The Peace

1.

    Colonel James Abbott awoke to the feel of soft vibrations emanating from the cabin recliner of his shuttle craft.  He had been asleep for what seemed to be a tremendously long period of time, or since the shuttle had left Charon.  Attempting to shake off the affects of prolonged slumber, he made an effort to regain his bearings even as the recliner's vibrations were becoming incrementally more annoying.  He was more accustomed to waking on a hard slab in the command post of a war zone on some mudball in deep space, which made waking on the soft recliner all the more disorienting.

    "What's our status," he asked the shuttle's navigational computer, sounding as if his mouth was filled with dirt.  The sound of his voice, however, caused an end to those obnoxious vibrations.

    "We are currently passing Earth's moon, approximately one hour and seven minutes from our scheduled arrival," answered a deep, calm voice that seemed to come from everywhere.

    "And Major General Tan will be meeting me there?"

    "Yes, sir, he has confirmed."

    "And no one else, correct?"

    "As you requested."

    Satisfied with the computer's statements, Abbott began to stretch his limbs, which were sore from his extended sleep.  He looked out of the front viewing port and saw the distant blue-green sphere with the thin red line that led to it.  That line was not physically present, but an on-screen visual representation of the path in which the tractor signal was leading the shuttle.  Interspatial speeds were not allowed within the heliosphere, and to enforce that rule, all shuttle crafts were driven by tractor signal.  In the crafts to which Abbott had been accustomed, the rest of his present journey would have taken seconds.

    Grabbing a soma stick from a dispenser to his left, he casually placed the business end of the thin shaft in his mouth, flipped a diminutive switch at the end and sucked in the calming drug.  As he relaxed, he considered how long it had been since he had been to the home planet.  It seemed to him that it had been five, or no, maybe six years since his last furlough there.  The last communication from Abbott's wife, Shelby, had stated that Danielle, Abbott's eldest daughter, was now nineteen, and he recalled that it had been her thirteenth birthday on that furlough.  He recalled that his daughter had been respectful and pleasant enough, as any daughter of the military would be, but she had also been distant.  There was good reason for this, as Abbott had been an almost complete stranger to her.  In her lifetime he had been to Earth four times, never for more than six weeks.  Now, he would be returning there for good.

    As the image of Earth began to fill the front viewing port, Abbott noted that it was still a swirl of blue, green and white, but now large areas of gray-black accompanied those colors, as if the planet had been infected with some form of global cancer.  There were large sections of the planet which were once inhabited but were now unlivable, the festering reminders of three hundred and twelve years of interplanetary war.  The war had ended now, though, and the population of the planet could turn it resources and energies to revitalizing these areas.

    Abbott closed his eyes again and, as he had done so often over the past few months, pondered his own future.  Like all other humans, he had been a soldier all of his life, and had never known a time when there was not war.  Human history stated that over three centuries earlier the Ilyans had first attacked the Terran outpost Xi-417 in the Altebaran system, thus initiating the Great Interplanetary War.  The odd, slug-like Ilyans had been unknown to humankind up to that point, and as the creatures communicated through bodily excretions rather than with sounds and gestures as humans did, this made the act of communication with the race next to impossible.  So alien was the Ilyans form of communication that humans were only able to decipher the most rudimentary elements of the Ilyan language.  Without the ability to communicate, and thus no means for diplomacy, war ensued.

    For decades the war took place in various locations throughout the explored universe, with Earth and the Ilyan homeworld far removed from the front of the conflict.  Then, at the dawn of the war's second century, Terran intelligence operatives were finally able to pinpoint the location of the Ilyan homeworld.  Taking the planet was not so simple, however, as the Ilyan defenses were far greater than the Terran Command could ever imagine.  The Ilyans possessed spatial disruptors, weapons of a design unknown to humans which could cause a rift in the flow of time and space in a concentrated area which could cause an entire Terran fleet to dissolve in the cosmic medium.  It was the thinking of the Terran Command that these weopons were not mobile, otherwise the Ilyans would have already won the war.  Shortly afterwards, Ilyan spies discovered the wormhole ports that Terran ships used for deep space transport and were able to overtake a few smaller ones that were not as well-fortified as the others.  Thus the Ilyans were able to make short but effective strikes on the home planet, and war had come to Earth as it had come to the Ilyan homeworld.

    The shuttle sizzled softly as it entered Earth's atmosphere, and the port image briefly glowed red as the craft accustomed itself to the radical change in temperature.  As the red faded, Abbott noted that the sky was still blue in the daylight, the clouds were still gray-white, the oceans remained a deep blue-green.  The difference, of course, was in the landscape.  There were those dark, lifeless areas from which an eerie smoke continued to rise, as if the planet's soul was seeping out through them.  Then, there was the fact that, other than ruins, there were also no visible cities on the planet's surface.  As a direct result of generations of conflict, humans now lived in large pod communities underground.  One of the casualties of war had been the ability to live in daylight.

    It was dusk over the Australian continent as the shuttle came down for its landing.  The western half of the continent was one of the planet's wastelands.  The Ilyans had targeted it for good reason.  Their attacks had missed the Terran High Command by 1037 kilometers, an event that resulted in a massive refortification of Terran defenses and created a contingent command post on the North American continent.  However, the High Command had stood, a fact that had led to the strengthening of a myriad of religious beliefs and lent itself to the manufacture of patriotic song and verse.

    Abbott prepared himself as the shuttle made it final approach to the landing pad.  The only items now visible, the pad's guidelights, created bright red, blue and green streaks on the view port as the shuttle moved past them.  The shuttle slowed, then eventually halted, setting itself on the circular, green-lit pad.

    Abbott attempted to raise himself from the recliner and immediately felt the aches of several weeks of inactivity.  As much as he had lived most of his lifetime in either artificial or no gravity, he also began to feel the effects of planetary pressure on his various artificial parts.  Over a three-decades-long career as a soldier, Abbott had his left eye, the left side of the base of his skull, his bottom three vertebrae, a lung, his pancreas, his left hip, the lower half of his right leg, his left kneecap and his upper intestines replaced by various metals, plastics, chemicals and electronics.  The result had been dull pains throughout his body on most occasions, but nothing as severe as the pain he now felt.  Picking out another soma stick and activating it, he stiffly made his way through the shuttle's open portal.

    Once outside, Abbott inhaled the acrid air at the Terran High Command and immediately began to cough violently.  Somewhere in the distance, illuminated smoke billowed into the atmosphere, and below him were the white-clad servicemen, who appeared grotesque in the green illumination.  One of them quickly made his way up the shuttle's steps and shoved a device into Abbott's mouth, after which his coughing abated.

    "Having problems breathing our atmosphere," asked a short, stocky Asian man in blue military dress standing at the edge of the landing pad.

    "General Tan, sir," Abbott coughed out, awkwardly saluting the general, a salute which was casually returned.

    "You soldiers always forget what it's like to come back here.  Years of breathing artificial air and the lungs just don't want the original stuff.  That breather that Sergeant Yawney put in your mouth will help.  Leave it in your mouth for a day or so and it'll acclimate your lungs to our atmosphere.  I'd forget about the soma sticks while it's in there, though."

    "Yuh--yes, sir," Abbott said, limping his way down the steps.

    "You're in pain?"

    "Nothing I can't handle."

    "It's the neural connections, isn't it?  How much of your body has been replaced?  Or would it be easier to tell me how much of it is original?"

    "It may be, sir."

    "Sergeant Yawney, would you please?"

    The serviceman opened up Abbot's shirt and placed a blue strip on the left side of his chest.  The strip dissolved and Abbot's pain disappeared with it.

    "And we can dispense with the 'sir' after every other sentence," General Tan continued.  "Our returning soldiers are being feted as heroes, field commanders such as yourself are our new gods.  Administrators such as myself who sat on our cans and barked orders are pretty much afterthoughts now."

    "If you say so."

    "I do.  So, explain the mystery to me.  We are in the midst of a planetary celebration, or at least as much celebration as a ravaged planet can muster.  Every platoon of soldiers that return home is treated better than the one before.  Our field officers, officers such as yourself, are being treated to a neverending list of honors and ceremonies.  Entire communities are being named after them.  Your arrival should have been attended by no less than three hundred of our finest military journalists and a bevy of military dignitaries.  Full honor guard.  The works.  So, why so low-key?  You don't like crowds?"

    "Something like that.  I really just want to see my children again."

    "I see.  Understandable.  I hope you fare better with your wife and children than many of our soldiers are.  It's difficult being a father to a child who barely knows you."

    "That's why I would like to get at it as soon as I can."

    "Hmm.  And why call me out here to meet you?"

    "I need someone to debrief.  Sir."

    Tan released a chuckle and slapped a palm on Abbott's shoulder.  "Still the professional soldier, I see.  You realize there's not a lot of call for those anymore."

    "Yes, I do.  I suppose I'll have to find another calling."

    Tan turned and led Abbott down the steel pathway to the adminstration building, followed by the servicemen.

    "Okay, well, you can enter your official report into the system tomorrow morning, but let's go ahead and begin the informal debriefing now.  What's your assessment of the Ilyan homeworld?"

    "To be truthful, we can never be absolute about these things.  Their 'cities' are absolutely unlike anything that any human being would consider livable.  However, bioscans indicate that nothing biological exists within the planet's 432 communities.  Rural areas are harder to determine as it would take decades to bioscan the entire planet.  Biopsies tend to indicate that these creatures are intrinsically communal, however.  They simply don't do well either isolated or in small groups.  Therefore, we can extrapolate that there is little chance that we will find Ilyans existing outside of their population centers.  Then, of course, there are the outposts. . ."

    "Informal debriefing, Colonel Abbott.  Most of the facts and figures we already possess.  From your perspective, what is your assessment of present conditions."

    Abbott hesitated.  He much preferred facts and figures to conclusions.

    "Well, sir, the percentages are great that the Ilyan threat has been nullified.  Even if there were Ilyans left alive out there somewhere, they have no means in which to create a meaningful act of aggression."

    The two officers had entered the administration building.  In spite of the powerful pain medication that the serviceman had given him, Abbott was still hobbling due to his lack of acclimation to Earth's gravity.  The outer, armor-plated doors slammed shut behind them as they walked down the dimly-lit gray entrance corridor towards the central nerve center of the facility.  A year or so earlier, the corridor would have been alive with activity as the High Command and their attendants would be bustling about at all hours in order to convey reports, statistics, stratagems and all other necessary information to one another.  Now, with darkness having fallen on Australia, the massive corridor had an eerie quiet to it, and the sound of the footfalls of the small group of soldiers echoed off of every surface.  The end of the corridor opened out into a massive auditorium, capable of holding tens of thousands of soldiers despite the huge holographic war map in the midst of it.  On escalating platforms on all sides of the war map were hundreds of work spaces of various sizes and functions, each one equipped with all forms of monitoring devices and thinking machines.  At present, the map was down, leaving nothing but a bowl-shaped projector covering the entirety of the auditorium floor, and the auditorium itself was dimly-lit with only a few dozen people scattered in small groups around the structure.

    "The place has become a museum now," Tan said, stopping at the end of the corridor.  "A museum and a laboratory.  They talked about dismantling it, but the historians cried loud and long enough, so it stays.  Five years ago, every corner of this place was crackling with activity.  A year from now the whole thing will be decommissioned."

    "You sound disappointed," Abbott said.

    "Hard as it would be for some to believe, I hated sending soldiers to die, I truly did.  I've been at this post for seventeen years now, been a soldier for over twice as long, and I've never gotten used to the human loss that war brings.  But, there is that part of me that will hate giving up the strategy sessions and the sense of accomplishment that comes from having those strategies succeed.  Do you think that's wrong of me, Colonel Abbott?"

    "I'm not a judge, General Tan."

    Tan let out a soft chuckle and began to walk again.  "Spoken like a future politician," he said.

    "I don't think I would really be cut out for that, sir."

    "When was the last time you were back on the homeworld?"

    "Six years ago.  Following the completion of the Sigil campaign.  I was rewarded with a furlough for my eldest daughter's birthday."

    "Did you dock here, at the High Command?"

    "No, I came in on a platoon ship.  We docked near Krakow."

    "So, when was the last time you were here?"

    "Thirteen years ago, sir.  I received my promotion here and attended a strategic session for the Third Interplanetary Army."

    "Then you haven't seen some of the spoils of our victory that we've kept housed here?"

    "No, sir."

    "Come along, then.  I can show you some Ilyan devices that have turned up over the past decade or so while I show you to your quarters."

    Abbott and Tan made their way along the walkway that surrounded the war map beneath the work stations that rose above them in sections on their left side.  One work station, three levels above them, was brightly-lit, and a group of blue-clad individuals stood their gesturing excitedly around a console.

    "Eggheads," Tan said with a hint of spite to his tone.  "Scientists control this place now."

    "What are they doing?"

    "They think they've found some sort of flaw in the ancient Chronology Protection Conjecture, the law that states that macroscopic objects cannot travel backwards through the fourth linear dimension."

    "Time travel?"

    "Why not?  Maybe then they can go back three hundred years and stop this whole damned conflict before it even began."

    "Then what?"

    "Then I doubt that you and I would be here discussing this, which means they won't be up there attempting to learn how to travel through time, and after that my head starts to hurt and I don't want to think about it any more."

    "I suppose that's for the best."

    "One thing that's always struck me is that, despite all the carnage, war always seems to advance science.  Take yourself, for instance.  Early in the conflict, you would have been a dead man after that shot you took to the gut during the Battle of the Rim."

    "I'm impressed that you know about that, sir."

    "You asked for me to personally debrief you, it serves me to do some research on you.  My point is, out of necessity, we had to learn to synthesize human organs and human biological systems.  We stood the possibility of running out of soldiers if we hadn't.  We've made such great advances in bio-engineering that, should there be another conflict, all of our soldiers will be manufactured.  Chemistry, astro-physics, all of the sciences have made great leaps since the war began.  Do you know that we had a weapon in development that could create a singularity at any point in space?"

    "No, sir."

    "Fascinating, isn't it?  See that area up there with the red flashing lights?"

    Ten levels above and to their right, an area cordoned off by four iron posts was illuminated with an undulating red light, above it a bright digital clock was counting down.  When the clock reached zero, the area briefly flashed brightly enough to light up the entire auditorium, then just as quickly the flash disappeared.

    "That flash was a single particle shot from the other side of the solar system," Tan continued.  "They take measurements here, then it shoots through a tube underground to the Atlantic Ocean, where another team takes measurements, then it's shot off the Earth and towards another space station.  Something to do with the effects of atmosphere and gravity on particle acceleration, from what I'm told, though it seems to me they should've been able to conclude something by now.  I do know that, whatever that particle is, it packs a mean wallop.  When they first build it, some grunts were moving some sheets of titanium through that area and no one had informed them of the experiment.  The particle came through and destroyed every sheet of titanium, killed all the grunts, too.  Could you imagine how effective that could have been if we could turn it into a weapon?"

    "Very effective."

    "It would've at least given us a decent defense weopon for the homeworld.  We were never ahead of the Ilyans on that front.  Their spatial disruptors are still a mystery to us."

    "I believe our teams on the Ilyan homeworld are still having difficulties with that.  Before I was relieved, one of my last duties was to act as envoy for the Physics and Engineering Corp.  Their people told me it may take years, perhaps even decades, to unlock all of that weopon's secrets."

    "Could you imagine what might have happened if they were able to mobilize that weopon?  Ilyans would have been crawling all over this planet now rather than us taking the Ilyan homeworld."

    "I believe that part of their failure to mobilize was due to the form and function of their species.  Their physiques made it difficult for them to create scaled-down versions of their inventions.  If they did, it would be difficult for them to operate.  That's why their spacecrafts were so large and such easy targets."

    "And. . . that is why, towards the end, they became so obsessed with the human physique."

    "I believe so, sir."

    "You've heard of some of their late experiments, then?"

    "I understood that they were attempting to create bioform soldiers that at least appeared human."

    "They succeeded in creating partially bioformed soldiers.  They were at least able to ape the skull and limbs of the human structure.  But that was hardly the worst of it."

    "Something worse than Ilyan spies that looked like us?"

    "Androids.  Artificial intelligence.  Those bastards weren't just able to create human-looking robotics, but they were able to create robots that mimicked human development.  In other words, they aged and developed in the same manner that humans did.  They could introduce them here as infants and they would grow to maturity just as any person would.  They could be here twenty years before they carried out their programming and no one would know a damned thing.  Fortunately for us, they never learned to correctly calibrate the human life cycle and they were succeptible to detection through bioscan.  Also, they could never remove a basic flaw to their design, the fact that the androids' eyes would glow green, something to do with the power system the androids were utilizing."

    "How is it that I've never heard of that?  If true, that contradicts our theory that the Ilyans were impeded by their anatomies."

    "It was kept under wraps.  Very tight wraps.  If word of this ever leaked to our general population, every green-eyed person from here to Scandanavia would've been reported as a spy.  You would've been reported as a spy, seeing as your eyes are greener than most.  As it is, while some of the security has been removed from the information, I doubt if we'll ever be releasing this information to the public."

    Abbott and Tan had reached the other side of the auditorium and Tan led Abbott to the exit, which would lead to Abbott's quarters.  Before they exited, Tan took one last look at the auditorium.

    "A museum and a laboratory," he said wistfully.  "It's hard to imagine this place being like this.  I can remember my first assignment here.  The place was packed with humanity, there was so much activity that it caused my head to swim.  Now look at it.  What does a war machine do when there's no more war?"

    "Retire, sir."

    Tan smiled and shook his head.  "I suppose you're right.  Do you play cribbage, Colonel?"

