A Gentle Place To Call Home
Lorenzo sat on the low wooden dock, his feet bare in the cool, clear stream. The water was fine as the day was warm. He ate a pomegranate and waited for the others to join him in legionspace.
Where had this place been?
--
Lorenzo looked over the rolling plains, the amber susurrus of grain and grass. Beyond, low mountains described a range, blue gradient rising to dark clouds of rain shadow.
No world he had ever visited. A place of clean sky. He wondered if you could see the stars at night.
--
Footsteps on the dock behind him shook Lorenzo from his reverie. He turned to see Tello, grim and tall in his brown woolen coat, left sleeve pinned up to his shoulder.
“Cardenal,” Tello greeted Lorenzo. “Why did you choose this place?”
--
Lorenzo stood, brushing his pants clean of the dock’s dust. He embraced Tello, clapping him on the back. “Good to see you, old man.”
“And you,” Tello said, looking past Lorenzo at the pastoral scene beyond. The plains moved like autumn watercolor, purple and gold.
--
“I was just thinking,” Lorenzo popped a handful of pomegranate ampules into his mouth, savoring the tart, acidic taste. “I have never been to a world like this.”
“This is my home,” Tello grunted. “Cornucopia. This is my memory.”
--
“Is it?” Lorenzo looked around. He chuckled. “Must have been before I ever got there. Did pomegranates grow on Cornucopia? There’s a tree upriver a ways, if you want one.” Lorenzo waved upriver, but the tree was lost behind the grass.
--
“This is what Cornucopia looked like before the revolution.” Tello said. He reached out and took a small handful of ampules. “Fruit was for the King and his court.”
“A beautiful land.” Lorenzo muttered.
Tello didn’t respond. He stood, closed his eyes. “Who else is coming?”
--
Lorenzo sat back down, dangled his feet into the stream. “Commander Mayura Song. Union. Her battlegroup was in-system before the Aun destroyed the gate. You know -- the Yalta, Fansipan.”
Tello frowned. "I am aware. A battlegroup is not enough to stop the Crusade fleet.”
--
“No,” Lorenzo said. He finished the last of the pomegranate and dropped the rind into the stream. The water carried it away. “Not enough.”
Footsteps through the brush. Tello and Lorenzo looked up, across the stream. An officer in Union blues pushed through the grass, picking her way across the ground on the other bank.
“Your bridging is sloppy, Lorenzo. We’ve let you run too long.”
--
“Commander Song, welcome,” Lorenzo waved. “This is Tello, of Cornucopia. He was with me during the counterrevolution.”
Song had a pair of junior officers and a subaltern in tow. They all saluted. “With our side?” Song asked.
“With my side,” Tello said.
--
“Yes,” Lorenzo said. “How much time do you have, Song?”
The subaltern whispered into Song’s ear. “Minutes. There is a detachment of Aunic ships in pursuit,” Song said. “Their NHPs can’t breach this connection, but their hardlight cannons are charged and nearing firing range.”
--
“Ain’t that a helluva situation,” Lorenzo said. “Let’s keep this brief. Attend,” he said, gesturing above the water. A projection coalesced between the two groups. It appeared solid, real, a slice of the galaxy in miniature.
--
“Two days ago, an Aun Crusade fleet jumped into Cornucopia's blink gate.” Lorenzo began. “ And that’s literally into it: Fansipan's NHP registered roughly a thousand transponder contacts piercing its PDC perimeter moments before they collided with the station.”
"I should say, we do not know how, exactly, they could jump into Fansipan without the blink."
--
Lorenzo pulled a cup of coffee from thin air. “Commander Song’s battlegroup was already in-theater, responding to the incident on Bijan’s world,” Lorenzo said, nodding to Song.
“That’s where we lost the Yalta,” Song said.
--
“Our CAP flagged the incoming fleet by its plasma cone,” Song continued. “We were able to disengage from the station before the martyr ships impacted.”
--
The battlescape projection highlighted a tight arrow of ships ejecting from the collapsing blink station. Song’s battlegroup. Smaller groups scattered in twos and threes, breaking in every direction, using drifting sections of the blink station as cover.
--
Some ships remained and engaged the approaching mass of the crusade fleet’s opening salvo. Their shields flared, overloaded by kill-clouds slamming into them.
“Stop playback.” Song was formal, curt. “Thirty seconds before I have to cut connection, Lorenzo. The point, please.”
--
“The Aun aren’t probing.” Lorenzo said. “This is a full-scale attack. With the gate down, any Union response is on approach at relative speed: we’re on our own for the next few years. I have theater control through my omni connection, but there’s only so much I can do with it.”
--
“My battlegroup still has operational capability,” Commander Song spoke quickly, her voice tense, level. “And a company of chassis onboard the Loa. My orders are clear, given the scenario.”
Lorenzo raised an eyebrow. He looked back to Tello.
--
“Cornucopia began wartime conscription after Fansipan was destroyed,” Tello said. “But our pilot corps isn’t up to strength. A company would go a long way in the defense of my world.”
“Done,” Commander Song said. “Lorenzo, I need to go.”
--
“Stay safe, Commander Song,” Lorenzo said, his smile thin. “I’ll slow the Aun where I can. Rest assured, you will have access to all of my data to the end.”
Commander Song nodded. “Tello, take good care of my men.”
Tello began to respond, but Song had already disconnected.
--
“The Loa is en route to Cornucopia now,” Lorenzo said. He pulled a worn paperback from the air, opened it to a bookmarked page. “They will arrive in one week,” he read. “And the Aun in six months. Will you be ready by then?”
--
Tello scratched the white stubble on his chin. “Why does this follow me, Lorenzo?”
Lorenzo closed his little book. “I do not know.”
“I thought I was done with war.”
“Your kind never is.”
--
Tello looked up at Lorenzo, brow furrowed. “My ‘kind’ has never wanted this. All we wanted was a gentle place to call home.”
Lorenzo shrugged. “When humans want the same thing, what do you expect? Cooperation? Trust me, friend, all of your history is stained by this.”
--
Tello looked long at Lorenzo. A friend, of a kind. “Drive everything you have into their fleet,” he ordered the Legion. “Every station, every drone, everything. Their only play after the gate is Cornucopia.”
“And after? The cost will be terrible--”
--
Tello turned, clutching his coat closed. The clouds, distant over the dark range at the horizon, were moving closer. “There is no ‘after’,” he called back. “Not with the numbers they bring.”
Lorenzo knew the man was right. Tello disincorporated, exiting legionspace.
--
Lorenzo sat at the dock until the clouds reached him. It must have been hours, but his subroutines and subalterns could handle most all the work he needed to accomplish.
The rain was warm, and endless.
--
His drones and stations, mining rigs, shipyards, and subaltern crews across the Cornucopia system blinked to life, rising from dormancy.
As one, across the system, they turned, their tools discarded, and began burning for the shifting mass of the Aun Crusade fleet.
--
Lorenzo put a hand over his eyes to better feel the rain.
In realspace, one of his mining rigs crossed within a hundred thousand kilometers of the main body of the crusade fleet. It winked out, slagged by a beam of hard light.
Lorenzo mulled over the feeling of void.