John Ringo: Manxome Foe

For the loved ones who wait at vigil with hope that their beloveds will return safely.

And especially to those whose beloveds have given the ultimate sacrifice.

As always:

For Captain Tamara Long, USAF

Born: 12 May 1979

Died: 23 March 2003, Afghanistan

You fly with the angels now.

“I’d only do this for Mom, you know.”

Sergeant Eric Bergstresser adjusted the high collar of the Marine dress blues and shrugged his shoulders, again, trying to get the uniform to feel right. But since he spent most of his time in digi-cam or jeans, it never quite did.

“You’ve skipped out of it the last two visits, bro,” Joshua Bergstresser said, shrugging. Josh, just turned sixteen and decidedly civilian given the earring he was sporting, was wearing Dockers and a polo shirt, as dressed up as he was going to get for church. “Besides, you look good. You’re going to attract the ladies like flypaper. Maybe I should get a set of those.”

Eric winced and then shrugged.

“Don’t do it unless you’re sure,” Eric said, frowning. “As long as you’re not in my outfit, Mom probably won’t get two telegrams.”

“Not a good way to talk, bro,” Josh said. “You’ll be fine. Tell me you’ll be fine.”

“Ain’t gonna lie, bro ,” Eric replied. “Not something I can talk about. But I will tell you that on my last mission, we went out with forty-one Marines and landed with five.”

“Are you serious?” Josh asked angrily. “That never made the news!”

“Yes, it did,” Eric said, one cheek twitching up in an ironic smile. “Thirty-six Marines killed in helicopter crash. News at Six.”

“That was out west somewhere,” Josh replied, furrowing his brow thoughtfully. “That was your unit? Eric, crashes, well…”

“There wasn’t a crash.” Eric chuckled grimly. “They all died in combat. But a helicopter crash was a convenient cover. Among other things, it explained why most of them had closed casket funerals. Hell, there weren’t even bodies in most of the caskets, just sandbags. We didn’t lose them all at once and quite a few weren’t recoverable.”

“And that was your unit?” Josh asked.

“Yep.”

“And you’re going back?”

“Yep.”

“That’s insane.”

“Yep.”

“Eric,” Josh said desperately. “You cannot go do… whatever it is you do, again. Forget what I said about the uniform. De-volunteer or something. Hell, I’ll hide you under my bed. With casualties like that…”

“Not much chance of believing I’ll survive, right?” Eric asked, finally turning away from the mirror.

“YES!”

“Believe it or not, on the last cruise I started to get into Goth and heavy metal,” Eric said, talking around the point.

“And I was happy, happy, happy,” Josh replied. “Since I no longer had to listen to Hank Williams, Jr. What’s it got to do with the statistical certainty you’re going to die?”

“I still listen to Hank,” Eric said. “But one of the songs I got into was called ‘Winterborn.’ You’ve never heard of Crüxshadows, have you?”

“Bit indy for me, man,” Josh said. “What’s wrong with Metallica?”

“Besides that they haven’t had an album out in ten years?” Eric replied. “But this song, it’s about the Trojans. There’s a line in the chorus: In the fury of this darkest hour, I will be your light. You’ve asked me for my sacrifice, and I am Winterborn. I’m good at what I do, Josh. Very good.”

“I didn’t figure you got the Navy Cross for being incompetent,” Josh said quietly. “But there’s these things called odds.”

“And if I didn’t do it, somebody else would have to,” Eric continued as if he hadn’t heard his brother. “From experience, probably somebody who wasn’t as good, who has less of a chance of coming back. You want me to put them on the chopping block, bro?”

“Hell, yes!” Josh said, his jaw working. “ They’re not my brother!”

“They’re somebody’s brother,” the sergeant said, picking up his cover. “They were brothers and sons. Some lady just like Mom carried them in her womb and nursed them and loved them. And most of them we couldn’t even bring home. There wasn’t anything to bring. I’ve got a better chance than any replacement.” He tucked his cover under his arm and curtly nodded at his reflection. “So, this is my sacrifice. As my first sergeant once said, if I was worried about where I was going to die, I never should have joined the Marines in the first place.”

Commander William Weaver, Ph.D., topped out on the climb and stood up on the pedals, clutching the saddle between his thighs as he coasted downwards to catch his breath. The roots on the trail were still slick from the morning dew that had yet to be burned off by the mid-morning Alabama sun. The canopy of oak trees and the dense green foliage around the trail would prevent that for several more hours. The rear wheel spinning and slipping on the roots had made the climbs more difficult than Bill was hoping and he was getting totally worked.

Leaning his center of gravity behind the saddle as the screaming downhill rushed up at him, he managed to keep the bike in control just long enough to hop over a small oak that had been dropped across the trail to prevent it from washing out. Bill looked at his heart rate monitor on the center of the handlebars — 185. He was working way too hard for this part of the trail. The ride was fun and had let him take his mind off of, well, off of a lot of things, but his heart just wasn’t really in it. The climb on the other side had severely kicked his ass. He should be able to get his heart rate back down to at least the 160s, but it was dropping slower than he’d expected and his heart pounded like a bass drum in his throat. He felt so out of shape. And the ride back up the mountain to the parking lot was going to be hell.

Eight years ago he would have kicked this ride’s butt and been up for another lap or two, but eight years ago was… eight years ago.

Eight years ago was when he’d put his ass on the line to save the world. Eight years ago was before there was any concept of the Vorpal Blade . Eight years ago was… eight years ago when the world was a relatively simple place and a little slope like that last one wouldn’t have bothered him one bit.

Eight years ago he’d been working for a defense contractor, fixing problems for the military and other government agencies with acronyms, mostly ending in A. DIA, CIA, NSA. Then an explosion blew out the University of Central Florida physics lab. Not to mention the rest of the university. Two hundred fifty-one times ten to the twelfth power joules would do that. Call it sixty kilotons and be done.

Subsequent to the blast that flattened UCF and a goodly space around it he’d been blasted into other dimensions, died he was pretty sure, resurrected he was absolutely sure and generally had a hell of a time running around saving the planet. The blast had opened up gates to other worlds, some of them inhabited by hostiles with seriously negative intent. Called the Dreen, they consumed organic matter to create more copies of themselves. They had conquered multiple worlds and Earth was next on the list. Weaver, with the help of a SEAL master chief and sundry others had managed to close the gates the Dreen used. But the anomaly where UCF physics department used to be kept pumping out more gates.

In time Weaver, among others, had figured out how to create gates on Earth, shutting down the gate forming bosons that were the culprits. Instantaneous teleportation from point to point was now a reality, with more and more gates being opened every day. The now defunct airlines had been less than thrilled. After almost ten years it was getting to the point that auto makers were less than thrilled.