    "A bit.  It sometimes helped me pass time between missions."

    "Good," Tan said as he led Abbott through the exit.  "I can take some of your excess script, and you can continue with your debriefing."

2.

    Abbott peered out of the window of his military transport shuttle and watched the budding crops of the North American farmlands rush by, a sign that agriculturists were once again attempting above-ground farming.  It was a welcomed sight.  It signified that people were becoming more confident that the Peace was lasting and that the planet would return to the type of existence it had not known for three centuries.  Still, he wondered how well a generation that had known nothing but war and who had inherited that war from their forebears would transition into peace.

    As he reclined in his seat, his thoughts turned to his family.  He had met his wife, Shelby, when they were both teenagers at the Saskatchewan Military Academy.  All of the planet's children were placed in military academy on their tenth birthday in order to determine their service to the species.  From the day he entered, Abbott had been an officer candidate, like his father and grandfather before him.  Shelby had been designated as a candidate for the Communications Corps, meaning that she would be stationed Earthside, something that would prove to be an advantage to Abbott after they wed.  They met at a military social function in Regina, one of the planned but far-too-seldom breaks that cadets recieved from their training.  It started as a single, simple dance and Abbott initially thought nothing would come of it as he stood thirty centimeters taller than her and he was awkward and clumsy in the dance.  It may have ended at that but, as the music began to fade, Shelby mentioned her love of holographic modeling, a hobby of which he was a devoted enthusiast.  As they discussed their passion, they remained on the dance floor for another song, then a third, and they eventually moved their conversation to a table, where they also discussed military life, family, colleagues and whatever else came to mind.  As they left, he for his barracks and her for her mother's home, Shelby gave him her call number and made him promise to call on her.

    Abbott did so, repeatedly, over the next two years.  He asked Shelby to marry him on the day he received his commission and was called up for field duty.  There were practical purposes for this.  The military government took special care of their field soldiers materially, and took particularly good care of its field officers.  However, with no home but the military, many of the soldiers squandered their gains in the course of their careers, leaving them destitute and dependant later in life, particularly if they were debilitated in the course of action.  If they were killed in action, any material possessions that they had obtained would be redistributed to the military.  But a married soldier with a spouse that was stationed Earthside received first-class quarters and a recepticle for his rewards.  In other words, a spouse made for a good safe deposit box.

    His marriage to Shelby had not been loveless, however, at least not at first.  He still felt that he held an affection for the woman and he wanted to do his best to care for her.  During over a quarter of a century in service, though, he would rarely see her in person as he spent perhaps a total of ten months of his career Earthside.  His longest stay on Earth had been after the Kuiper Belt conflict nearly two decades earlier, during which he lost his lower left leg.  He spent five months back on Earth recuperating after that, and it was at this time that his eldest daughter, Danielle, was conceived, although he had returned to active duty by the time the girl was born.  Two subsequent, brief furloughs over the intervening years had brought two more children; Chandra, who was sixteen, and Tyler, who was twelve.  Every trip back to Earth had brought him a child except the last one, Danielle's birthday, and then he had barely spoken to Shelby before leaving again.

    He had not been faithful to his wife.  No field soldier was ever faithful to their Earthside spouse.  Abbott had a total of seven trysts over his career, every one of them to married women.  The longest had been a three-year affair with a pilot in the 43rd Interplanetary Squadron.  Towards the end, she had begun to hint strongly that they should dissolve their current marriages and commit themselves to each other.  Abbott sometimes wondered if he might not have done so, despite the problems it would have caused him, but that consideration was moot after her squadron became victim to a disruptor just over the Ilyan homeworld.  He thought that perhaps Shelby may have had similar affairs, considered that it was a probability, but in the end decided it was not important.

    The engines of the transport slowed as it arrived at the Regina Military Terminal, ending Abbott's musings.  The transport hovered momentarily, then gently sat itself on the landing pad.  The door to Abbott's private compartment hissed open and a young corporal entered.

    "Sir, we have already sent your things to your transport, and you may disembark at your convenience," the serviceman said.

    "Thank you," Abbott said, lifting himself slowly out of his seat and working some of the stiffness out of his limbs.

    He followed the serviceman through the cramped corridor towards the exit.  As the hatch opened, Abbott stepped out into the cool Saskatchewan morning.  The air did not hurt his lungs as badly as the air had in Australia, partially due to the cleaner air and partially due to the acclimator that he still had in his throat.  The day was bright and cloudless and it took a moment for Abbott's eyes to adjust from the dimness of the cabin.  When his vision cleared, he saw an honor guard standing on both sides of the walk leading from the landing pad, and Brigadier General Marc Clare standing in wait at the far end of the walk.  The guard stood at attention and saluted, a salute which Abbott returned as he made his way towards General Clare, who he in turn saluted.  After returning the salute, General Clare held his hand out for a handshake.

    "Good to see you home, Colonel," Clare said through the handshake.

    "Good to be home, sir, though this is a bit more of a reception than I had expected."

    "I know, I know.  You've been doing nothing but travelling for the last eight or nine months and now all you want to do is get home and rest, and believe me, everyone wants to respect your wishes to keep everything low-key.  But you didn't think that the hero of the Buffer Zone would get away scot free, did you, especially in his home town?"

    "I don't know about all that 'hero' nonsense. . ."

    "Don't be humble, Colonel.  This planet needs its heroes, particularly with all the work we have ahead of us.  Now, we didn't want to do too much, but we do have a small press conference set up for you, after which you can go ahead and do whatever you need.  Is that okay?"

    "Certainly, sir," Abbott said, seeing no means of escape.

    Abbott had a great deal of experience handling press briefings during his tenure in the Third Interplanetary Army.  For the most part, those briefings were held in a makeshift structure on a small mudball somewhere near the point of conflict, where he would deal with perhaps a dozen or so journalism corps members brave enough to be there.  Abbott felt that for this news conference, there was nothing to talk about and no reason to be there, yet there were well over two hundred journalists crammed into a relatively tiny rooms to question him.  They made their questions about nothing last fifty-two minutes.  Finally, an officer to Abbott's left signalled to the press corps that the conference was over and, after a few cordial handshakes, Abbott left the room.

    After exchanging niceties with several more senior officers, a serviceman informed Abbott that his private transport was waiting.  Abbott thanked the soldier and exited the building into the brisk Canadian morning.  After a brief walk to the transport depot he found the silver-colored sled that served as his private transport, and in front of it stood the family that he barely knew.

    Shelby stood in front of the near-side hatch, flanked by Chandra and Tyler.  Shelby had retired from active service two years earlier, and thus she was clad in civilian attire.  After all the years and the stresses that wartime had incurred, she remained a striking woman.  Despite her diminutive stature, she had a lithe, athletic physique with proportionately long, graceful limbs.  Her sandy hair cascaded about her face and neck in tight curls, framing her regal features.  Her eyes remained as blue as the Canadian sky, her cheeks high, her nose thin and straight, her lips full and red.  She was dressed in a flowing black one-piece that flattered her form, with ankle-high gray boots that came to a point at the toe.  Both children were dressed in their black military cadets' uniforms with their various honors pinned to their chests.  Chandra was the image of her mother, though her sandy hair had a much shorter cut underneath her cadets' cap, and she had already passed her mother's height by two inches.  Tyler had inherited the dark, straight hair that his father once had along with his intense green eyes.  Both children saluted Abbott as he approached them and he returned the salute, then turned to his wife.

    "Hello, Jim," Shelby said, delivering a kiss to his cheek.

    "Hello, Shelby."

    "Back for awhile this time?"

    "For a longer time than you may be ready for."

    "I think we can handle it," she said with an awkward wink.  She was obviously ill at ease and trying to disguise it with coyness.

    Shelby touched a contact on the side of the hatch and it slid upwards, revealing the seating compartment.  Abbott and Shelby took the two front seats while the children took the rear, and as the portal closed Shelby asked the vehicle to take them home.  Noiselessly, the vehicle lurched on its track as it began its journey.

    Abbott sank back into the plush seat as best he could, but he felt uncomfortable, and not just physically.  He glanced over at the virtual stranger that was his wife and she smiled with attempted warmth, but the smile was artificial, as if she were going through the motions of a role she knew she had to play.

    "Is Danielle still at the base," Abbott asked in order to break the silence.

    "There was a disturbance in the Dakotas and her unit was called in.  No big deal, she says.  She said that she thought she'd be back this evening."

    "Good.  With any luck, these small, local skirmishes is all the action she'll ever see."

    With nothing more to say, Abbott gazed at the scenery through the viewing monitor.  At length, the transport entered a tunnel and began its descent down into the city.  Other than ruins, above-ground cities had been rare on the planet for the past century.  The Ilyans, once they found their way through the wormhole gateways, immediately targeted the largest population centers on the globe.  The ancient city of London was destroyed in less than a day and there had never been a record of any surviviors.  In subsequent attacks, Beijing, Bombay, Moscow, Buenos Aires, Toronto and Chicago were all razed.  Fortunately for Earth's population, the gateway wormholes that the Ilyans had at their disposal were limited in size and humans had time to develop a defense.  They beefed up their homeworld security forces, but even with their forces at their best an Ilyan craft could briefly penetrate and lay waste to a mid-sized population center.  As a result of this, engineers quickly began work on designing a series of underground cities.  At war's end, almost all cities were designed in the same hive-like manner and, other than size, one was not distinguishable from another.  These cities were interconnected cylinders, each cylinder containing a number of levels, each level containing a number of domiciles.  This was the environment in which most humans had lived over the past century.

    After a distance, the tunnel expanded vertically and the rail on which Abbott's transport was riding branched off, with the seperate rails descending into the lowest parts of the city.  Abbott's transport remained on the topmost rail, and eventually the tunnel opened up into the city's first cylinder.  The cylinder was gray, drab and utilitarian, with identical layers from top to bottom, each level seperated by a grated walkway.  The uppermost levels contained fewer domiciles as these housed the city's most prominent citizens.  It was these levels that contained a bit of greenery or some colorful lighting in a futile effort to make these residences appear somewhat less dull than the others.  To Abbott's way of thinking, the whole thing was nothing more than a massive military bunker with delusions of grandeur.

    The transport made its way through five more identical cylinders, then made a sharp turn to the left and went through two more.  In the third the transport finally slowed, then turned into a parking pad on the left side, top level.

    "So, this must be home," Abbott said, breaking his silence.

    "Actually, we have the top two levels on this side," Shelby said as the portal opened and she began to step out.

    "We've moved."

    "Yes, I suppose we have.  Where were we living the last time you were home?  Tenth level in C-Orange?"

    "Something like that.  It's been a long time."

    "Yeah.  Long enough for you to become the 'hero of the Buffer Zone.'  Because of that, they gave us this.  Spoils of war and all.  We even have domestics."

    Abbott grimaced.  At times he had had servicemen to assist him between conflicts, but he had expected nothing like this post-war.  "That's not necessary. . ."

    "Like I said, spoils of war."

    As they spoke, they made their way down the walkway, the children in the lead.  They walked past three circular, mirrored windows to the gray metallic entranceway.  There, Chandra placed her palm on a plastic white surface by the entranceway and it slid open.  They stepped into a narrow foyer with an entrance to the right which led to a spacious yet sparsely-furnished living area.  The room contained a couch beneath one of the windows and two recliners adjascent to it, each of which was little more than two large cushions on a metal frame.  A glass holovision set was in the midst of the room, and an aquarium with several multi-colored fish sat against one of the olive-green walls.  The floor was covered in a soft, light-gray plastic compound, and the ceiling was comprised of a luminescent material which provided a dim backround light for a pair of floor lamps.

    As Abbott surveyed the room, a tall soldier in a clean gray uniform walked in from the foyer and saluted.

    "Colonel Abbott, it is an honor to meet you and to serve you, sir," the soldier said as he stood at attention.

    "And to whom am I addressing," Abbott asked as he returned the salute.

    "Corporal Jeremy Theriott, sir."

    "Corporal Theriott.  I take it that your on staff here."

    "Yes, sir.  I am the chief domestic."

    "Well, then, I'll know who to call when I need something."

    "Certainly, sir.  If it pleases you, dinner will be served at 1800."

    "That'll be fine.  Thank you, Corporal Theriott."

    With that, the soldier turned and left the room.

    "Sir," Chandra's voice came from behind Abbott.

    "Yes," Abbott said, turning to his daughter.

    "Sir, with your permission, my brother and I have our studies. . ."

    "Certainly.  We'll get together again at dinner and do some catching up."

    Chandra then turned and exited through a side door, but Tyler stood firm, a doe-eyed expression on his face.  After a moment's pause, Abbott asked, "Is there something I can help you with, Tyler?"

    "I. . .I just have a question to ask you sir, if you have the time for it."

    "I'm certain that I can make time.  What do you want to ask?"

    "Well. . .sir. . .my classmates and I have been training for combat for the past couple of years.  You know that.  Now, it looks like we'll never see that type of combat, at least not the type you know.  So, I was wondering, sir, what was it like?"

    Abbott looked down at his son for a moment, then slowly sat on one of the recliners and leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees.  Tyler aped his father's motions.

    "They show a lot of combat holos at the academy, don't they?"

    "Yes, sir."

    "Many of them feature human heroes and human victories, correct?"

    "Certainly."

    "Of course they do.  Our failed tactics can be studies with texts and schematics.  Those holos are meant to inspire young cadets to greater service to their species.  But every man that I've ever dealt with, every man, has told me that no matter how many courses and simulations they went through in training, they were caught completely off-guard when things began exploding around them in real combat.  You see, those holos feature machinery and explosions, yet, in almost every case there are humans manning that machinery and, out of neccessity, in combat situations command has to treat soldiers as if they were another piece of machinery.  Expendable machinery.  It would be nice if those of us who lead those men could think of them in the same way.  But, it's human nature to seek friendships and so, sometimes completely against your will, you start talking to these soldiers, this machinery.  And you learn about their love interests and their parentage and their hobbies, you learn things about them that are beautiful and you learn things that are disgusting.  Then you watch them die.  Horrific deaths.  Torturous deaths.  Deaths they don't deserve.  It becomes all about loss.  And that's what combat is, it's loss.  You may accomplish your mission, but when you think of it, personally, all that you can concentrate on is what you've lost, and wonder if the day will come when you're lost as well.  And that is why I am so very glad that you'll never know that type of combat."

    Abbott was no longer speaking to his son but was staring straight ahead, as if there were an invisible guest in the room.  Finally, his eyes once again met Tyler's.

    "Anyway, that's my answer to your question.  I'm certain that there are others that are just as valid."

    "Thank you, sir."

    "Certainly.  Now you had best get to your studies."

    Tyler stood, saluted his father and exited the room.

    As Abbott had been speaking, Shelby had been standing by the couch staring absently out the window.  Now, with their son out of the room, she sat on the couch at the end furthest from her husband.

    "So, everything must seem really odd for you," she said.

    Abbott pulled a soma stick from his pocket and activated it.  "In a way, yes.  I really haven't thought about it a lot."

    "Do you have any idea what you're going to do with yourself?"

    "I really don't know.  What do you do with yourself after you've seen the universe?  Major Priam from the academy contacted me while I was in Australia and asked me if I might be interested in taking a teaching position in advanced tactics.  That's a possibility.  I could write my memoirs.  I should do that while there's still a market for it.  Other than that, I guess I'll do what all old soldiers do."

    "Speaking of old soldiers, the general contacted me yesterday.  He would like to see you."

    "I suppose he should be at the top of my priority list.  If you have no plans, we can visit him tomorrow.  The children should come, too."

    "We can do that.  I just have to arrange leaves for Chandra and Tyler."

    Abbott began to notice his wife.  Her words were pleasant enough, but she was fidgeting, and her left foot was softly tapping with what seemed to him and abundance of nervous energy.

    "So, what about you," he said.  "What plans do you have now that the world's at peace?"

    "Nothing changes for me.  I retired two years ago and became a domestic goddess, and that's what I'll continue to be."

    Abbott knew that the conversation was headed towards and awkward silence, then he remembered something in his back pocket.

    "Hey, I thought you'd like to see this," Abbott said, pulling out a thin, black case.

    "What is it," Shelby inquired, moving forward slightly.

    Abbott placed the case on his knee and opened it.  An image flickered, then jumped out at great intensity.  A multi-colored, intricate geometric shape floated above the case, tiny points of light looping and swirling through the design.

    "Oh my god, is that a holographic model," Shelby asked with a bemused smile on her face.

    "I had a lot of time to myself while I was on Charon, so I worked on this.  What do you think, have I lost my touch?"

    "I. . .wouldn't know what to say.  I dropped that silly habit after Danielle was born.  I haven't even looked at one for twelve years."

    Abbott let the design sit on his knee for a moment, then, with no critique forthcoming, he closed the case and put it back in his pocket.

    Finally, the awkward silence had come.  Shelby turned her gaze back to the window while Abbott studied the floor.  At length, Shelby said, "You know, this is a big place.  We have two guest bedrooms, would you believe it?  They're both quite comfortable. . ."

    "Either one would be fine," Abbott said, stopping her short.

    At that moment, they heard the outer door slide open and footfalls in the foyer, followed by a whispered conversation between Corporal Theriott and a female voice, after which the footfalls became more determined.  At length, Abbott's eldest daughter was at the room's entrance, standing at attention and saluting.

    Danielle had become a beautiful young woman.  She was the obvious offspring of her father, tall and statuesque, with her straight black hair tucked neatly beneath her uniform cap.  Despite her military bearing, she was a classical beauty with features that seemed to be carved by an artisan out of dark stone, offset by eyes that were as intense as her father's, eyes which appeared to flash as she spoke.

