moment it all began, of course, but you could say it’s the best starting point I have.
~Ia
 
 
MARCH 4, 2490 T.S.
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA PROVINCE
EARTH
 
“Name?”
“Ia.” Back straight, hands clasped in her lap, she waited for him to comment. She pronounced it
EE-yah
, not the
EYE-ah
most people assumed. “Just like it says on my ident.”
The brown-uniformed recruitment officer quirked his brow and sat back at that. Light from the glow strips overhead gleamed off his service pins for a moment, allowing her to read the badge holding his name.
Lieutenant Major Kirkins-Baij.
“I know what it says on your ident, young lady. But given how the Terran United Space Force has roughly two billion soldiers to keep track of, it helps to have more than one name. Usually, a Human has at least three: a family name, a personal name, and an additional name. Some even have two family names, like myself.
“So. What is your full legal name, meioa?” he asked.
“My full legal name
is
Ia. Capital
I
, lowercase
a
. Ia,” she repeated. “Nothing more, and nothing less.”
The corner of his mouth quirked up for a moment. “With a name that short, I don’t see how you
could
have anything less.” Glancing at the workstation screen displaying her stats, he frowned a little. “Independent Colonyworld Sanctuary? Where’s that?”
“It’s on the backside of Terran space, close to the border of the Grey Zone. Not quite seven hundred light-years from here,” she told him. “It’s relatively brand-new. I’m second-gen.”
“We don’t normally get recruits from any I.C., not here on Earth,” the lieutenant major offered. “I’ll presume your Colony Charter permits its citizens to join the Terran military, and that you’re prepared to sign the necessary waivers, but if your Charter was sponsored by the V’Dan Empire instead, I’ll have to get out a different set of forms.”
“Sanctuary’s Charter was actually sponsored by I.C. Eiaven,” she clarified. “That cuts the paperwork down to almost nothing.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Eiaven is almost the exact opposite direction from here,” he pointed out, lowering his brows in a doubtful frown. “Most sponsoring worlds are next to each other, not hundreds of light-years apart.”
Ia didn’t let his skepticism faze her. Rather, she welcomed it as a positive sign that she was doing the right thing at the right time.
“That’s true for most worlds, but most heavyworlds are sponsored by Eiaven. Sanctuary is merely the latest to prove itself viable. Article VII, Section B, Paragraph14, subparagraphs c, g, h, and j of the Sanctuary Charter—duly registered with the Alliance—state that, as a Sanctuarian citizen, all I have to do to join either the Terran or the V’Dan military is to take the Oath of Service as a recruit, and my citizenship will automatically transfer to the appropriate government. We’re not so much an independent colonyworld as an
inter
dependent one. Life on a heavyworld is tough enough without adding political troubles, and both Human governments recognized this long ago. Eiaven and its sponsored colonies are legally considered joint neutral territory.
“If I choose to serve in the Terran military, I automatically become a Terran citizen, with all the rights, responsibilities, and privileges thereof, and disavowing all rights to V’Dan citizenship, should I choose to do so. Which I do, which is why I am here,” she said.
“And you came all the way to Earth, almost seven hundred light-years from home, just to do so?” he repeated, still skeptical. “Exactly on your eighteenth birthday?”
“Yes, meioa,” Ia admitted, reminding herself to be patient. “Provided I am a full, legal adult—which I now am—I can join up at any Recruitment Center anywhere across the Terran United Planets. I just happened to pick Melbourne, Australia Province, Earth. I’d also like to join the TUPSF-Marine Corps in specific, which is why I’m sitting here in front of you, meioa-o, instead of one of the other officers at this facility,” Ia stated patiently. “You
are
the local recruitment officer for the TUPSF-MC,” she reminded him, pronouncing the acronym
tup-siff -mick
. “Now, may I please do so?”
“And your name is just . . . Ia?” the lieutenant major asked dubiously. “The military needs more than that to be able to identify you, meioa-e.”
“I have an ident number, duly registered with the Alliance,” Ia reminded him, nodding slightly at his workstation, which still displayed her civilian profile. “Ident # 96-03-0004-0092-0076-0002. All I need to join any branch of the Space Force is a name and a valid ident number, both of which I have provided, and to state which Branch I wish to apply for. My name is Ia, you have my ident number, and I would like to join the TUPSF-Marines.”
Sighing roughly, the lieutenant major typed a command into his workstation. “It’s not quite
that
easy to get into the Marines. Your background check hasn’t turned up any legal troubles yet, but we’ll still need to place a vid-call and confirm your citizenship status with the authorities on Sanctuary. You’ll also need to take the Military Aptitude Test. You can apply for a preference in Service Branches, but depending on how well you score in the various categories, you might end up in the TUPSF-Navy, the Army, or even the Special Forces . . . though you shouldn’t hold your breath on that last one. Very few are selected to join the elite Branch of the Service.”
“Oh, I’m willing to take the test,” she assured him. “I’m ready right now, in fact. I also know I’m well-suited for the Marines.”
“We’ll see.” He checked her application again. “It says here you’re an ordained priestess with some subsect of the Witan Order. If you’re ordained, why aren’t you aiming at the Special Forces for a chaplaincy?”
BOOK: Theirs Not To Reason Why: A Soldier's Duty
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