Then they heard the spitting of Kreelan light arms fire and someone screaming, but while the scream was only from a single terror, it had many, many voices.
“Oh, my God,” Wiley said, closing his eyes. “They breached the shelter.”
Reza thought of Mary worrying about him, whether he would be all right by himself until he could get to the safety of the shelter. And now all of them – a thousand or more children and adults – were being massacred. Reza started to shake.
“Boy,” Wiley said quickly, afraid that both he and Reza would lose their will and their wits if he waited but a moment longer, “it’s now or never. You’re going to have to make a run for it on your own.” Reza opened his mouth to protest, but Wiley hushed him with a finger across his lips. “I can’t go with you, son. I’m too old and too slow, and my brain’s going to turn to mush again here pretty soon. I can feel it.”
He took something out of his coat pocket, the one over his heart, the only one on his janitor uniform that had a button on it. It was an envelope, plain except for the Confederation Marine Corps seal at the closure.
“I wrote this the same night I wrote the one for Nicole,” Wiley told him. “I knew you wouldn’t need it for a few years, but when you have a noggin like mine, you do what you can when you can. Here,” he said, pushing it into the boy’s hands. “Read it.”
Reza opened it to find a single sheet of paper inside. But the paper was by no means ordinary. In addition to the embossed Marine Corps emblem that showed through the paper when held up to the light, it carried the symbols of two Confederation Medals of Honor, the Confederation’s highest award for valor in the face of the enemy. During the course of the war, only fifteen men and women had ever won two such honors; the Medal of Honor was almost always given posthumously. Colonel William Hickock had been one of those fifteen, and the only one who still lived. The words that were scrawled on the page were few and to the point:
To Whom It May Concern:
Being of sound mind and body as I write this, I submit that the young man bearing this document, Reza Sarandon Gard, be considered for acceptance into the military academy of his choice upon reaching the Confederation legal age of decision, that being fifteen years from his stated date of birth.
The Confederation Services will find no finer pupil for the military arts and the leadership on which the Confederation depends for its continued survival.
(Signed,)
William T. Hickock
COL, CMC (Ret.)
“Wiley,” he began, “I don’t know what to say…”
“It’s the least I can do,” the old man said quietly. “If it’s what you want, that’ll give you a little muscle to get past some of the stuck-up boneheads screening people for the academies.” He looked around, as if he had suddenly forgotten something “But that’s for another time,” he said as he stuffed the envelope and its precious contents into a pocket in Reza’s shirt. “You’ve got to get out of here, son.” He looked hard at Reza, then pointed to the flechette rifle in the boy’s hands. “Think you can handle that thing?”
“Yes, sir,” Reza replied in a voice that sounded small and alone. “But–”
“No buts, boy,” Wiley said gently, but firmly, leaving no room for argument. “This is it. For real. I’ll try to create a diversion for you.” He nodded toward where the screams from the breached shelter still rose and fell like pennants in a gale. “Besides,” he went on quietly, his voice echoing memories from another life that Wiley the janitor had never known, “I want to die the man I used to be. Not as some senile broom pusher.” His eyes pierced Reza. “You understand that, don’t you?”
Reza nodded, biting back the tears he felt coming, remembering how he and his real father had parted a lifetime ago. It’s happening all over again, he thought wretchedly. “Yes, sir,” he choked.
“Do whatever you can to stay alive, son,” Wiley told him softly. “If anybody can make it out of this, you can.” He embraced Reza tightly.
“I love you,” Reza said, holding on to his adopted father for the last time.
“I love you, too, son,” Wiley said, stroking the boy’s hair, fighting back his own tears.
Reluctantly, Wiley let go. Then he rose in a crouch, holding his artificial leg behind him like a kangaroo’s tail for balance. “Good luck, Marine,” he said.
This was how he wanted it, Reza told himself. He only wished it could be some other way. “You too, colonel,” Reza said, snapping his arm up in a sharp salute.
The old man saluted him in return before making his way to the front door. After pulling the second Kreelan warrior’s body into the lobby and clearing the exit, he squeezed through to disappear into the street beyond.
Feeling as if he were trapped in a holographic nightmare, Reza turned and made his way to the emergency escape at the rear of the library. Peering through the adjacent window, he saw that the area behind the library was clear, at least as far as he could see. The closest wheat fields were about two hundred meters away. Maybe a minute of hard running, he guessed. Only a minute. Plenty of time to die.
Holding the flechette rifle close to his side, he pushed open the door and headed outside, the door’s emergency alarm blaring uselessly behind him.
Wiley crouched near the rock wall, not too far from the first group of soldiers that Reza had seen being wiped out by the attacking Kreelans. He had exchanged the alien weapon for a pulse rifle and a spare magazine from one of the dead soldiers. The pulse rifle was a bit heavier than the flechette guns, but had more firepower in its crimson energy bolts than a flechette could ever hope to boast. Unfortunately, their higher cost made them a low volume commodity on all but the best-equipped worlds.
He snaked forward along the wall, trying to get a glimpse of what was happening at the shelter. The firing had stopped, as had most of the screaming.
“What are you bitches up to?” he wondered aloud as he peered through a hole in the wall toward the admin building.
Kreelan warriors were clustered about the entrance to the vault, standing in two lines that extended from the vault’s entryway where the great door had been blasted from its hinges, to where a vehicle resembling a flatbed trailer hovered in the center of the street. The warriors were passing objects from one to another, moving them from the vault to the carrier.
Bodies, Wiley thought. They’re taking the bodies away.
The lone wail that suddenly pierced the air made his blood run cold. He watched as a child, five or six years old, emerged from the vault and was passed along the chain of warriors like a bucket in a fire brigade to where the other bodies were being stacked on the carrier. There, a Kreelan in a white robe – a type of alien that Wiley had never seen or heard tell about – did something to the child, who suddenly was still.
His eyes surveyed the carrier closely, and he noticed two things: there were no adults, only children, and the children apparently were not dead, just sleeping. Drugged or stunned.
The old man’s mind reeled. There had never been a confirmed report of prisoners being taken in the war against the Empire. Sometimes, for reasons never understood, the Kreelans would leave survivors. But never had they taken prisoners.
Yet, here they were, making off with a few hundred children from this house alone. If they were doing the same at the other houses, they would be leaving with tens of thousands of children.
“I’ve got to get out a message, a warning,” he whispered to himself.