    "Sir," she addressed the Colonel as she remained at attention.  Abbott rose and returned the salute.

    "Lieutenant, it's good to see you again," Abbott said to his daughter.  "I heard that you had some problems in the Dakotas."

    "Just a local skirmish, sir.  Nothing that would call for any special attention.  The operation was wrapped by 1300."

    "1300?  And you made it back to base that quickly?"

    "Certain special accomodations were made for me, sir, considering your return."

    "It's good to see that I still have friends at the home base.  The general has requested for us to visit him tomorrow.  Do you think that you could call on those same friends for a twenty-four hour leave so that you can join us?"

    "I can make some calls tonight, if you wish."

    "Good.  He'll be pleased to see you."

    "Sir, I cannot overstate what an honor it is to have you here.  I have studied your campaigns since I first entered academy.  The Battle for Barium Minor, the Antares-Citni III Mission, the Grand Battle for the Rim.  I must say that I look forward to discussing your career with great anticipation."

    "I see that you're a fairly eager student.  I admire that.  It appears that I'll be here for quite a while, so you can of course call on me any time to discuss military theory."

    "Thank you, sir."

    Shelby broke in, "You'll be joining us for dinner, won't you, Danielle?  We'll be serving at 1800."

    "Yes, ma'am.  Let me go to change out of my uniform and I will meet you in the dining room later."

    As Danielle left the room, Shelby turned to Abbott.

    "I have a few things to finish up myself before dinner.  Will you be okay by yourself until then?"

    "Certainly.  I have a few communiques to catch up on.  They should keep me occupied until then."

    "Can you find your way to the dining room?"

    "I can call on Corporal Theriott if I need assistance."

    "Okay.  I'll see you at dinner, then."

    With that, she walked forward and gave Abbott a dry peck on the forehead, then left the colonel alone to his musings.

3.

    General Evander Abbott had served in the Terran military for forty-eight years, the last nineteen of them as one of the commanders for the Fourth Interplanetary Army.  Three years before the Peace he had been retired with distinction by the High Command.  While few Terran officers were offered the liesure of retirement during wartime unless debilitated, members of the top brass were given the option of turning their duties over to younger commanding officers and allowed to spend their declining years in less stressful pursuits such as teaching or writing their memoirs.  General Abbott had chosen the latter and was given private quarters at the Memorium, a facility that specialized in care for the aging military brass. 

    The Memorium was one of the few active stuctures in Regina that experienced sunlight as its viewing deck on the western side had been built into a hillside and was exposed to allow the retired officers a view of the Canadian countryside.  This was where the general was occupied at the moment, reclining in a lounger and lost in his own thoughts as he gazed out at the cloudless sky.  Less than a decade earlier he had been making decisions that moved what was arguably the mightiest army in the Terran military.  Now he sat motionless in his linens and his thin polyester robe, occasionally forced to obey the orders of somewhat competent retirement nurses.  Over the past few years he would, on occasion, be called to consult on a strategem, to relay an opinion to one of his former colleague's subordinates.  Then he would once again be forgotten while those younger than he partook in the glory of war.  Now victory had come and those who were present in the end were enjoying the fruits of three century's worth of labor.  At times during the celebration that ensued, while viewing the various retrospective holos, the general would hear his name mentioned and resolve to further his work on his memoirs.  However, to further that work he would have had to actually begin it, and at present its existence was a complete fiction.  His memoirs resided in his head, and that was where they were likely to remain.

    A breeze blew from the west and caused the thin wisps of snowy hair that adorned the general's scalp to gently dance about.  He had his eyes closed, and though he was not slumbering, he was in that surreal state between wakefulness and dreaming, the wind caressing about his face adding to his relaxed state.  This state was presently interrupted by the prodding of one of the nurses, an action which startled and slightly annoyed the general.

    "Sir," came the nurse's deep, hushed voice, "your son is here."

    "Thank you," the general said, the tone in his voice a combination of grogginess and gruffness.  He grabbed his cane and pulled himself up on it, then limped slowly towards the Memorium's lobby.

    If Colonel Abbott had spent little time with his family over the course of his military career, then he had spent even less time in the presense of his father, General Abbott.  During the two decades prior to Abbott receiving his commission, the general had been a field officer who spent little time Earthside.  Abbott's mother was also a field officer, a transport unit commander who had been killed in combat when he was only seven.  Abbott had then spent the years prior to academy in a military nursery and his entire time at academy in the barracks, only seeing his father on occasional, brief furloughs.  Coincidentally, the general was assigned to the High Command shortly after Abbott received his commission.  They remained in contact over the years through regular if infrequent communiques, but in truth, the general was as much a stranger to Abbott as his wife and children were.

    As the general entered the lobby accompanied by the nurse, Abbott, as well as his family, rose and saluted the general.  The general casually returned the salute, then held out his hand to his son.

    "It's good to see you again, colonel," the general said as he shook his son's hand.

    "The pleasure is mine, sir."

    "It's been some time since we've seen each other face to face."

    "We've been busy, though I believe we may be less so now."

    "Exponentially.  And somewhat painfully, I'm afraid.  I feel that I find it difficult to find other means of occupying myself now that I've lost the only means of preoccupation I've ever known."

    "Agreed.  You, of course, remember my wife, Shelby, and my children."

    The children stood at ease, Danielle in her military dress and Chandra and Tyler in their cadets' dress.  As Abbott was also in his dress uniform, Shelby stood out considerably from the rest of the family.  She had chosen to wear a gray one-piece with an open collar, along with black flats. 

    "Shelby, isn't it," the general inquired as he offered his hand.  "I take it that you've opted to retire also."

    "For a couple of years now, sir.  I've found that I enjoy serving my children much better, these days."

    "Very good, although it wasn't so long ago that soldiers didn't have the option to retire unless their minds had vegetated.  I suppose all of that had changed now that the Peace has come."

    "Yes, sir, I suppose it has."

    "And these are the children, sir," Abbott said, directing the general's attention to his offspring.  "Danielle is the eldest, followed by Chandra and Tyler."

    "So these are your children, hm?  You've mentioned them in your communiques before, it's nice to finally get to know them."

    "Sir," Danielle said, extending her hand, "it's an honor to meet you."

    "Likewise.  And how many years have you been serving?"

    "This is my second, sir.  It may please you to know that I've made myself quite a student of the Fourth Army, mostly because of your time with it.  I've studied the Cigni campaigns quite extensively, particularly your efforts in those campaigns."

    "I'm impressed that you would know of my involvement in those campaigns."

    "Apparently," Abbott said, "the lieutenant is quite a student of military theory."

    "I also like to know something of my legacy," Danielle replied.

    "Legacies are nice, although I'm not so certain they're of much use any more," the general said.  "And this is Chandra and Tyler?"

    "Sir," the younger siblings said in unison, each shaking the general's hand in turn.

    "Well, it's always good to have someone to speak with," the general said as he sat down in a nearby recliner, with Abbott and his family following suit.  "We get so few visitors up here, with us being put away and all."

    "Well, I would certainly hope there would be more people coming here now that the Peace is here," Abbott said.  "The people in here are living history.  Hopefully, the younger generations will take the time to learn from the past.  Speaking of which, how are your memoirs coming?"

    "Slowly, I'm afraid.  I spend most of my time here thinking of the past, but when it comes time to record those thoughts, I become completely disorganized.  I'll get them out sometime, I suppose, though I may need to ask for some assistance.  But I find that I'm more distracted by what I fear is to come than by what has already passed."

    "I'm not sure I follow you, sir.  Certainly we won't be facing a threat as bad as the Ilyans anytime soon."

    "Before the Ilyans, mankind had been its own worst threat since its inception."

    "How do you mean?"

    "I take it that you haven't studied ancient Earth cultures much, have you, colonel?"

    "Not really, at least not since academy.  I would say that it's not a particular interest of mine."

    "It's too bad.  We talk so much about recording the history of this war, but there is so much more we need to learn from our histories before the war now that we have only ourselves to deal with once more."

    "I can't imagine anything we could create for ourselves that would be worse than what we've faced for the past three centuries."

    "Hm.  Lieutenant, didn't I understand that your unit was involved in resolving a skirmish in the Dakotas yesterday?"

    "Yes, sir," Danielle said, leaning forward a bit.  "It was minor, though.  We were able to wrap up the operation in less than three hours."

    "Yes, but tell me, can you give me some of the general details of this skirmish."

    "It involved land rights concerning several groups of agriculturists in the James River Basin.  Each group claimed that it had legacy rights to develop the land.  I'm afraid I don't really know that much more about the details of the dispute, our mission was simply to keep the peace until negotiations could be arranged."

    "Negotiations which may or may not appease them.  I have been keeping track of this in the evening journals.  Over seven hundred land rights negotiations are currently taking place in North America alone.  If one side or the other is unhappy with the negotiations then another skirmish will ensue.  We've been able to handle it fairly easily so far, but the Peace has barely begun and we've found reasons to quarrel with one another.  It seems to be our nature."

    "We still have a world military government," Abbott said, appearing somewhat ill at ease with the direction of this conversation.  "I think that would be sufficient enough to handle the petty selfishness of local interests."

    "You're somewhat of an optimist when it comes to intrahuman affairs.  It's easy to be one, seeing that we've had to pull for one another against a mutual enemy for so long.  But, I wonder, how well do the children get along once the bully has been removed from their midst?"

    "We're children now?"

    "Undoubtedly.  Consider this.  You place a group of ten children in a room and you give each child a bag of peanuts, this is to be their provisions over a certain period of time.  Now, a bully who is older and larger than these children gains access to the room and begins to demand peanuts from each child in order to avoid receiving physical punishment from him.  Over time, the ten children, if they have any sense at all, will realize that their numbers are greater than the one bully and they will work together to defeat and remove the bully's threat.  That is a model for our history over the past three centuries.  But now the bully is gone, and one child, perhaps physically larger than the rest, begins to notice another child has more peanuts than he.  Or perhaps he has the same amount or less, it doesn't matter, the first child will give himself an excuse as to why the second child's provisions should be his.  So the first child demands the peanuts from the second child, eventually taking them by force.  Now, if the smaller child has the reasoning that the entire group had exhibited earlier, he will find an ally to assist him against the larger child, perhaps more than one.  He will convince his mates that they face a similar threat if the larger child should turn on them, and that with two or three they can overcome the threat of the bully's physical dominance.  The bully will in turn realize that he alone is no match for numbers and will seek allies of his own.  Eventually, the group is divided into two factions or more, and a conflict becomes inevitable.  That is a model for how humans dealt with one another prior to the war, and that is the direction in which I fear we are headed once again."

    "I can't believe that.  With the tremendous amount of loss that we've experienced during this war, I would think that we've become wise enough to disdain warfare as a solution for anything."

    "We disdain warfare and embrace peace, but we still want what we feel is our portion, even if that portion isn't particularly fair to someone else.  It's as if. . ."

    The general's voice faded away as he suddenly began coughing, a wheezing, dry coughing fit that continued for several seconds.  The nurse, who had been standing by the entranceway, rushed over to the general to check on his condition.

    "Sir, are you okay," asked the nurse.

    "Yes, yes, I'm fine," the general gasped out impatiently as he fought to regain his breath.  "These things come and go, you know that.  Just get me some water and I'll be fine."

    "I'll get some for you, sir," Danielle said, and she was quickly on her feet and rushing towards the water dispenser on the other side of the room.

    "Thank you, lieutenant," the general said weakly as she returned with the water.  "I'm not sure how these things come on.  Just my body reminding me of my age, I suppose."

    The general drank down a good portion of the water, then, sitting the cup on the nearby end table, said, "Is anyone hungry?  The mess here serves adequate if not spectacular food, and they are generally willing to cook up something a little out of the ordinary if we let them know we have guests."

    "We would love to dine with you, general," Shelby said as she rose from her seat.  "But let me go down and make the arrangements.  It'll give you and your son some time to talk privately."

    "That's not necessary, dear," the general said.  "I can have the nurse here make all the arrangements."

    "That's okay, sir.  We've spent half an hour in our transport coming over here, and I, for one, need to stretch my legs.  The children can join me and you two can sit and talk."

    With that, Shelby and the children took temporary leave of Abbott and his father.

    "So, colonel, how is the Peace treating you," the general asked.

    "To be truthful, I'm not sure yet."

    "An honest answer.  But I was meaning physically.  Has your body adjusted to returning to the homeworld?"

    "It's only been a couple of days, but so far, not too well.  I don't have the excrutiating pain I experienced when I first came back here, mostly thanks to the patch and soma sticks, but I still feel uncomfortable.  How long was it before you became acclimated to the homeworld?"

    "I'm still not used to it.  I had my entire left leg destroyed during a skirmish on Ceres-II.  Every fall, when the temperatures get cooler, the joint where the artificial leg is attached feels as if it will just fall off, and, given the pain it gives me, I sometimes feel it would be a relief if it did.  Then I get the patch and the pain disappears, but it still gives me the discomfort that you mentioned.  But it gets better.  You've spent most of your years out of the homeworld environment, and, for the most part, your prosthetics were placed on or in you in deep space.  After awhile your body adapts, and the patch exists for those times when it doesn't adapt."

    "Good to know.  Say, there's something that's been drawing my concern since my return and I was wondering if I could get your opinion on it."

    "Certainly."

    "While I was in Australia, General Tan told me that they had relaxed some of the security concerning the Ilyans' android project.  I take it you've heard of it?"

    "I'm familiar with it.  But, as far as I knew, the information for that project called for the highest of security clearances.  A potential danger exists if the general population got wind of it."

    "Then, yesterday, Danielle told me that she had studied details of the Antares-Citni III Mission at academy.  Are you familiar with that?"

    "Colonel, so many missions came across my desk. . ."

    "This was a special mission.  A very controversial mission, even in the High Command.  The High Command knew of it, as did the necessary commanders in the Third Army.  Then, of course, there were those of us chosen to carry out the mission.  And that was to be all that was to know anything of it, for an indefinate period."

    "I was a commander in the Fourth Army, colonel.  Very few things about the Third Army passed over my desk, unless it was some sort of operation that specifically connected us to it.  And certainly nothing needing that sort of security clearance would pass by me."

    "And yet, apparently, we've recently allowed information concerning this mission to be contained in the texts of cadets.  The point I'm trying to make is that it appears that the security with which we've kept some of our classified information is becoming very lax.  Some of these things need never come to the attention of the general public.  I've been thinking of sending a communique to General Tan concerning this."

    "A good course of action, if this sort of thing is widespread.  I concur, even with the war over, there is no need for our most classified information to come into the public domain.  There are so many things that occurred over three centuries of warfare that would cast a negative light on the actions of the military without proper context."

    "Exactly.  I think that perhaps we're becoming a bit arrogant and maybe somewhat naive now that the Peace is here."

    "Human nature.  Part of what I was talking about earlier.  We need to be cautious, colonel, or we risk losing everything we've fought so hard to gain."



    At length, dinner was served and the general and his kin enjoyed a cordial meal and made small talk, though they were fairly conservative in their choice of topics.  As the dinner ended, the nurse arrived to assist the general to his room and Colonel Abbott and his family said their goodbyes to the general, wishing him well and promising regular visits in the future, although, at least for his part, the colonel felt that the promise would be empty.  The general and his nurse then entered the lift, the general returning to his quarters and his memories.

    "It's very nice in there," Shelby said as she and her family entered the tunnel leading to the structure where their transport was parked, breaking the silence that had ensued since they left the general.  "So much nicer than it is in the rest of the city."

    "The city will improve, given time," Abbott said, not particularly speaking to Shelby.  "In wartime we had our security to worry about, in the Peace we'll probably find the time for niceties."

    "Sunlight would be nice.  Sunlight and. . ."

    A sound like intense thunder emanating from the Memorium stopped Shelby short, and the ground shook so violently that it nearly knocked Abbott off of his feet.  He whirled back towards the Memorium, and he saw shattered building materials falling towards the floor of the tunnel and heard the sound of falling debris sprinkling all around him.  After a few short seconds the quaking ended and shortly thereafter the debris stopped falling, then the walls glowed with an undulating red light and the first of what would be a wave of emergency personnel began to rush towards the Memorium.

    "Is everyone alright," Abbott shouted towards his wife and children, though he could visibly see that they were all unharmed.

    "Yuh. . .yes," Shelby said, attempting to regain her composure.  "What was that?"

    "I don't know.  But, I'm going to find out."

    Abbott quickly made his way towards the tunnel where emergency servicemen were now rushing towards the Memorium by the dozens, some carrying various types of rescue equipment.  Joining in with them, he quickly searched through the rescue troops until he found the insignia that designated the troop leader.  He then dodged his way through the chaos until he had caught up to the leader.

    "Captain, what's going on in there," Abbott asked in vain, as the leader continued to speak into his communicator as if the colonel was not there.

    "Captain," Abbott repeated emphatically, "I need to know what just happened here.  I'm giving you an order."

    "The answer is, I don't know, sir," the leader answered without looking at Abbott.  "Obviously there was some sort of explosion in there.  Other than that, you know as much as I do.  Right now, sir, I need for you to evacuate the area and let us do our work."

    "Captain Rohrig," Danielle had caught up to her father and was now standing beside him.

    "Lieutenant Abbott," answered the leader.  "You're supposed to be on leave."

    "I was here visiting my grandfather.  This is my father, Colonel James Abbott.  We're here to help."

    The leader looked up at Danielle, then gave Abbott a quick glance.  "Okay," he said, "gear up.  We need all the help we can get in there."

    Danielle gave the sleeve of her father's uniform a quick tug.  "Come on," she said.  "The equipment wagon will be down this way."

