The Last Day of the War - Part 2

"We don’t have much need for the Rites of War, but we remember them." I leaned back on the console and folded my arms as Captain Serle entered the room. He was the tanker who had stood up to defend me on my first night on base. It seemed a very long time ago now and whatever gratitude the armor officer had felt that night seemed to have vanished in a cloud of suspicion.

"Pardon me, Angel, Major Kolete. I was going to recalibrate my datapad with the sensor system, but I can come back later." The captain turned back toward the door with embarrassment plain on his face.

"Let me see it, Captain." I held out my hand for his datapad and he stared at it as if I had spoken a dead language.

"See what?" He looked at Major Kolete and then back at me and if the expression on his face was any indicator he wished he could disappear.

"Your datapad?" I gestured toward the calibration terminal and held my hand out to him again. "I can calibrate it for you so you won’t have to come back again."

"Oh…" The captain fumbled his datapad out from his belt and handed it to me. I set it on the calibration terminal and was not surprised to see it showed an even two percent error. I zeroed out the error and handed it back to him. He stuffed it back in his belt and left with a mumbled thanks and a furious blush.

"I don’t think he trusts me. I swear sometimes he goes out of his way to check on me." I turned to Major Kolete and she laughed at me.

"You have been hanging around that suspicious old Sergeant Major too long Tetyana! He was probably going to ask you to sit with him at lunch." She said when she could speak again. "He is infatuated with you and I think you are the only one on the base who doesn’t know it. I can guarantee after I leave he will be back with two trays of food within ten minutes."

"Oh, you’re imagining things Major." I felt the color rising in my cheeks and looked away to fumble for my tools. When I looked back toward the major, she was already halfway out the door.

"You’ll see, and Tetyana call me Nicia."

The major disappeared out the door and I crawled under the next console to inspect what I was beginning to believe was an artistic interpretation of the system wiring diagram. I had not been working much more than ten minutes when a pair of boots strode into my field of view. I peered up from under the console and saw Captain Serle blushing down at me.

"Major Kolete said you couldn’t get away for lunch and asked me to bring you something. I was going to eat back the maintenance bay and this is on the way."

The major had cheated on her bet, but could not find it in myself to complain.

Thousands of soldiers came running up the broad valley with their officers riding behind them on horses. Over sharp reports of our rifles I heard the Sergeant Major muttering beside me about something being too easy, and as I sent another officer tumbling down from his horse I wondered what he meant. The human tide ebbed closer to our outer perimeter and tripped the outer most mines unleashing a massive wall of flame and dirt that obstructed my view. The Sergeant Major scanned the horizon searching for the end of the nebulous wall and swore when his scan took him to the extreme east.

"Jump Tetyana!" He catapulted himself over the catwalk railing as I slid underneath it. The Sergeant Major had parked a small hover-truck beneath our position on the control tower and had made sure the bed was moderately cushioned. The truck sank toward the ground as we hit it and its antigravity suspensors whined in protest. The Sergeant Major threw himself on top of me as the small truck began speeding away from the control tower. We had not gone far when a barrage of enemy fire broke down the shields and wreathed the tower in flame.