John Ringo: The Road to Damascus

At length, he speaks. “Give me one good reason why I should believe you.”

I consult my experience databanks to find range and direction, then target the federal troops manning the guns just outside Maze Gap, the troops who fired on the civilians in this canyon. I do not know why Vittori Santorini ordered them to return to their weapons. I know only that they must not carry out even one more of his orders. I fire bombardment rockets. Two point zero-seven seconds later, massive explosions send debris skyward with a flash of light visible even from here, thirty-seven kilometers away. A shocked sound escapes Commodore Oroton, nonverbal and raw. I surmise that the commodore also heard Vittori’s orders to those gunnery crews. The two officers with him also react, one gasping and the other letting go a single word of profanity. The hoods of their bio-containment suits swivel from the broken, dawn-lit horizon, where the first governmental casualties have just died, and turn to stare up at me, once more.

“Okay,” the Commodore says, voice betraying abrupt evidence of stress, “you’ve got my attention.”

But not his trust. That will be far harder to gain.

I open my command hatch. “Commodore Oroton, I formally surrender. I am yours to command. What you do with me is up to you.”

Long seconds tick past while the Commodore gazes at the open hatch. He makes no move toward it.

“Can you tell me what kind of weapon they used on us?” he asks, instead.

I replay the recorded conversation I held with Sar Gremian last night. “That is why I believe the child, Hannaniah, survived,” I add, once the transcript finishes playing. “If he spent the first hour after the attack sheltered in a filtered-air safe room, the virus would have been inert and no longer a lethal agent by the time he emerged to confront me.”

“Makes sense,” one of the officers with the Commodore mutters. “ And there ain’t but one way t’ test it. I ain’t worth enough to count for much, if I die, tryin’ t’ see if he’s tellin’ the truth.”

I know this voice, but I am still stunned when Phil Fabrizio removes the hood from his bio-containment suit and draws a deep, double lungful of morning air.

“Phil!” Sudden pleasure catches me completely by surprise.

My erstwhile mechanic squints up at my prow. “You look like shit, Big Guy. But you got ridda’ them stupid medals, I see. ’Bout fuckin’ time, ain’t it?”

My mechanic’s mannerisms have not changed. But he is not the same illiterate fool who first set foot in my maintenance depot, unaware that he was a heartbeat away from being shot. The look in his face, the light in his eyes have changed, in ways I know that I will never fully understand. He is human. I can never share that with him. But I can be happy that he has found his true calling, at last, in the service of a fine officer.

“Yes, Phil,” I agree softly. “ It is long past time. It is good to be rid of them.”

He stares up at me for a long moment, then turns to the commodore and the other unknown officer. “Well, I ain’t dead yet.”

The other officer strips off the protective hood, revealing a young woman of some eighteen or nineteen years. I do not know her, yet she is disturbingly familiar to me and I cannot determine why. Her expression as she stares up at my warhull reflects hatred, mistrust, and fear. “Personally,” she says, voice full of biting anger, “I think you should order him to self-destruct, sir.”

There is nothing I can say in answer to this.

It is the commodore’s prerogative. Should he order it, I would comply. He does not. Stepping so slowly, glaciers might move faster, he crosses the intervening ground and climbs the access ladder. Reaches the hatch. Then hesitates once again, staring at the tops of the cliffs and the dawn-bright peaks between us and the camp I have just obliterated. Then he glances down at Phil and the young woman standing beside him. “I’m not doing this by myself, people. Shag your butts up here.”

Phil starts climbing.

The young woman gazes at me through narrowed eyes that radiate hostility. But she puts aside her private feelings and begins to climb. The commodore has trained his officers well. I would have expected no less. They reach the hatch and follow the commodore wordlessly into my Command Compartment. They do not speak, even after reaching it. The commodore stands motionless for two point three full minutes, just looking. I would give much to know his thoughts. I close the hatch with a hiss of pneumatics and wait for him to issue a command.

Instead, he begins stripping off the biocontainment gear. Underneath, he wears a bulky uniform and a command-grade battle helmet. He reaches up, then pauses.

“You realize you’re about to see what ninety-nine percent of my own troops have never seen. Including Phil,” he adds, glancing at my mechanic, who is staring at the commodore, eyes wide with surprise.

“I am honored,” I say.

“Huh. Why do I want to believe you?” He strips off the helmet.

Recognition thunders through me.

I know the commodore’s face. There are new lines, driven deep into the skin and the flesh beneath, but I know the face only too well. I know a great and sudden exultation. KAFARI IS ALIVE! Joy floods my personality gestalt center. Races through my psychotronic neural net. Sets my sensors humming with an eerie buzz I have never known. I fire infinite repeaters and bombardment rockets, even my Hellbores, in a wild, involuntary salute. A tribute to the worthiness of my adversary. My friend. Who has defeated me with such brilliance, I stand in awe of her accomplishment.

My surrender is transformed, my sin redeemed by putting the power of my guns into her capable hands. When the thunder of my salute dies away into cracking echoes, I whisper into the stunned silence. “In one hundred twenty point three-seven years, I have never been happier. Command me.”

A strange laugh, part heartbreak, part dark emotion I cannot interpret at all, escapes her. “That was some hell of a greeting, Sonny. I think you scared my daughter out of a year’s growth.”

“Your daughter?”

Kafari reaches out to the young woman with her. “This is Yalena,” she says softly. “My little girl. She… came home to kill you.”

“If you wish to destroy me, Kafari, you have that power.” I flash the Command Destruct Code onto my forward datascreeen. “ You have only to speak.”

Long, frightening seconds tick past. “I think,” she says softly, “ that for now, silence is the best answer.” She moves slowly toward the command chair. “ I really don’t know how to use this. Maybe we should call somebody who does?”

I do not understand her meaning until she places a call. “Black Dog, this is Red Dog. Are you there?”

A voice I know responds. “This is Black Dog. Have you taken off your helmet, Red Dog?” Simon’s voice is puzzled, alarmed.

I realize, then, that Kafari’s battle helmet functioned as more than just communications and command gear. It altered her voice and disguised her gender, allowing her to assume the persona of Commodore Oroton, a brilliant ploy for diverting suspicion away from her true identity. I should not be surprised. This is the same woman who once killed a barn full of heavily armed Deng infantry with a hive of angry bees.

“Yes, I have,” Kafari says. “There’s someone here with me, Simon. I think he’d like to say something to you.” She looks into the video lens at the front of my Command Compartment, leaving the moment open for me to use as I will.