    "And get a suit," the leader shouted after them.  "We're getting radiation readings from in there."

    Running against the flow of traffic, Abbott and Danielle made their way down the tunnel and towards one of the large, bulky equipment wagons that had carried the emergency personnel there.  Danielle searched through the storage units on the side of the wagon until she found the one labelled "Abbott," which she opened while simulataneously opening another nearby unit.  She pulled from each a helmet and mask along with a bulky silver armored suit.

    "Here," Danielle said, "Sargeant Grainger is about your size and he's still in the infirmary.  It's not as good as what you're used to, but it'll serve."

    Securing their equipment, Abbott and Danielle raced back up the tunnel towards the Memorium.  As they reached the entrance, a tall man who seemed to be directing the traffic there called them over.

    "You two," he said.  "We need you on the second level west side, asap.  There's a ton of debris down there and we need to see if there were any survivors."

    The two of them entered the building, the interior of which was thick with smoke and ash.  Danielle turned on a light on her helmet and directed her father to do the same.  They then made their way through the formerly immaculate reception area.  Those who had arrived first could be seen moving towards the entranceway, carefully assisting those survivors who could still move on their own.  Abbott now took the lead, moving towards the emergency stairwell.

    "The west side," he said.  "That's where the general's quarters are.  Third level."

    "Sir, they directed us towards the second level. . ."

    "I know," Abbott said and, working his way through the soldiers assisting victims up the stairwell, dutifully made his way to the second level.

    Abbott had, of course, experienced worse scenes than that which confronted him as he stepped out of the stairwell.  Yet, it was disconcerting for him to see it at home.  Vast amounts of shattered building materials were heaped upon the floor, soldiers digging their way around them.  Human bodies lay strewn about them, some barely injured, some already dead.  The ceiling was mostly gone, a dark chasm appearing above them where retired officers' quarters once existed.

    "Sir," Danielle said.  "We can look for the general. . ."

    "No need," Abbott said.

    "Sir. . .?"

    Abbott did not answer, but continued to look directly at the empty space above him.  The general's quarters had been directly in the midst of that space.  Given the magnitude of the devestation, Abbott knew that his father was gone.

4.

    "Forty-seven injured, twenty-two dead, seven missing, sixty-two incidences of radiation poisoning and counting."

    The small man in the white uniform reading off the statistics was the center of attention of the small group gathered in the briefing room.  For the most part, those in the room were municipal officials whose respective designated purposes concerned the welfare of the city.  However, Abbott had used his status as "hero" to obtain a place at the briefing.

    "As to the seven that are missing, we can safely assume that they are also dead," the small man continued.  "The intensity of the blast was so great that it could have easily destroyed their bodies.  Of course, we'll eventually find some remains once we finish clearing the debris, but for the moment, we can only list them as missing."

    "Any idea what may have caused the blast," asked a bulky, stoic man peering through thick lenses.  This was Colonel Aubrey Waite, who served the city in a mayoral capacity.

    "No idea yet," answered a thin, wiry middle-aged man across the room who was Captain Morris Eckhardt, the city's disaster specialist.  "I think that it would be premature to suggest foul play was involved.  However, at present we've yet to find the explosive device.  There should have been absolutely nothing in that area that would have caused an explosion like that."

    "Just a question, but has anyone looked into what personnel were present when the explosion took place," Abbott asked from his position in the back of the room.

    "As I said before," Captain Eckhardt stated, "any suspicion of foul play is premature.  I think we need to treat this as an accident."

    "You also said that there was absolutely nothing in the area that should've caused an explosion like that."

    "Which doesn't mean that it was caused deliberately."

    "What does it mean, then?"

    "Colonel Abbott, I am well aware of your credentials as a field officer, but this is a municipal matter.  We haven't had much evidence of enemies or madmen plotting to take lives in the recent past, not in this city, at least."

    "This isn't the recent past."

    "Colonel Abbott," came Colonel Waite's deep baritone from across the room, "we know that you're father was in the section of the building that was destroyed and we know that he is one of the missing.  But I think perhaps you're being a bit prejudiced in your thinking here.  Our enemy is gone, and there has been no evidence of any civil upheaval in this area since the Peace began.  With that in mind, I have to concur with Captain Eckhardt, we have to treat this as an accident."

    "Perhaps you're right.  Maybe this is just an odd accident, maybe somehow just the right elements came together to cause an explosion that took out the entire west side of the third level of the Memorium.  But as a precaution, and maybe just to put my mind at rest, could we at least just take a look at the personnel that was working there yesterday and see if we might find any suspiscious activities?"

    "Define 'suspiscious activities,'" Captain Eckhardt said.

    Colonel Waite turned to an elderly man with a bulldog face sitting midway down the table, "Captain Wingate?"

    The director of municipal security looked up, his chin resting on his right fist.  "Colonel Abbott is right, of course," he said.  "There's always a chance that some malcontent may have wanted to make some sort of statement by blowing up the Memorium, though you'd think we would have heard from them by now.  That sort of person generally wants to make himself known.  Still, it wouldn't hurt to look through some of the personnel files and check through some of the security holos to see if something unusual doesn't come up."

    "Going through the holos is part of the process," Captain Eckhardt said.  "We've already been through the holos taken on the day of the explosion and we've found nothing suspiscious."

    "What about the day before," Abbott asked.

    "What about the week before?  Or the month before?  How many hours of holos do we have to go through?"

    "I think right now just searching through the personnel files will do, at least until we get a report back from our forensics people," Captain Wingate said.  "I have a couple of my best men I can put on it.  Would that do, Colonel Abbott?"

    "I want to know if and when they find anything."

    "Now hold on," Captain Eckhardt said.  "This isn't anything for our field troops to worry about.  This is a municipal matter and we have municipal personnel that can handle it.  I don't think we need anybody answering to you."

    "I think Captain Eckhardt forgets that our Colonel Abbott is a very influential man, and that all he needs to do is send one communique to General Clare and we'll have field troops all over this place," Colonel Waite said to no one in particular.  "The colonel will be contacted as soon as we learn anything, isn't that correct, Captain Wingate?"

    "Certainly, sir."

    "However, colonel, I would appreciate it if, as a courtesy to me, you would allow our people to conduct the investigation.  I'm certain that they will value your help if the need arises for it."

    The meeting soon adjourned, and Abbott made his way quickly down the narrow halls of the municipal building.  He soon found that he was being followed by Captain Eckhardt, who fell into step beside him.

    "Sir, I apologize if I seemed disrespectful in there. . ."

    "You were just doing your job, captain."

    "I am, however, concerned that you're coming at this from perhaps too personal a point of view.  It was your father, after all, and anyone would understand. . ."

    Abbott stopped walking and rubbed his eyes with his right hand.  "Captain," he said without looking at the man, "I've had people much closer to me than my father killed in front of my own eyes.  And no, it's nothing you ever really get used to.  But I think anyone who hadn't closed himself off from the idea of any sort of civil unrest would see that there's something suspiscious about this.  And it really doesn't matter if the city hasn't seen anything like this before because if we don't treat this seriously and I'm right we're sure to see something like it again."

    "This isn't the Rim, colonel, and it certainly isn't a battlefield."

    "But, if you keep your mind closed to the possibility, it could be."

    Abbott exited the municipal building and made his way to his transport.  There, Danielle would be waiting for him to escort him to the memorial service for those who died in the Memorium.

    "Just us," Abbott asked as he entered into the transport.

    "Chandra and Tyler will be with the cadets in their section at the memorial."

    "And your mother. . .?"

    "Mother isn't feeling well.  What happened yesterday upset her pretty badly.  I don't think she'd do very well at the service."

    "Mm."

    Danielle told the transport computer the coordinates, and for a few minutes the two of them sat silently as the transport made its way to the service.  Then, Danielle said, "What was he like?"

    "To be honest, I don't know.  Yesterday was the longest conversation we've had in over thirty years.  We kept in contact with each other, mostly out of a sense of duty.  But I can't say I ever got to know what he was like.  It's one of those casualties of wars.  You become closest with people you otherwise wouldn't care to know, while you're a complete stranger to those who you're supposed to be closest to."

    "I can relate," Danielle said, allowing a slight smile to come across her features.

    As she turned her attention back to the viewing port in front of her, Abbott quietly studied her.  Nineteen years, Abbott thought, and I've only experienced a few months of them.  She had his coloring, but she had her mother's features and the combination had turned her into a striking young woman.  The young soldiers had to be falling all over themselves for her attention.  Still, she was every bit her father's child, a professional soldier to the bone, and without a minute of field experience she seemed to exhibit as much composure as any young officer who had ever served under him.

    "What's it been like," he asked after a few more minutes of silence.

    "Sir?"

    "What's it been like here?  How's life been Earthside?"

    "Over the past few years it's been pretty low-key, I suppose.  I mean, other than a few uprisings.  But mostly, people are just happy everything's over."

    "I mean for you.  For your mother and your brother and sister."

    "Normal, I guess.  Mother's always been stationed here, of course, so we've been allowed to take our quarters with her, which is nice.  The barracks just don't seem to be that great a place in which to grow up."

    "They're not.  Your mother seemed to have given up her duties fairly quickly."

    "As soon as they allowed non-coms to retire.  I don't think she ever liked working in the military, even in a safe position like communications.  She liked staying home and being with us.  And working, well, there were just things there that bothered her."

    "Really?  Concerning her duties?"

    "Concerning her environment."

    "Hm?"

    "Her unit commander was a man named Captain Jason Stavros.  He had some pull and used his connections to get his wife stationed in his unit.  That's against every regulation, of course, but the Peace was coming and they relaxed the rules for a lot of non-essential departments.  Anyway, they came into their unit every day and, on top of their duties, they got to be husband and wife.  Mother wasn't the only one in the unit frustrated with that, there were a lot of people with their spouses in the field who were angry that those two were priviledged that way.  But I don't think she was angry, just sad.  So, the day that they started allowing communications officers with more than twenty years in to retire, she did so."

    "Then, you've been close?"

    "I think so.  Of course, the three of us are always busy, sometimes I'm away from Regina for several weeks.  But, when I'm home, and when we get together for dinner at the end of the day, we try to keep her informed about how our day went and what we've been doing.  I think she likes that."

    "I think, maybe, we all need a furlough."

    "A furlough?"

    "Once all this dies down, of course.  Away from Canada.  I know a general who keeps a private bunker down in the lower Americas.  From all reports, it's a pretty swanky setup.  Perhaps the five of us could go down there, relax, maybe get a chance to get used to the current situation."

    "You mean, you being home?"

    "Yeah.  It could be six, I suppose, if you have a significant other.  Do you. . .?"

    "No, but that's a pretty sly way of finding out.  But that sounds nice.  Once all this dies down."

    "Yes," Abbott closed his eyes and allowed himself to drift off a bit, "once all this dies down."



    Abbott was on a battlefield on some small planetoid, in a partially-destroyed bunker with the bodies of dead soldiers all about him, trapped helplessly under a piece of machinery with a battlecraft firing on him in slow motion but never quite hitting him, when a dull throbbing sensation made him slowly realize that none of this was real.  In agonizing increments, he fought his consciousness off of the surreal battlefield and back into the comfort of the semi-soft mattress of the second-level guest room.  Still not quite certain of which scenario was real and which was not, he touched a stud on his bedside communicator to stop the throbbing.

    "Abbott here," he said into the communicator, though he was not quite certain if that statement was true.

    "Colonel, sir, this is Sergeant Suarez from investigations."

    "Yes, sergeant."

    "Sir, Colonel Waite asked us to contact you directly if we found anything unusual with the Memorium's personnel."

    "Yes," Abbott grabbed a capsule from a drawer in his bedside bureau and, holding it to his nose and cracking it open, was instantly aware.

    "Well, there's some irregularities here that I think you may want to look at."

    "Irregularities where?"

    "We're in the records room at the Memorium."

    "I'll be right there."

    Abbott swung his feet on the floor and stood up, quickly relieving himself of his sleeping clothes.  He had yet to fully unpack his belongings, so he rummaged through the neat piles of containers on the far side of the room until he found his garment bag containing his field uniforms and the case which held his boots.  He dressed swiftly, and though he felt he would have no use for it, he chose a small sidearm and placed it in a holster on his belt.  No soldier goes into the field unarmed, he thought, even if that field is at home.  Glancing at the holographic timekeeper that seemed to hover in midair near his dressing mirror, he noted that it was 0336 hours and thought to himself that Captain Wingate had not been overstating things when he mentioned that his best people would be working on the investigation.

    Before exiting the room, he pulled a blue patch from the same drawer that had held the capsule and placed it on his chest to relieve the dull pains that he was experiencing.  As the residence was massive and the guest room was set apart from the other sleeping quarters, Abbott had no fear of waking anyone else in the household.  There would, of course, be a domestic needlessly assigned to security at the main entranceway.  Abbott quickly and vaguely informed the domestic of his destination in case anyone would inquire, then he made his way for his personal transport.

    The Memorium had been mostly deserted as it had not yet been decided whether to repair the current structure or to build a new one, though the radiation had been cleaned up.  Thus, Abbott walked into a corpse of a building, with only emergency lighting providing illumination and no sound but the quick and steady taps of his boots on the hard floor.  He utilized a hand-held navigator to pinpoint the location of the records room and moved down three flights of stairs to the floor on which it was located.  A tall, husky man was waiting for him at the door of the records room.

    "Colonel Abbott, sir," he said with a salute.

    "Sergeant Suarez, I presume," he said, quickly returning the salute.

    "We have been in touch with Captain Wingate and he is on his way.  The irregularity we found is fairly profound, and I believe we may have found our culprit."

    The two of them continued to talk as they walked through the records room entrance.  Two more members of Suarez's team were seated at the console, and they quickly stood and saluted as Abbott came near.  "How so," Abbott asked as he made his way to the console. 

    "We found nothing wrong with the personnel records themselves, each entry was verified and came out clean.  We then matched the entries against the scanner logs for the day, seeking anyone who was not supposed to be present.  Again, we found nothing wrong, all personnel scanned in were scheduled to be there that day.  But then, as a matter of procedure, we checked the active personnel list against the day's security holos to see if anyone seemed out of place.  That's when we came across this."

    Sergeant Suarez touched some areas on the cube in front of him and the lower left quarter of the cube came to life.  An image of a hulking man with poor posture dressed as an orderly appeared in that cube, the orderly awkwardly going about his duties in a nondescript manner.

    "Who is this," Abbott asked, drawing closer.

    "That's just it.  We don't know."

    "What do you mean, you don't know."

    "Just that.  There is no personnel record for this man.  He's not an orderly, not one assigned to the Memorium, at any rate, and shouldn't be there."

    "Okay, then his record should be on the guest log."

    Suarez touched another part of the cube, and alongside the orderly's image came the image of more than two dozen faces, each accompanied by their identifying information.  "This is the guest log for the day," he said.  "Any person coming into the building should have been picked up by the scanners.  You'll note, you and your family are right there.  But nowhere can we find a record of this person entering the building."

    "That shouldn't be possible.  From my understanding, the scanners should automatically record the information of anyone from their chip.  Is there any possibility that the chip or the scanner could be malfunctioning?"

    "There's always the possibility, sir.  It's highly unlikely, though.  The scanner worked on every other person entering the building, so we can eliminate the idea that the scanner was faulty.  As for the chip, we would not know unless we had the chip itself to examine.  However, on a planetary basis, the incidents of the identity chips malfunctioning are. . ."

    At that moment, Captain Wingate entered the room with his aide.  After another round of salutes, the security director was briefed as to what had been discovered.

    "I don't believe that it was a bad identity chip.  Those are shielded and are designed to outlast the human in which they are implanted tenfold.  Add to that the incredible coincidence it would take that the one malfunctioning chip in Regina happened to belong to a person present on the day of one of the city's greatest disasters."

    "Coincidences like that just don't happen," Abbott said.  "What about tampering?"

    "How?  Again, those devices are shielded.  They're tested against electro-magnetism, radiation, any of a dozen other means of outside tampering.  Of course, they could possibly be physically removed, if one was so inclined to make an incision at the base of one's skull and dig out a device not too much larger than a germ."

    "Okay, then, what sort of explanations can we come up with?  Anyone?"

    Abbott looked about the room, but he was answered with nothing but silence.

    "Okay, we can't come up with any theories, at least none that seem plausible," Wingate finally said.  "But we do know that somewhere out there in Regina a man exists that is unscannable."

    "How can we use that to assist us," Abbott asked.

    "Our policing vehicles can be fitted with mobile scanners.  It's what we use when we're searching for a suspect.  For the most part, walls and structures don't hide the chip signal.  It simplifies searches and is much faster than attempting to make a physical identification.  In this case, though, we need to search for someone with no chip signal whatsoever.  It's somewhat more difficult, especially if our suspect is adept at hiding, but it's the best we've got at the moment."

    "Added to that, we have a physical image of the man and we could have a decent shot at catching the suspect.  That is, if he's still in the city."

    "Almost a certainty, colonel.  We closed the city off immediately after the first reports of the explosion were received.  Travel outside the city is restricted, and those who leave must go through scanners.  Anyone who did not scan would be detained."

    "It seems as if we have all the angles covered then," Abbott said, rubbing his eyes with his right hand.  "We can put this plan to work, and from there it becomes a waiting game.  Until then, I plan to be at my home.  I can expect to hear from you the minute anything breaks?"

    "Certainly, sir."

    Abbott left the records room and made his way back to his transport.  Speaking his destination to the transport's computer, Abbott sank back into the seat.  All of the energy that he had received from the capsule earlier had dissipated and he once again felt the need to rest.  He wondered to himself why he felt such exhaustion.  He had gone through much more rigorous activity during his campaigns than he had over the past week Earthside, though, of course, he had been younger then.  He could not attribute his loss of energy to the death of the general; as he stated before, he had experienced the deaths of those close to him from the very start of his career.  He thought that perhaps the lack of energy was due to physical problems, that perhaps he had still not grown accustomed to Earth.  After all, the general said that he still felt the effects of being Earthside, and he had been there over two decades.  Then, he also still felt mentally uncomfortable in his new surroundings.  Home did not feel like home to him but merely the place in which he had kept his family.  As the transport turned into the parking pad, Abbott wondered if a change in location might not suit him better.

    Abbott was still caught up in his own musings when he opened the entranceway and found his eldest daughter looking straight into his eyes.

    "Danielle," Abbott said, caught by surprise.

    "Sir."

    "You're up early.  Don't you have to be at base at 0700?"

    "I was up late and heard you leave.  I asked the corporal where you went, and when he informed me I decided that I would meet you at the Memorium to see if I could help at all.  I'm guessing that I'm a little late for that."

    "We've done all that we can do there, yes.  But we do think that we have a lead as to who a suspect might be.  The city's policing units are out searching for him now and all that we can really do is wait.  They are supposed to contact me when they come up with anything."

    "Well, then, I suppose we wait," Danielle said with an air of finality.

    "Thank you for wanting to assist me, lieutenant.  The sooner we get to the bottom of this, the sooner that we and the city as a whole can get on with our lives."

    "If you wish, I can ask my unit commander, Major Cofoid, if my duties could be closer at home in the coming week, so that I may be available if anything breaks."

    "Do what you think is best.  Of course, your duty to your unit comes first.  But, if the major can clear the way for you to assist us, we would be grateful to him."

    "Yes, sir.  I'll try to discuss this with him first thing in the morning."



    Something broke at 1430 hours the following day.  A patroling unit was canvassing the bottom level in AA-black when they came across an individual who would not register on there scanners.  The bottom level was the level that housed the lowest-ranked individuals in the city, and as such there were more domiciles in a smaller amount of space.  This made it difficult for the scanners to filter through all of the humanity that was at this level, and the patroling unit had made it a matter of procedure to canvas the area three times to give them a greater chance for a hit.  They hit on the second pass through, and, as the non-scanning individual also fit the physical image that the unit had of him, they made a move to apprehend the man, at which time he began to flee down the corridors of the first level of AA-black.

    Abbott was contacted at 1445 hours by Captain Wingate.  He had just finished a social meeting with the director of the academy and was travelling home when the captain's message came through.

    "Sir, I think we've found him," Wingate said over the transport's communicator, the inflection in his voice suggesting that he was involved in the pursuit.  "We came across a hit on the first level of AA-black.  The man fits the physical image we have from the security holos."

    "Where is he now?"

    "We're still in AA-black.  He's gotten ahold of a rocket sled and apparently he's pretty good on the thing.  Our unit has him bottled up there, but so far he's been able to evade our attempts to physically apprehend him.  There's no place to go, though, and I believe that it's only a matter of time before we're able to get him."

    "You're trying to avoid harming him?"

    "As much as possible, we obviously need to question him.  The problem is that there are people down here, lots of them, and he doesn't seem to have the same reservation of harming them as we do of him.  If it seems that the people down here are in real danger. . ."

    "Understood.  I'm on my way."

    Abbott broke off his communication with Captain Wingate and then spoke his daughter's name into the communicator.

    "Lieutenant Abbott," Danielle's voice came over the communicator.

    "We think we've found him.  They have him holed up on the first level of AA-black."

    "Okay.  I talked my way into desk work today, so I can be there shortly."

    A few minutes later, Abbott's transport arrived at its destination and Abbott directed it to a local parking pad.  Locating Wingate's command wagon, Abbott made his way over to the vehicle beside which he found Wingate standing and speaking directions into an earpiece communicator.

    "What's the situation," Abbott asked the captain, who was still yelling orders.

    "Not good.  We have him bottled up in the bottom three levels.  We're slowly narrowing the parameter, but in the meantime this guy has no problem taking out innocents if he thinks that it'll help him avoid capture.  We've already got four injured and it's just luck that nobody's dead yet."

    "How'd he get ahold of a rocket sled?"

    "It's a kid's toy here.  They're all over the place, it's a status item for those in the lower levels.  Legally, you're supposed to have graduated academy and be liscensed to operate one, but that's a law that's hard to enforce, especially when no one will report it."

    Above him, Abbott saw the chase taking place.  The suspect seemed to be an expert with the thin flat rocket sled, a device on which the rider laid flat on his stomach and steered through controls on the sides.  The wheeled pursuit cycles of the policing units were far bulkier and could not fly through space, although they could keep the sled bottled up due to their sheer number.  However, whenever the police seemed to have the suspect cornered, the suspect would make his way through a narrow and risky escape lane and escape.

    "Can we get someone on a sled," Abbott asked.

    "It's possible.  But none of our officers really train on a sled, so we would be at a distinct disadvantage, and being that there's already a huge danger to the public here. . ."

    As Wingate was speaking, a second sled suddenly appeared from one of the upper levels.  The sled cut through the narrow lanes between the pursuit cycles and made its way silently and gracefully towards the suspect's sled.  The suspect seemed to panic, suddenly directing his sled upwards, a move that seemed to take the second sled by surprise as it did not alter its course but instead grazed the bottom of the first sled.  The effect was that the first sled careened off to one side, wobbling slightly in midair, then steadied itself.  The suspect's sled, however, in the midst of vertical acceleration at an extreme angle, flipped over several times, throwing its rider before crashing onto an empty walkway.  The rider fell, arms and legs flailing awkwardly, before he landed hard on the concrete of the city's floor.

    The second rider was the first to reach the suspect, and when she undid the safety harness and took off the helmet that the suspect had been negligent to wear, Abbott could see that it was Danielle.  She quickly made her way over to the suspect and kneeled down beside him, seemingly examining his wounds.  Abbott was the second to arrive, having sprinted as best he could from the pursuit wagon.

    "Sir," Danielle exclaimed, jerking her head up suddenly as her father approached.

    "Lieutenant, what-?"

    "Sir, I didn't mean to injure him.  I thought I stood a better chance using a rocket sled, I only meant to steer him towards the pursuit cycles.  I didn't think. . ."

    "Save it for the report.  Right now we need to determine just how injured this man is.  The height from which he fell. . ."

    "I can't tell.  His limbs appear to be limp, his eyes aren't moving but he appears to be making some sort of conscious effort to move.  But there's no blood, just this sticky transluscent blue fluid that's all over the place around him--"

    "God," Abbott exclaimed violently and knelt beside the suspect so quickly that he appeared to be attacking him.  By this time, Wingate and several of his men had caught up to Abbott and his daughter and stood directly behind them.  Abbott ripped open the shirt of the suspect and found the familiar smooth gray mass that characterized the flesh of his planet's sworn enemy, that flesh saturated by the blue fluid seeping out of it.

    "What is that," Wingate asked.  "Some sort of blood?"

    "No," Abbott replied.  "That's his way of screaming."



    "An Ilyan?  In Regina?"

    "Yes, sir," Abbott said towards the holographic image of General Clare that was present in the midst of the conference table.  "Bioformed.  There's no way the city's scanners would've ever detected him."

    "We have no way of scanning for Ilyans," Eckhardt asked from his position at the conference of municipal officers.

    "Of course we do," Wingate said.  "But, as there is no record of an Ilyan spacecraft ever reaching the surface, we've never seen a reason to install a scanner for Ilyans."

    "Our city isn't the only one to fail to do so," Waite said from the head of the table.  "It's an expense that most of our cities didn't want to bear.  I'm afraid we've been guilty of naivete."

    "With the war ending and no immediate danger for the past decade or so, it's understandable," Clare said.  "But I don't believe that their cloaking devices would have been great enough for us not to notice one of their ships landing on our planet."

    "It might not have had to," Abbott said with obvious impatience in his voice.

    "How so?"

    "How many raids did the Ilyans make on our cities over the past hundred years or so?  Thousands?  In the vast majority of them their ships were lost.  We always considered that they thought those suicide runs to be worth it because of the damage it caused to our cities.  But those raids continued even after we went underground.  They seemed to be overzealous, but what if they were aiming something besides a means of destruction at our planet?"

    "What are you getting at, Colonel?"

    "It's simple.  In the chaos that surrounded one of their raids, it would've been easy for them to launch a pod that contained Ilyan spies without our noticing it.  If they did. . ."

    "Then we could have an Ilyan colony somewhere outside the city."

    "So, we install scanners inside the city," Eckhardt said.  "That'll keep the city safe while you guys flush them out from wherever they're hiding."

    Abbott shook his head disdainfully.  "You don't understand," he said through his teeth.  "It's not just a couple of dozen out there, or even a couple of hundred.  Ilyans can't exist for long periods of time in groups that small.  The smallest number of Ilyans that we've ever encountered has been in the thousands.  Which means, somewhere in the countryside surrounding Regina. . ."

    "We have a large group of hostile Ilyans eyeing our city," Waite completed Abbott's statement for him.  He paused for a moment, allowing the idea to sink into the thoughts of everyone in the room, then said to Clare, "So, what's our next move?"

    "For you, we do just as the captain said.  We install scanners, quickly.  That should reveal whether or not there's any more of them in the city or whether this guy was acting alone.  For us, it means that we have to mobilize troops, search the surrounding area and see if we can find this colony.  Then, of course, we have to notify the leaders of the rest of the planet and High Command so that they can formulate plans to deal with this menace."

    "So much for an end to the war," Abbott said bitterly.

    "So it would seem," Clare added.  "We'll be sending out an emergency communique within the hour and the world leaders should be meeting shortly thereafter."

    Wingate stood up and took a step towards Abbott.  "Sir, there's more."

    "Like what?"

    "Sir, we found some tissue at the Memorium that we could trace back to your father.  We found in that tissue traces of a particularly dense polymer the likes of which we had never seen before.  We also found evidence of tissue corruption that was inconsistent with the burns that the tissue might receive from an explosive blast.  As I said, my men had never seen that sort of thing before, and we might have been stumped if it weren't for one of them seeking out a military consult.  It seems that the sort of tissue corruption that we were seeing was consistent with the annihilation of matter when in contact with antimatter.  That sort of explosion. . ."

    "Captain, you don't need to explain antimatter explosions to me.  What has this to do with General Abbott?  Are you saying there was anti-matter inside of him?"

    "If you recall," Clare interrupted, interceding for the visibly cowering Wingate, "our intelligence discovered some time ago that the Ilyans possessed a particularly nasty weopon involving antimatter explosives and the human gastric system.  Microscopic devices with the antimatter material suspended in an electromagnetic web with a particularly dense shielding capsule that nevertheless could be dissolved by hydrochloric acid.  The devices could be introduced into somebody's food without that person noticing until it was too late.  It was used a few times by their spies and caused the same sort of explosion that took place at the Memorium.  And, being that this guy had the run of the place. . ."

    "He could've easily introduced it into the general's food," Abbott concluded, then, slowly, "But for what purpose?  Was the general's tissue the only tissue that exhibited these characteristics?"

    "Not everyone is accounted for yet, but of the remains we have found, his is the only tissue that was like this.  We have to assume that your father was the epicenter of the explosion."

    "But I ate with him that evening.  Why just him?"

    "We can't assume a time when the devices were introduced.  The shields take a considerable amount of time to completely wear away, it could've been placed in his food at breakfast.  But the why is concerning us.  We can take it for fact that the Ilyans have been with us for some time now, so why attack now, and why attack a benign place like the Memorium?"

    "Well, there were a lot of high-ranking persons in the Memorium.  You'd think maybe revenge, except. . ."

    "Except, why save your opening attack for something so useless as an act of revenge.  The Ilyans were more logical than that, so they had to be after something more valuable, and we think that thing is you."

    "Me, sir?"

    "Or not.  At this point, we're clutching at straws.  But we have to assume everything and hope that in doing so we somehow cover whatever their target truly is.  That means removing anything that we consider a target to a safe place until we can determine their cause or eradicate the threat."

    "But sir, all I've ever been is a field commander.  As you said, they didn't wait for this moment just to cause an act of random violence or to make a statement against a field officer.  I think I'd be more valuable. . ."

    "Agreed," Clare stated, admitting the validity of Abbott's thought without letting him conclude it.  "But like I said, we feel that it's more to our advantage to be over-cautious, and in this case that means protecting all likely targets.  After all, it's not as if you were never a part of a sensitive or highly-classified mission, and perhaps it's something in that history that makes you a valuable target to them.  If not, then no harm done."

    "Except that you've neutralized a field officer with valuable experience against the enemy."

    "Something of which we're in abundant supply at present.  With all due respect to your considerable service, you're far from irreplaceable, colonel."

    "Yes, sir," Abbott said, but he was no longer looking at Clare's image in the midst of the table.

    "You, along with your family, are to report to transport tomorrow morning at 0700.  That means, as of the present, your daughter, Lt. Danielle Abbott, is inactive, and that your other two children are on indefinite leave from academy.  You'll be taken to a safe bunker on the oceanfront in the Carolinas and have the services of hand-picked soldiers to guard you.  And if it makes you feel any better, colonel, we don't feel that it should take us too long to flush out the Ilyans and discover what their purpose is.  Once we do that, your services will once again be required."

    "Why my family?"

    "Again, because we don't know.  We honestly don't know what the target was at the Memorium, colonel.  All persons visiting on that day are being removed to safe places, and that includes your family.  Treat it as a furlough, because you'll be very active when we call you back."

    "There's no way for me to appeal this?"

    "No.  As much as I agree with it, this decision didn't come from me.  The instant High Command got wind of the gastric explosives, they made the call."

    "Then I suppose I'll go home and pack.  Colonel Waite, if you'll allow me to be excused from the meeting?"

    "Certainly, colonel," Colonel Waite replied.

    With that, Abbott slowly raise himself from his seat in the back of the room, moved past the other individuals and left the room.

5.

   

    In the century past, as Earth-bound human civilization was moving underground, the military's top brass had removed themselves from the bland glorified bunkers that the cities had become and instead chose to build heavily-fortified isolated shelters on the planet's oceanfronts.  The reason the public was given for these shelters was that they provided a means by which the High Command would be protected if the enemy would discover a means to attack the underground cities.  However, though the public was never allowed to question it, even the High Command had to admit privately that the purpose of the shelters made no sense, as none of them were completely underground but had the oceanside open to the surface, though protected somewhat by a heavy shelf that served as a patio roof.  Despite the number of troops that would be stationed at these shelters when the officer to which it was assigned was present, the shelters were strategically less secure than the cities.  Over time, though, what these shelters had become was more luxurious, with modern-era niceties of which were unheard in the cities.  In short, they had become rewards for being placed in the inner-circle of the High Command.

    The shelter to which Abbott was assigned had been designated to Major General Mason Lucas, the top defense secretary of the Americas.  As far as area was concerned, the general's shelter was half the size of Abbott's domicile in Regina, with only three bedrooms.  That was all that General Lucas' shelter conceded to Abbott's home.  Whereas Abbott's home, like all other homes in the cities, was sparsely furnished and decorated, the shelter was a den of liesure, with the flooring of every room covered with a thick, cushioned carpeting and the walls colored in rich hues, from a deep burgundy in the living area to a vibrant emerald coloring in the bathrooms.  The walls were decorated with various trophies and shallow holos depicting General Lucas' career, so much so that the shelter had become a monument to the good general.  Abbott felt that if he had not grown used to the comforts of Regina in his days since his return Earthside, then he felt it would be forever before he could grow accustomed to this type of luxury.

    Abbott and his family arrived on the Carolina shore at just after 1900 hours after several short delays for fuel and transport transfers.  The soldiers assigned to Abbott were already there when he arrived, six in all, each uniformed in their blues, each bearing the projectile arms required of guard soldiers.  One of them, a tall, athletic female, stepped forward and saluted as Abbott neared the entrance.

    "Colonel Abbott, sir.  I'm Master Sergeant Lenore Vincent.  I'll be your head of security during your stay here at the shelter."

    "Thank you, sergeant.  If you don't mind me saying so, I doubt if you'll be needed much while we're here, however long that is."

    "Certainly, sir," the sergeant said, and nodded towards two of her subordinates to begin unloading the family's belongings from the transport.

    The sergeant then led Abbott and his family through the heavy iron port entrance shielding the tunnel that led to the front entrance of the shelter.  The instant that Abbott entered the living area he felt uncomfortable.  He could not imagine how he would have ever considered this as a choice of location for a furlough.

    "Sir, dinner has been prepared," the sergeant said.  "Would you prefer it in the dining room or out on the patio?"

    "Shelby can decide that.  I'll eat later, after I've finished some business."

    Shelby decided on the patio, then assigned rooms to the children, giving the girls the larger of the guest rooms and, with relunctance, reserving the master room for Abbott and herself.  She then lingered for a bit as she watched her husband check on whatever concerned him on his communicator, then said, "You know, they can do that without you."

    "Do what without me," Abbott asked absently.

    "Whatever it is you're checking on there."

    "So I've heard.  General Clare made that fairly clear, as did General Tan in my communique with him.  Still, I like to stay informed. . .and, I like to stay prepared."

    "It's what makes you a good soldier.  Still, I can't help but think that they've handed you the furlough that you've been wanting."

    "Hm?"

    "Danielle told me.  She said that, as soon as all of this has blown over that you were thinking of taking us on furlough.  Well, here's your furlough."

    "I don't know if you noticed, but nothing has blown over yet.  In fact, it looks like nothing is going to blow over for awhile."

    "Okay, then.  We'll be out on the patio, eating.  You can join us if you wish."

    Abbott sat back in the far-too-plush cushioning of the couch and awaited the information that he had just requested off of his communicator.  The cushioning irritated him, as did the cool air temperature of the climate-controlled atmosphere of the room.  In fact, the gaudy walls and the faux fire in the chamber inset in the one wall were also serving as irritants, as were the myriad artifacts of the career of Major General Mason Lucas that were surrounding him.  But the biggest irritant was the lack of information about the Ilyan situation that he could receive over his communicator.  He would thus sit in this spot, uncomfortably, for the next few hours, receiving only spotty reports, the contents of which featured more conjecture than fact, while his family finished their meal on the patio and prepared for their first evening at the shelter.  At length, his musings were interrupted by his oldest daughter.

    "Sir," she said, gingerly entering the room.

    "Yes, lieutenant."

    "Any word yet?"

    "Nothing substantial."  Abbott had not lifted his head from the communicator.

    "It's frustrating."

    "That it is."

    "Sir?"

    "Yes," Abbott said, bringing his head up with a frustrated jerk.  When he did so, he noticed that, for the first time, he had seen his daughter out of uniform.  She was dressed in night clothes, a thin, pastel-colored blouse-and-pant set covered by a sheer robe, an outfit that Abbott considered more feminine than anything his daughter might ever wear.  Caught up in the visualize evidence that his eldest child was, indeed, a young woman as well as a soldier, Abbott momentarily forgot about his frustration over his forced occupational impotence.

    "Sir, in the morning, the staff said that they would prepare a late brunch, and that they felt it would be safe for us to take a swim in the ocean just off of the patio.  It would help relieve some of the tensions over our inactivity.  It would--I mean, it would be nice if you would join us.  Mom thinks that it would be nice if you would join us."

    Abbott allowed a slight, sardonic smile to crease his face.  "In other words, she would like it if I partook in the family vacation?"

    "We're all feeling the stress, sir. . ."

    "I know.  But I think that, perhaps, I'm feeling it a bit more, don't you think."

    "All the more reason for you to relax, sir."

    Abbott inwardly allowed himself a chuckle.  "I suppose I'm being a bit of an ass, right?"

    "That's not for me to say."

    "But you've essentially said it.  Very well, lieutenant, I suppose I should do something besides stare at this damned communicator.  I'll meet everyone for breakfast in the morning, okay?"

    "Yes, sir.  Thank you, sir."

    His daughter then left, but Abbott could not bring himself to leave the couch, as uncomfortable as it was for him, and the communicator he held in his hand.  He had been awaiting a communique from one of General Clare's aides concerning the spotting of a potential Ilyan settlement one hundred meters north of Regina, but he had received nothing new despite continuous requests for updates.  He considered the lack of news to be either a bad sign or an indifferent sign.  Either they had, as of yet, found nothing, or they had found something and were currently engaged.  Abbott had never, in his entire military career, even when lying injured on an infirmary cot, felt as useless as he did at this moment.

    Another hour went by and there was still no sign of life from Abbott's communicator.  At length, Abbott began to feel the onset of fatigue.  He found himself in a state of slumber several times, and had considered laying down on the couch, when the soft sounds of footfalls on the carpeting brought him back to a state of semi-awareness.

    "Who's there," he mumbled in the general direction of the space around him.

    "It's just me," came Shelby's voice in a half-whisper.  "I thought that, if you're going to sleep in here, you might want to dim the lights."

    "I hadn't planned on sleeping.  I'm awaiting word on what's happening up north."

    "Mm.  And is there anything you can do once you get word?"

    The question irritated Abbott, as perhaps it was meant to, thus he ignored it and once again went about his business of checking his communicator.  Shelby stood behind him for a moment, then said, "The children and I are taking a swim tomorrow. . ."

    "I know.  The lieutenant has already informed me."

    Shelby paused again, then said, "Her name is Danielle."

    "Hm?"

    "She has a given name.  She was Danielle eighteen years before she was ever given the rank of lieutenant.  Do you see these chidren as nothing but soldiers?"

    "I'm not sure what you mean, 'nothing but soldiers.'  Soldiers are what we are.  Soldiering is the proudest, most honorable thing a member of our species can be.  I don't see them as 'nothing but soldiers,' I see them as a part of a proud tradition of soldiering."

    "And they can be nothing more?"

    "I can think of nothing more that they would want to be."

    Shelby paused once more, and Abbott thought that she was finished, but instead she sat in a lounger across from him and, after seeming to ponder the question for a moment, she quietly said, "Even if there is no more war?"

    "But there still is war.  And. . . we don't know what the extent of it will be."

    "Okay.  Certainly, maybe things aren't as finished as we thought they were.  But still, how many of these things can be on our planet?  We'll get rid of them eventually, you know we will.  Then, do our children still have to be soldiers?"

    "Again, what else would they be?  Once these Ilyan cells are taken care of, however many there may be, we still have a job ahead of us that's gigantic in its proportions.  Nearly one quarter of the once-habitable land surface on this planet has been rendered useless by enemy raids.  We need to make these areas fertile again, and we need to bring our various peoples above the surface, to re-establish our cities.  That is going to take effecient, precise labor, and who could provide that labor better than a military society?"

    "Our planet was not always military, at least, not entirely."

    "But we have been for the past three centuries and look at what we've accomplished.  The truth is, I lied to the general when I stated that I haven't studied pre-war societies.  I just don't find their study to be of any use to me.  Even though our species had expanded our seed into the stars, they were a directionless lot, with no goals other than to exist, consume and die.  Do you know that there were those who actually opposed our exploration of space?  They felt that our resources could be better used to assist the impoverished and the oppressed, yet they found no hypocricy in expending vast amounts of their own personal resources on entertainment.  Discovery, knowledge and expansion be damned, personal, selfish enjoyment came first.  To be truthful, the Ilyans probably did our species a favor when they attacked Xi-417.  They saved us from a destiny of becoming nothing more than interplanetary sloths doomed to spiritual extinction even as we propogated our seed throughout the stars."

    "So, it's necessary that each generation of children die in wars?"

    "You're misunderstanding me.  War is a heartless bastard, cruel in its every aspect.  On the contrary, as I told Tyler, I wish that our offspring never know war again, although I truly don't think that's possible, not on a permanent basis.  But a military society is one thing that will put a stop to much of the useless conflict.  A military society alots a place and a purpose for everyone, while, to the contrary, a society governed apart from the military allows certain, large portions of that society to deteriorate into uselessness.  In my view, our futures depend on this new world society in the time of the Peace embracing the precision and purpose of the military.  So, the fact that you ask me to think of my offspring as something other than military is preposterous.  The truth is, it's impossible for me to think of them as anything but."

    During their conversation, Abbott had not once lifted his head to look at his wife, but instead had kept his eyes directly focused on his communicator.  Shelby moved forward, as if she had something further to say, but then stopped herself, thinking better of it, and raised herself from the lounger.

    "Very well, then," she said, walking towards the living room door. "Good night, colonel."

    "Good night, sergeant," Abbott said, sinking back into the couch.



    "It seems to me that you've forgotten at least part of your military training."

    Abbott's senses slowly came back to him as he woke from a deep, dreamless sleep.  Initially, he wondered as to how he found himself lying on the floor, then he remembered that he could not find any way of feeling comfortable laying on the general's couch, so he had moved himself to the floor where he drifted off to slumber.  It was the best night of sleep he had gotten since returning Earthside.

    Shelby was once again in the room, making her way back and forth across it, doing something.  She had woken her husband, though she did not particularly seem to do it on purpose.  Abbott began to move to raise himself off the floor and in doing so realized that, perhaps, sleeping on the floor had been a mistake after all, as every joint in his body seemed to ache. 

    "Need this," Shelby asked, standing over him with a blue patch in her hand.

    "What time is it," Abbott asked as he took the patch from her and placed it over his left breast.

    "Past 0930.  We've already breakfasted, Tyler and Chandra are already at the beach and Danielle is in the shower.  I'll be next in, unless you want to go ahead of me."

    "What's the purpose of going into the shower when you're going down to throw your body into salt water?"

    "Do what you will.  I like to feel clean in the morning, so do the children."

    Shelby's comment caused Abbott's memories to flash back to a campaign on a planetoid in the outer cluster some fifteen years earlier.  Abbott's division was trapped in a small military bunker on this hellhole with the double problem of a malfunctioning water reclaimer and a heating unit that worked only too well.  Like most of the planetoids in Earth's domain, life was absolutely unsustainable outside of the bunker and an Ilyan fleet seperated Abbott's division from the supply line.  The water reclaimer only recycled enough water to keep the soldiers partially hydrated, none for personal hygiene, making the bunker a cannister of stinking, fetid humanity for over four Earth months.  The memory caused Abbott to scoff at his wife's remarks.

    Abbott inwardly cursed for allowing himself to sleep so late.  He had made it his habit to wake no later than 0630 no matter the hour in which he went to sleep.  Finally making his way to the couch, he picked up his communicator and began punching in some queries.  When answers slowly began to leak back to him he found that there had been news, but it was still murky.  It seemed that a division had found an Ilyan cell in the wilderness north of Regina and had engaged it, but the results of this engagement were yet to be found.  Furthermore, throughout the planet military units had made similar discoveries, but, again, the information was unclear. 

    "The staff still has breakfast for you on the patio, if you're interested," Shelby said as she began to walk towards the bathroom.

    Abbott did not answer his wife, his attention consumed by the small, thin device he held in his hand.  After several fruitless minutes, however, he decided that perhaps he should eat breakfast if, for no other reason, it might take his mind off of those things over which he had no control.  Stiffly rising from the couch, he made his way out of the living area, through the dining room and out of the sliding tinted glass exit that led to the beachfront patio.

    The patio was a massive concrete multi-leveled expanse which slowly descended onto the sand of the beach.  Despite its size, it might have been utilitarian in appearance had it not been for the embellishments of greenery and waterworks scattered throughout the patio.  As it had been built into the side of a cliff, it had a natural roof overhead which acted as further shelter against any attack should it come.  On a raised area in the center of the patio a dining area had been arranged, an opaque table and similar chairs with a small food preparation center beside of it.  A member of the staff stood at the food preparation center, busily cleaning eating utensils as he awaited the colonel.  Abbott made his way to the table and sat down, addressing himself to the staff member.

    "What would be the colonel's pleasure this morning," the soldier asked.  "We have freshly-prepared chicken eggs, wheat cakes with peach or strawberry sauce, sausages. . ."

    "Just wheat cakes and coffee, thank you," Colonel Abbott replied.  "And no fruit sauce on the cakes, please."

    As he awaited his breakfast, Abbott looked out on the Carolina beachfront.  It was a brilliant day, with the sky a hue of blue that Abbott had not seen in a very long time.  The ocean was calm, with the blue-green waters gently lapping the white sand of the beach.  Even under the shelter, Abbott could feel the warmth of the sun.  Tyler and Chandra were already at the beach, Chandra in her swimming leotard, having already been out in the water and seemingly preparing to return to the sea.  Abbott seemed to recall, during a conversation over dinner, that she was somewhat of a fish, a swimming champion for the academy with a long list of trophies and honors.  It was the sort of specialty that would qualify her for the elite corps once she graduated from academy.  Tyler was not in the water, nor was he in swim leotards, but rather in a simple pair of khaki trunks, riding an open-air propelled device above the waves.  Abbott recognized the device; in point of fact, members of his company had used the device two decades earlier to navigate some particularly nasty terrain on one of the outer worlds.  Its official name had been the Multi-terrain Hover Vehicle, but it was better known as. . .

    "A flying disc."

    "Beg pardon, sir," the staffer asked, somewhat surprised at Abbott's sudden statement.

    "A flying disc.  It's what we used to surprise an Ilyan company on Borax-III, some twenty-one years ago.  Those things were considered top of the line military equipment back then."

    "Yes, sir.  Now, they're children's toys.  That seems to be the fate of most of our technology, doesn't it?"

    Abbott did not answer, but instead watched his son steer the sleek machine over the waters.  The boy was lithe and athletic, and Abbott was momentarily mesmerized as he watched his son easily and gracefully guide the vehicle over the waters.

    "Beautiful day, sir."

    His attention broken, Abbott looked over his shoulder and saw Danielle standing behind him, dressed in blue swim leotards and tucking her hair underneath a swim cap.

    "Yes, I suppose it is."

    "Any news from up north?"

    "Nothing definite, though we've definitely spotted the bastards."

    "And we've engaged them. . .?"

    "Apparently.  There's nothing certain."

    Danielle was quiet for a moment as she finished readying herself for the beach, then she said, "It's a beautiful day for a swim."

    "Yes, I suppose it is."

    "Are you going to join us on the beach?"

    "Maybe, in a bit, once your mother joins us."

    "Okay, then.  I'll be down there with Chandra.  I owe her a beating for the last race she took from me."

    "Oh, yes?  I didn't realize that you and her were that competitive."

    "You know, sibling rivalry and all that.  I need to redeem my honor." 

    She said this with a laugh, then, turning from her father, she made her way down to the beachfront, her long, sure strides bringing her quickly alongside her sister.  For Chandra's part, she had just emerged from the water again and was shaking herself loose while checking a tiny timepiece imbedded in the wrist of the leotard suit.

    "How's the water out there," Danielle asked, looking ot at the ocean.

    "Calm and warm.  Good conditions for a swim."

    "And how's your times been?"

    "A little slow.  I'm either rusty or it's the fact that I haven't been ocean swimming in a long time."

    "Where are you timing yourself to?"

    "See that marker, about three hundred meters out?  It's approximately the distance of one of our courses at the academy, so I'm using that as a guide.  Why, are you considering losing to me again?"

    "That's a fairly arrogant statement," Danielle said with a smirk.  "Particularly considering that you just said that your times were slow."

    "My slow is better than your best time.  You forget, I'm a fish."

    "A fish can be reeled in.  Care to put a little wager on it?"

    "Like what?"

    "Half of my next week's wages against your next month's academy allowance."

    "How are you going to make up for half a week's wages?"

    "I don't plan to find out."

    "Sister, you do know that I'm academy champion. . ."

    "Yes, and I also know that you've probably been out to that marker and back about five times now, maybe more.  I'll wager my fresh legs against your worn ones, no matter how fast your academy times say you are."

    "All right, then.  To the marker and back?"

    "Sounds good."

    "You can make the mark."

    Danielle gave her sister a sarcastic smile, which Chandra returned, and both sister lined up on the waterfront.  Danielle raised her hand high, and as she dropped it, both women sprinted for the water.  Danielle hit the ocean first, but by less than a second, and a few seconds into the water Chandra was well in front of her.  At the 100 meter mark, Chandra had better than a body length's lead on her sister, at 200 meters the race was no longer really a competition.  Still, Chandra's hands sliced into the warm salt sea, her muscular legs kicked rhythmically, propelling her through the waves in a straight line.  Her mouth occasionally took in a spray of water, but she found that she relished this, that the living waters in the ocean were so much more of a challenge and had made her feel so much more alive than the still waters of the academy tanks.  This, to be certain, was her future, to go beyond academy into elite corps training, to first hone her skills in the waters, then to learn to move and work in all forms a mediums that may exist on the other explored worlds.  Her sister had proven herself to be a great officer, certainly, and she would serve well in whatever unit to which she was assigned, but she would never be more than a field officer, possibly one day achieving her father's ranks, but, with no war, probably not.  But, if everything went according to plan, Chandra would be spending her future with the planet's top soldiers, assigned to missions both challenging and rewarding.  She looked up briefly from the water and saw that the marker was no more than ten meters in front of her and could feel her sister nowhere behind her.  She could very well coast to a win, but still, she knew that her times could be better, so she lunged for the marker and prepared herself for the return swim.  Her hand reached out, slapping the marker, and then she heard a click.

    As Shelby had not come out yet, Abbott was still sitting at the breakfast table, sipping coffee and occasionally punching queries into his communicator, so that, at first, he did not even notice the spray of water rising suddenly three hundred yards out into the water.  When he did look up, the water was already descending, and the guards had begun to run to the beachfront.  Instictively, Abbott was up in an instant and running towards the beach.  Sergeant Vincent was already at the waterfront by the time Abbott arrived there, communicator in her hand, ordering beach craft to be brought in to run out to the site.

    "What happened," Abbott demanded rather than asked.

    "I--I don't know, sir," Vincent said in a flustered manner while looking through a set of magnifiers.  "It looks as if some form of explosion happened out there. . ."

    "An explosion?  How. . .?"

    As soon as the explosion had happened, Tyler had ridden his dixc to the site.  Now, he had turned the disc and brought it inland, floating two feet above the water in front of Abbott and Vincent.

    "Sir," he said in a high-pitched voice, "it's Danielle.  She's unconscious on the water.  I--I can't get her and control the disc. . ."

    Without saying anything, Abbott was out into the water and had climbed into the small compartment in the disc.  Tyler immediately turned the vehicle and steered it out into the water.  There, Danielle lay in the water face down, her only movement being that which the waves caused.  Bringing one leg over the side of the disc while Tyler worked to keep the disc balanced, Abbott was able to place one arm around her waist and gingerly lift her out of the water.  In spite of everything, Abbott momentarily stopped and considered the form that now rested in his arm.  At the moment, she was not the proud, efficient soldier that he had known over the past several days, but seemed frail and delicate, her lithe figure seeming more fragile than wiry.  He placed her in the floor of the disc and, grabbing a breathing mask from the emergency equipment aboard the disc, placed it over her mouth and nose and activated it.  After a few seconds she began breathing again, violently coughing out the brine that she had swallowed.

    The disc did not easily hold three, and Abbott knew it.  Moreover, he was concerned for Chandra.  Thus, kicking off his boots, he jumped into the waters, motioning for Tyler to head towards the beach.  On the surface there was no evidence of his second daughter; in fact, now that everything had settled, there was no evidence that anything at all had happened.  The marker even remained intact, and Abbott began to swim towards it.  To his dismay, when he arrived at the marker, he saw that it was spotted with fresh blood.  Still, there was no sign of the girl, so Abbott submerged himself beneath the surface, reaching for anything that may be down there.  For what seemed like minutes he searched, his eyes surveying the gray waters illuminated by the diffused light of the sun overhead.  His lungs were at the point of bursting, and he was just about to bring his head above water, when he noticed the silhouette of something small floating by several meters in front of him, something that he at first mistook for a fish.  On a whim, he swam towards it, and what he found there was a severed hand with a bit of leotard attached to the wrist, the imbedded clock on the wrist still keeping the time.

    Abbott emerged from the water, painfully gasping air into his lungs.  By this time the guards had procured some beachcraft and had made their way out to the site.

    "Sir, are you okay," Vincent asked as her craft came up alongside Abbott.

    "Yeah. . .okay."

    "Did you. . . did you find your other daughter?"

    "Yes.  Here she is," Abbott said, flinging the hand onto the boat.

    Two guards assisted Abbott onto the beachcraft where he sat in silence while they returned to shore.  After a long silence, Vincent said, "Sir, I. . . I don't know what to say.  We secured the beach, we checked everything, even those markers.  I don't know how this could happen. . ."

    "I know.  I believe you."  This was all that Abbott would say.

    When the craft arrived at the beach, Danielle had been placed in a chair on the patio and was being attended by a guard medic, Tyler seated nearby and looking on.  Abbott exited the craft and made his way towards his surviving offspring.  Danielle's cap and goggles were now off, her large, moist eyes immediately meeting her father's gaze.

    "Sir. . .?"

    "I'm afraid your sister is gone," Abbott said in a quiet voice.  "The guard out there is looking for her remains."

    "How. . .how do you know?"

    "I have proof.  I don't think you want to see it," Abbott said, knowing that Vincent had placed the hand in a secured cannister.

    Danielle made no open show of emotion, but simply put her head down, lost in her own thougths.  For his part, Tyler was doing the same.

    "Where is your mother," Abbott asked after some time.

    "I. . .I don't know," Danielle replied.  "I haven't seen her since I came back to shore."

    "Tyler. . .?"

    "No, sir.  I hadn't noticed her."

    "Corporal," Abbott yelled towards the staffer who had served his breakfast.  "Have you seen my wife since I came out for breakfast."

    "No, sir," said the staffer, somewhat more shaken by the events than the colonel's children had been.  "I had forgotten about her. . ."

    "So she hasn't come out since she went in to take a shower?"

    Abbott did not wait for an answer, but quickly made his way up the patio and into the shelter.  At the bathroom, he could still hear the sounds of liquid running in the shower.  Placing his hand on a stud, the entranceway slid open, and Abbott's skin immediately burned from the mist that emerged from it.  Closing the entranceway immediately, Abbott turned to Sergeant Vincent.

    "Get me a containment suit."

    "Sir?"

    "A containment suit.  The general has some stored away here, doesn't he?"

    "Certainly.  They're up front, in the storage area."

    "Then get me one, and suit up yourself.  And have someone open every vent and turn on every exhaust fan that this crackerbox has."

    Within minutes, Vincent returned with the containment suits.  Abbott took one of the cases that contained the suits and quickly opened it, fitting the one-size-fits-all elastic material over his legs, arms, torso and head.  Fastening the suit, he then placed the breather over his mouth and fitted the intra-spectrum goggles on over his eyes.  He recognized the material that had come pouring out of the bathroom, and he knew that there was no longer a reason to hurry.  Still, he was anxious to get on with it and definitively learn the fate of his wife.

    Looking like a silhouette of himself in the black suit, Abbott made certain that the guards who were present were similarly suited, then touched the stud of the door.  Once again, the thicker-than-air material came pouring out of the door, appearing green and gold through his goggles.  Those same goggles allowed Abbott to make out solid images through the fog so that he could navigate his way to the shower.  Opening the shower door, he found the thing that had been his wife crumpled on the floor, the flesh having melted off the upper half of her body.  Abbott touched the in-shower console and shut off the shower head, this having been the conduit of the corrosive acid pouring down on his wife's corpse.  The skull was turned up, one eyeball still stubbornly clinging to a socket, and Abbott knew that the acid had hit suddenly, not even allowing Shelby the opportunity to scream.

    "God," Vincent said as she came up behind Abbott, her voice muffled through the suit communicator.  "What is that. . ."

    "Bio-acid," Abbott answered in a matter-of-fact tone.  "A particularly devestating invention of the Ilyans.  It will immediately corrode any living matter it comes in contact with while leaving all inorganic matter undamaged.  Someone put it in the shower lines.  It probably didn't even come through until she was in the shower for a few moments.  Then, she never stood a chance."

    "Oh, god.  I--I don't know what to say. . ."

    "Nothing to say or do but clean up the mess."



    Three hours later, the bunker had been cleared sufficiently enough for the guards and Abbott's surviving family members to return to the shelter without suits.  All bathroom surfaces had been throroughly scoured and Shelby's remains had been removed in a white sterile bag.  Abbott once again found himself on the living room couch, sending a communique of what had transpired to General Tan in Australia.  It was while he was doing this that an uncharacteristically withdrawn Sergeant Vincent approached him.

    "Sir. . .?"

    "Yes. . . sergeant?"

    "Again, I have to apologize.  My men and I made a thorough search for anything suspicious prior. . ."

    "There's no reason to apologize.  I'm sure you did your job."

    "But, I don't understand.  There's been no one here but my men since we were notified of your arrival.  If. . ."

    "Sergeant," Abbott said, his tone betraying his impatience, "right now is not the time to blame ourselves for what we may or may not have done differently.  Two individuals were murdered here today.  I would say we would make better use of our time in deducing who and why someone did this."

    "Yes, sir.  Sir, General Lucas wishes to speak with you.  He's on my comm line."

    "Thank you, sergeant," Abbott said as he took her device from the guard.

    "Colonel Abbott," came the general's low voice over the comm, "I am so sorry that this happened.  I cannot believe that something like this happened at my bunker.  Are you and the other survivors okay, at least."

    "Yes, sir, we're fine, at least physically."

    "Do you have any idea how this could have happened?  My guards are generally some of the most efficient among guard soldiers."

    "They did their jobs correctly, sir.  I don't believe that any of them could've been prepared for what happened here."

    "So, you have a theory as to who did this?"

    "I have my ideas.  I'm going to submit them to General Tan before we leave Earth."

    "You're leaving Earth?"

    "General Tan's orders, once he was made aware of what happened.  His feeling is that, for whatever reason, I'm a target, and that it has become too easy for the enemy to get to me here.  While the Ilyan threat remains,  our best bet is off Earth."

    "But, if you're the target, why attack your family?  Certainly, they had the means to get to you."

    "That's a good question, sir."

    "Colonel, are you sure that you're okay.  I know you don't need for me to point out to you that you just lost two members of your family.  I have. . ."

    "Sir, with all due respect, I've been dealing with this issue since I returned Earthside.  For the past several days, I've been attempting to make a life with strangers who are supposed to be my family.  The truth is that my wife is someone who I barely knew, someone who was completely different from the girl I courted almost thirty years ago.  I suppose that I'm not that same guy, either.  The point of the matter is, as much as I've been trying to grieve over what happened here, right now all I can think about is what this may mean in terms of what may be going on with the Ilyans.  I'm trying to see my connection in all this, why they may want to keep me alive while killing those related to me.  There's just no room inside of me for any feelings for my dead wife or my dead child beyond the fact that two innocent humans were just murdered, presumably by Ilyans.  As cold as that sounds, that's how it is."

    "Okay, colonel.  I suppose I can understand, to an extent.  But what are your plans now?"

    "As I said, General Tan has ordered us off Earthside.  We'll be leaving Australia tomorrow.  As a precaution, I've requested that the three of us arrive seperately.  That way, an Ilyan attacker can't take out the three of us at once."

    "Very good.  Good luck, colonel.  As you know, our thoughts are with you."

    As Abbott was ending his communication with the general, his hands were busy on his own communicator, composing a communique to General Tan's office, a communique that made specific inquiries about Antares-Citni III mission.  Once it had been sent, Abbott sank back into the general's plush couch and let out a long, exasperated breath.

6.

    Abbott stood on the outer area of the landing pad at High Command HQ, a light Australian breeze caressing his weathered features in the dusk.  He had been correct about the air in Canada, and in Carolina, as well, as compared to Australia, as he was once again forced to place an acclimator in his throat.  His daughter would be arriving in approximately ten minutes, and plans called for his son to join him thirty minutes after that.  Abbott had returned to Regina to pick up some essential items, then had taken the transport to Australia.  Danielle, relieved indefinitely from her duties in Regina, had gone through Mexico before heading to Australia, while Tyler's route took him through Vancouver.  The plan that Tan's staff had drawn up called for them to spend the evening at High Command HQ, then leave in the morning for the weeks-long journey to the Haven station in the Kuiper belt, where the three of them would be employed in some form of duty while awaiting the resolution of the Ilyan situation.

    That plan, however, was never meant to be.

    It was Antares-Citni III that had first aroused Abbott's suspicions, though he thought little of it at the time.  However, Tan's staff had confirmed that which Abbott thought to be true all along.  Antares-Citni III was still highly classified, a non-history.  Earth's government would never acknowledge that it had happened, and while rumors of what had happened there may exist, none of the mission's participants would ever admit to the events that took place on that mudball.  And, certainly, the nature of that mission would never be taught in a classroom.  Other than the relatively small group of people who either ordered the mission or were involved in it, no human would know anything about Antares-Citni III.

    But an Ilyan would.

    Abbott peered out into the Australian evening.  He could see the forward lights of a shuttle in the distance.  A voice over his comm informed him that this would be Danielle's shuttle.

    Danielle, who had been the last one in the shower before Shelby entered.

    Danielle, who had been the one swimming with Chandra when her life ended.

    Danielle, who had handed Abbott's father the means to his destruction in the form of a glass of water.

    Right in front of Abbott's eyes.

    The shuttle was landing now, its thrusters slowly placing the craft on the landing pad, the various forms of bright light eminating from the openings of the shuttle contrasting with the dull green of the landing pad lights.  The hatch slowly opened, and stairs descended from it.  Emerging from the shuttle was a small crowd of military types; among those, in uniform blues that now seemed traitorous, was the being that Abbott had thought to be Danielle.

    There had been a final clue as to the killer's identity.  The theory had initially been that an explosive device had been placed within the marker that Chandra had touched.  But the marker had been completely unharmed while the body of Abbott's daughter had been blown apart.  Forensics officers had confided to Abbott that the murder bore much more of a resemblence to a shot from a propelled weopon than a stationary device.  The Ilyans had trained their soldier well, though.  She had made certain that she had made a connection to Abbott, she had attempted to bond with her "father," which she hoped would serve to allay any discrepencies that may appear in her guise, such as her knowledge of Citni-Antares III.  The Ilyans had gambled on the notion that a soldier's emotions would overcome his sense of logic.

    They made a mistake with Abbott, however.  Where his family was concerned, there was no emotion.

    Danielle had now made her way down the stairs and was standing in front of her father.  As was customary, she stood at attention and saluted.

    "Sir," she said, her green eyes focused on Abbott's.

    "What have you done with my real daughter?"

    As if the question triggered some form of response, Danielle's hand immediately shot to her sidearm and pointed it directly at Abbott, sending a seering bolt of energy in his direction.  It was only by instinct that Abbott moved quickly to his left, thus avoiding a shot directly to his chest.  The shot did, however, hit his shoulder at the point where it connected to his arm, severing the arm completely and sending it flying across the landing pad floor.  Abbott fell immediately, his arm gushing blood, even though the wound had been partially courdorized.  Danielle did not complete her kill, however, but moved immediately towards the portal of the High Command HQ, shooting two guards as she did so, killing one of them.  As Abbott passed out from the blood loss, his last thought was that the thing that appeared to be his daughter moved much faster than he thought a bioformed Ilyan might.

    Tan and some of his men had been watching these happenings from a monitor inside the nerve center of the administration building.  They had been ready with thirty soldiers around the parameter of the landing pad, waiting for a signal from Abbott that they should move in on what they thought was a bioformed soldier.  Things had moved quicker than Tan had thought they might, however, and Danielle was already halfway down the walkway to the administrative building entrance.

    "Move," Tan yelled over his comm needlessly, as his men had already began closing in on the thin figure.

    Danielle dodged several shots fired her way before deciding that her best course was to try to make the entrance underneath the walkway.  Grabbing the walkway's edge, she swung down and slid her body through a small opening in the side of it.  Tan's soldiers converged on the walkway and began firing blindly into its multiple service entrances.  After several minutes of this, one of the men took the lead and began to make his way into an entrance closest to the building only to be greeted by a blast that blew his head off.  Danielle quickly grabbed the dead soldierand pulled him in, pulling his headless corpse up to her chest, then moved through the serviceway utilizing the dead man as a shield against the blind shots.  Reaching the building, Danielle used her weapon to shoot open the underground service entrance, then, discarding the corpse, made her way underneath the building.

    "Sir," a man at Tan's side said, "there's an alarm at the service entrance.  The target is underneath the building."

    "Then find all the service traps in the building and cover them.  She's got to come out of one of them.  And get someone out there to take care of Colonel Abbott."

    "Sir," a female voice came from behind Tan, "I was just talking to one of our Ilyan experts.  He believes that, given her agility, that there's no way that she's a bioformed Ilyan."

    "Then what is she?"

    The administrative building currently had eighty-seven soldiers on duty, and fifty of them went about the task of covering the twenty-two service traps that could be found throughout the ground floor of the building.  The soldiers waited seventeen minutes, then the western-most trap on the northwest side of the auditorium floor exploded, killing the three soldiers that were covering it.  Up from the trap sprang Danielle, and before any soldier could react, she was climbing her way through the workstations that rose above her.

    Immediately deducing her intent, Tan yelled out, "She's heading towards the master war room!"

    The master war room was on the eleventh level, which was already stationed by twelve of the on-duty soldiers.  They quickly converged on the room in both directions just as Danielle arrived on that level, but the two on either side of her were immediately met with lethal shots before she turned her weopon on the polyglass entranceway of the war room, shattering it.

    "Sir," came a voice over Tan's comm, "we have her in the site of our laser cannon, ready to fire."

    "Wait," Tan said, hesitantly.  "Can you shoot a precise, intense shot at the small of her back, leaving her head unharmed?"

    "We can do that, sir, but it'll take a few more minutes to line it up.  What does it matter. . .?"

    "Just do it," Tan barked, hoping that his gamble paid off.

    Danielle was busy at a console inside the war room while occasionally sending shots towards the soldiers attempting to apprehend her.  Tan knew that she was transferring information and that it was too late to try to set up a scramble signal.  Now, his only hope was that his gamble would pay off.

    "Now, sir," came the voice over his comm.

    "Now!"

    A thin beam of intense red light shot out towards Danielle's back and immediately her body exploded in a shower of clear liquid.  The soldiers, seeing that their target had been dispatched, rushed into the room and stopped, shocked by the thing whose remains laid scattered about the floor.

    "Sir," said one of the soldiers over the comm, "what is this?"

    "That, son, is an Ilyan android.  And now, perhaps we can find out what it knows."



    The technology lab of the administration building was actually a consolidation of twelve workspaces on the sixth level of the auditorium.  The lab was a controlled mess of all forms of impressive technology, from the archaic to the modern, either being studied or created.  It was here, in a small tank in the rear of the lab's third section, that a makeshift life support system had been created for the android that had been considered to be Lt. Danielle Abbott.  The head, now lifeless but with eyes wide open, had been saved, as was the body down to the shoulder blades.  This bust now floated atop the liquid in the tank, its hair wetted down and plastered to its head.

    "Amazing," one of the techs was saying, his hands playing across a console which connected to some electrodes planted in its head.  "That liquid compound that was pounding through its body has nearly the same purpose as blood does in the human body.  There's some useless red liquid pumping through thin veins on the android's skin to fool anyone in case of a minor injury.  But it would have to have a complete and thorough physical examination in order for anyone to discover the differences between its circulatory system and our own.  In fact, all of the mechanical systems that we've studied from its body could easily be confused for being biological in nature.  Our scanners would never detect a system as sophisticated as this.  Somehow, it's had an identification chip implanted and they've even worked out most of the problems that they had with the green energies that used to give them away."

    "And the green eyes, of course, help hide any evidence of the green energies that may still be detected," added another tech nearby.  "Obviously, they've solved the life cycle calibration problems that their earlier models possessed."

    "But, how did this thing even get here," Tan asked, standing nearby with several members of his staff.  "The Ilyans have been losing ground to us for the last three decades, yet this thing appeared here no more than twenty years ago.  There's no way a handful off Ilyan cells creates anything this sophisticated."

    "In a moment, you can ask it yourself."

    "So, exactly what sort of information can we expect to extract from this thing?"

    "Just about anything, I would suppose.  Simply put, its brain seems to have three centers.  One is for its programmed personality, the thing that made it seem to be a young Canadian lieutenant.  The second is its information center, things that it gathers and then sends out upon command.  The third is its receiver, the part of the brain that receives missions and then creates a plan to carry the mission out.  The receiver is a shielded signal coming from somewhere to the northwest of us, we haven't particularly been able to establish where.  That has been deactivated, though it took us some time to figure out how to do it.  The personality mode seems to have shut itself down, presumably when it was confronted by Colonel Abbott, because it was no longer needed.  However, the information center seems to remain intact, and it's from this that we can get some information on its purpose here."

    "How do we go about doing this?"

    "Basically, we interrogate it.  Its information gathering resources are the same as humans, that is to say its ears and eyes.  It's output is also the same as us, that is to say, it's mouth and its equivilent for a voice box.  If you ask it a question, it should respond verbally.  Like most computers, its resistance to most questions should be gone, although some answers may obviously be shielded."

    "Okay.  Then whenever you're ready to begin."

    The tech took a small mic and strapped it around his ear, placing it in front of his mouth.  "We'll ask it a couple of simple questions first, to make certain we're on the right track."

    Then, looking at the thing floating in the clear liquid, the tech asked, "What is your identity designation?"

    The thing opened its mouth and spoke, though the voice was no longer feminine nor human.  It was no longer Danielle Abbott.

    "The identity designated to this unit by its programmers has been that of Lieutenant Danielle Abbott of the First Canadian Brigade.  This unit was designated to act as the female offspring of Colonel James Abbott of the Third Interplanetary Army and Sergeant Shelby Abbott, also of the First Canadian Brigade."

    "Did your designated identity have any other family members?"

    "A brother and sister, Chandra and Tyler, both cadets at the Saskatchewan Military Academy."

    The tech nodded towards Tan, who nodded back, then the tech continued.

    "When did you assume the identity of Lieutenant Abbott?"

    "This unit was able to assume the identity immediately after the birth of the original.  The creature was taken from its nursery and replaced by this unit."

    "And what happened to the original?"

    "At the moment of birth, the creatures are particularly fragile.  It is an easy task to end the system that brings them life, and the programmer who placed this unit in the nursery did so with the original."

    "Why did the programmers select Colonel James Abbott as a target?"

    "He fit the profile of the creatures that the programmers needed to utilize in order to disguise the inherit design flaw of these units, which is to say the gamma-based energies that cause the components designed to act as the creature's visual organs to give off a green glow.  Initially, he might have been any creature with green visual organs whose family this unit could infiltrate."

    "You said, initially.  Did your purpose within the family unit of the one of whom you were designated change?"

    "Upon the return of the creature's father to this planet, the programmers realized that the elder creature's status may give him unique access to the headquarters of the top commanders in the creatures' military.  They then implemented a plan for this unit to take action to take advantage of that access."

    "And that plan involved killing off members of Colonel James Abbott's family?"

    "Yes.  The stratagem of the programmers was to create a dangerous situation for the creature in question, thus giving him a reason to leave the creatures' planet.  The programmers reasoned that there was a certain percentage of certainty that the creature would depart from the planet at the same point at which he entered, that is to say, the strategic headquarters of the creatures' military.  Once this unit infiltrated that headquarters, it could obtain and transmit knowledge necessary to the programmers."

    "And were you able to obtain and transmit that knowledge?"

    "This data is no longer in my memory."

    "Answer the question," Tan ordered with uncharacteristic emotion.  "Were you able to transmit data to the Ilyans?"

    "Sir, it's not a human being," the tech said, looking back at Tan.  "Either the memory has been erased or it cannot access the data, in which case we may be able to retrieve it with further work.  At present, though, the answers that we're receiving from it is the data that it can access.  It's not programmed to deceive."

    "Then we have no way of knowing what these Ilyans may now know about our defenses."

    "No, not at present.  Depending on what data it may have been able to gather in the war room, the Ilyans may know everything about us."

    Tan turned from the tech and addressed a member of his staff.  "We have no choice, then.  We've got to move the headquarters of the High Command to our contingiency location immediately.  Send an alert to everyone in the high command, I expect us to be moving by 0600 tomorrow."

    The subordinate saluted Tan and left immediately, then Tan turned his attention back to the tech.

    "Ask it how many Ilyans there currently are on the planet."

    The tech put his mic back up to his mouth.  "How many of the programmers currently exist on this world?"

    "This data is no longer in my memory."

    "Damn it," Tan said under his breath.

    "Let me try another approach," the tech said to the general.  Then, turning to the android, "What is the general objective of the programmers on this planet?"

    "As the creatures systematically destroyed their world, the programmers have needed a new home.  This planet possesses the necessary conditions, its environment simply needed to be adjusted slightly in order to accomodate the programmers' anatomy.  Thus, the programmers general goal has been to terraform this planet and then subsequently eradicate the creatures."

    "How will this terraforming take place."

    "It has already begun.  At present, over one quarter of the planet has been adequately terraformed."

    "The barren areas," Tan said, again under his breath.

    "Sir?"

    "The barren areas, the areas that we thought the Ilyans had destroyed.  But they hadn't damaged them, they were simply changing them."

    "But, that would mean. . ."

    "We've essentially been invaded.  During the Ilyan raids, no one would have noticed how many of them were landing on Earth and setting up shop here.  There could be millions of them in those areas.  And, apparently, they no longer care that we know."

    "But, why?"

    Tan sat down in a chair nearby and leaned back, allowing his body to relax.  He had the look of a defeated man.

    "Because their plans have progressed enough that it no longer matters what we may or may not know," he said.  "All across the planet, companies of soldiers have been deployed in order to seek out what they think may be Ilyan cells, and all across the planet companies of soldiers are disappearing.  They've had decades on this planet while we knew nothing of their existence.  Simply put, they outsmarted us.  They withdrew, they allowed their own homeworld to fall, and we fell for it.  We were ready to fall for it.  The evil monsters from space defeated, the glory of humankind vanquishing their mosted hated enemy.  While we were celebrating, they were planning.  And now we are completely vulnerable and they are prepared to finish things."

    The room was momentarily quiet, then the female assistant standing near Tan broke the silence.  "Th--that can't be, sir.  Those things - those things aren't capable of. . ."

    "Aren't capable of what, captain?  Aren't capable of out-thinking us, out-stratagizing us?  We have to be more intelligent than they are, right?  Because they're so hideous and we're so beautiful, isn't that what you're thinking?  Consider this, captain.  In three centuries of war, we've only begun to understand the most rudimentary elements of what they consider a language, while they not only have a master's understanding of our language, but are capable of creating machines that can easily ape that language, that are capable of aping us.  Can our technology even conceive of creating an android like this thing of wonder here without utilizing their model?  Ever hear of something called the spatial disruptor?  We've captured those little marvels and, after a couple of years of study, we have only a germ of an idea on what principle those things work."

    The room fell silent again and Tan knew that the realization of what had occurred was just beginning to sink into the minds of those around him.  With no one willing to speak, Tan turned back to the tech.

    "Ask that thing why the Ilyans never mobilized the spatial disruptors to destroy this planet."

    Tan's words startling the tech out of his own musings, the soldier clumsily lifted the mic back to his mouth and haltingly repeated Tan's question.

    "The programmers developed the spatial disruptor to be a defensive weopon, its only purpose was to ward off their attackers.  Destroying an enemy's homeworld, or its ability to sustain life, would have been a detriment as well as a waste to the programmers' resources.  The programmers were then surprised to find how willing the creatures were to destroy the progammers' homeworld.  The programmers' only goal throughout the conflict was to protect their species existence on their own planet.  When this failed through the tenacity and visciousness of the creatures, the programmers found that they had the need to replace their homeworld, which was when the current stratagem was conceived."

    "How do the programmers perceive the creatures?  Ask it."

    Once again, the tech repeated Tan's question, to which the android answered, "The programmer first encountered the creatures on a planetoid that they were using as an eggworld.  Eggworlds were utilized by the programmers to incubate their eggs after conception.  Due to the environment of the programmer's planet, which is otherwise beneficial to their fully-developed anatomy, the programmers eggs only had a 17% survival rate from conception to maturity.  The programmers were able to discover planetoids in their domain in which the eggs could be stored and maintained until they reached maturity, thus increasing the survival rate to 96%.  The creatures attempted to land one of their crafts on an eggworld, the nature of which would have been deadly to the developing eggs.  The programmers attempted to warn the creatures off, but this was to no avail as the creatures landed anyway, destroying an entire brood of eggs.  As the programmers thought this planetoid necessary and as attempts to communicate were unheeded, the programmers sought to force the creatures off the planetoid.  They succeeded in doing so only to find that the creatures were a violent sort, seeking to engage the progammers' forces at any point without negotiating for peace.  Seeing as how the creatures were an inferior sort, the programmers considered that they could simply weather and outlast the assaults of the creatures, that eventually the creatures' would see the futility of their actions and desist.  The programmers underestimated the cruelty of the creatures as well as their ingenuity for that cruelty.  Soon, the programmers found the future of their homeworld at risk, and vowing to never fall victim to such hubris again, began plans to populate the known planet that would best fit their needs, this planet.  The programmers feel that, despite having learned the methods of sound in which the creatures communicate, that there is no making peace with them, and considering the nature of the creatures, the programmers feel that the systematic disposal of the creatures from existence is warranted."

    Tan let out a soft, cynical chuckle.  "Hubris.  They feel they were guilty of hubris.  They cannot even conceive of the hubris that our species is guilty of."

    Tan's staff and the techs in the room stood by awkwardly, unsure of what their next actions should be.  Tan stood up and walked slowly across the floor towards the tank in which the android's remains were kept.  He stared into the unblinking eyes of the thing with the face of Danielle Abbott and studied it, wondering at its soft, supple synthetic skin, in awe of the wet, straight black hair that fell across its severed shoulders.

    "Sir, do you have any orders," the assistant finally asked.

    "A full emergency meeting of the complete High Command to take place within an hour," Tan said in a quiet voice.  "Call in all field troops other than those essential for maintaining our outposts.  That will need approval of the High Command, obviously, but being that the approval is guaranteed, there's no need to wait to give the order.  Recall all retired soldiers to their local units, and make certain that those units already involved in conflict with the Ilyans are informed of the situation.  And, of course, expedite the evacuation of this facility."

    The soldier acknowledged Tan's orders and left.  The general had not taken his eyes off of the android, his face set in a grim mask.

    "How many more of you are there, hm?  And how have they improved the most recent models?  Can they have blue eyes now?  Do they have some form of red compound flowing through their systems?  How do we know the difference between you and us?  How do we win?"

    The question hung in the air, and the general stood there for several more minutes as his staff and the techs began to go about their duties.  At length, a chime on Tan's communicator let him know that the meeting of the High Command was set and he made his way towards the main entrance of the lab, weighed down with the knowledge that humankind may be nearing its end.

7.

    Abbott awoke in a sterile room with white-clad medics working over him with immaculate instruments.  A blue light above him showed directly into his eyes, and as he squinted and blinked in response, he could slowly hear the sounds of the world coming back to him, both the controlled atmosphere of the recovery room and the dull sounds of calamity coming from beyond the room.

    "He's waking up," one of the medics said.

    "That's okay," replied a surgeon standing to one side.  "It's in response to the stimulant I gave him.  He's going to be parched, though."

    A person standing behind Abbott placed a polyglass container with water in it on his bedside stand on his left side.  "Drink this," the voice said.

    Abbott picked up the container and began to sip down the cool and slightly bitter-tasting water.  He realized that their were several tubes running into his left arm, as well as a respiration unit placed in his throat.

    "Hello, Colonel Abbott," the surgeon said, stepping forward.  "How are you today?"

    Even in a state of semi-consciousness, Abbott considered that question to be a stupid one, but decided that it was just the surgeon's means of starting a conversation.  Even so, he did not reply.

    "More importantly, I suppose, how is your right arm feeling?"

    Abbott looked over at his right arm, which was covered in protective wrappings.  He could only feel tingling in the arm and was just barely able to move the ends of his fingers.

    "I don't feel much of anything," Abbott replied.

    "It's what I was afraid of.  Rush job and all that.  We just didn't have time to make all the proper neural connections for the synthetic arm and, more importantly, make certain that they were working correctly.  We'll have to work on you some more once we've relocated."

    As the surgeon spoke, Abbott's memories began to flood back to him.  "My daughter," he asked the surgeon.  "What did they find. . ."

    "Colonel, I'm afraid I'm the wrong person to ask.  An assistant of General Tan is supposed to be down here momentarily to inform you of everything that's going on.  All I know is that we're relocating High Command HQ, which means something big must be going on.  In the meantime, I think the young man here would like to speak with you."

    The person who was standing behind the bed now stepped forward.  It was Tyler, dressed in academy black, looking down on his father in a concerned manner.

    "Hello, sir.  How are you?"

    "Not good, I'm afraid, but I'll probably live.  You're sister. . ."

    "I--I don't know everything, sir.  They said she was involved in some sort of confict here, that she may have died. . ."

    "Son," Abbott said, leaning his head back into his pillow, "that was not your sister.  You're sister hasn't been around for a long time, maybe for years.  I'm afraid that she was some sort of spy, an Ilyan spy.  I'm pretty certain she was the one who was responsible for murdering your mother and Chandra."

    Tyler studied Abbott, confused and obviously unsure of himself.  "That can't be right.  The Ilyans are gone.  I've known her all my life, I would've noticed. . ."

    "She was brilliant.  Fooled you.  Fooled your mother.  And the Ilyans fooled all of us.  I'm afraid that this war isn't nearly as over as we thought it was."

    Tyler's eyes had become moist, and Abbott lifted up and looked directly into his son's eyes.  "Look, remember how I told you how glad I was that you would never know combat?"

    "Yes, sir."

    "Well, I'm afraid I was wrong.  We all were.  But now is time for you to become a soldier, understand, to become a man."

    At that moment, Tan's assistant entered the room.  She walked quickly to Abbott's bedside and adressed the colonel.

    "So, she was an Ilyan spy, was that it," Abbott asked the assistant.

    "Well, in a way, but she wasn't an Ilyan, at least not an Ilyan proper.  I believe the general spoke with you about the Ilyan android program."

    "Yes, he told me something about it, when I first arrived here.  Are you telling me that she was. . ."

    "An android, sir, only far more advanced than any that we've studied before.  It was able to infiltrate our headquarters once you were incapacitated and it possibly relayed sensitive information to the Ilyans."

    "And have we been able to find any of their cells yet?"

    "We fear that it's more than just cells.  We were able to get some information from the android, and it informed us that our 'barren' areas are actually areas in which they have transformed to suit their needs.  What's worse, we have no idea how many of their androids may have infiltrated our population or what their plans may be other than to eradicate humankind."

    "So the androids are undetectable. . .?"

    "At present, yes, and we only fear that newer models may be more advanced."

    Abbott stopped for a moment, considered his young son's face, thought about how advanced that Danielle must have been, then thought on how much more advanced a model might be after seven years of improvements.  Then, with sudden realization, he glanced down at the half-empty container of water by his side.

    "Captain," he asked the assistant in a calm voice, "may I see your sidearm?"

    "Certainly, sir," she said, handing Abbott the weopon.

    "Son," he said, addressing Tyler, "what purpose would you have in destroying me and this facility?"

    The answer was obvious, but Abbott had asked it to gain a response.  What that response may have been was lost, however, as the instant that Tyler made a move, Abbott fired the weopon, hitting Tyler point-blank and covering the room in a shower of the android's clear liquid.

    It took several seconds for the people in the room to recover, the assistant, drenched in the android's fluid, being the first to do so.  Slowly, she asked, "H--how did you know, for certain. . .?"

    "I didn't," was Abbott's only response.

    Abbott laid back again, allowing the weopon to slip from his hand.  He closed his eyes, seemed to be in pain for just a moment, then looked back up at the assistant, his eyes clear, his voice purposeful.

    "Captain, I need that water sent down to an analysis lab.  I need a very thorough examination of the water, what you're looking for is going to be nearly impossible to detect.  What you should find is some microscopic polymer beads, inside those beads is a magnetic field and trapped in that magnetic field is some antimatter molecules.  If you find those, and you will, then similar devices are floating around in my digestive system.  In a matter of hours the polymer barriers will be breached and the antimatter will be introduced into my system which will cause a very destructive reaction.  We need to take immediate action, and that action needs to be taken now, even before we get the analysis back.  I need to be moved to the barren area nearest this base and left there alone."

    "But--but, sir, we have personnel who can. . ."

    "Captain, are you aware of what happened at the Memorium in Regina?"

    "Yes, sir."

    "And do you agree that there is too much here that is important to be risked?"

    "Yes, sir."

    "Then carry out my orders."

      The assistant stood for a moment and attempted to formulate an argument against Abbott's logic.  The effort was futile, though, and she soon found herself carrying out the colonel's orders without speaking with him further.

      Approximately thirty minutes later, Colonel James Abbott found himself on a gurney situated on the landing pad outside of the High Command HQ.  Once again the headquarters had become a hub of activity, but this time in order to retreat from the menace that Command knew was coming.  The sun had began to rise in Australia, the red light illuminating the ever-present smoke seeping from the barren areas.  Shuttles were arriving and leaving from the landing pad in a never-ending procession, carrying away precious cargo and important personnel.  Somewhere out there, Abbott knew, conflict was taking place, soldiers were once again fighting and dying, this time on their home planet, this time for the survival of their race.  Abbott would never know if they would win that battle.

    A soldier came up and whispered information into Abbott's ear confirming what Abbott had feared, then a pilot emerged from behind the soldier and addressed the colonel.  "Sir, are you ready?"

    "Yes," Abbott said, closing his eyes, "I'm ready."