Supplanted

The celebrations were mixtures of joy and regret. No party was complete without a toast to the victory, a toast to the new republic, a toast to all those who had died heroically and needlessly to defend it, and a toast to what we no longer were able to call our home world.

I retired to my farm. Most of the refugees that had fled to Wilson’s World had left a month or so after our return to return to their abandoned worlds and rebuild their lives; and to fortify them against a possible Earth invasion. The fleet dispersed to protect them. It has been six months since the end of the war, and, thankfully, no aggressive action has been taken against us by our former kinsmen.

My old units are on constant alert. I tendered my resignation to Eric in person two weeks after we came home, but I still keep tabs on the Wild Men and the Rough Riders. I have also declined numerous invitations to rejoin them on patrols and other maneuvers, even though patrolling is more uneventful than ever, and the maneuvers that they and the other members of the new order participate in are more posing and posturing on the borders with Earth held territories than actual exercises in preparedness.

Ron Gamble visits me regularly. He also hung up his spurs (his saying, whatever that means). He now is part owner of one of the red light district’s finest rest and recuperation parlors. His invitations to rejoin him I seldom turn down.

I haven’t heard from Celia at all since we last saw each other at that odd meeting in the General’s ready room; or breakfast room; take your pick. It’s a pity, since the story of what happened between her, her husband’s family and Earth gov. concerning her son must be interesting, but she hasn’t made any further attempts to contact me, and I haven’t bothered to seek her out either. From what I heard through the rumor mill, she married Captain Bailey and settled back down on New Eden with her son and their inheritance, which she somehow managed to bring with her from Earth to our new side. I still sometimes wonder about what really happened; then I find something better to do.

Colonel Tucker took over the command of the Wilson’s Rough Riders, and three other Rough Rider units that were formed in the Beta and Delta sectors. He and Captain Stovall became fast friends. They both keep in touch with me, more for social interaction than to ask my military advice. I don’t think that they particularly like my current brand of military advice, since it has become quite jaded and anti-military.

The Freedom Fighters are still stationed on Wilson’s World. General Josten, who promoted himself to Field Marshal and declared himself supreme commander of the colonial defense forces, routinely sends me intelligence reports and asks for my opinion. I usually send them back unread. I keep telling him that I no longer have the stomach for warfare or tactical tripe. He says he understands, but he hopes that I’ll reconsider. He also promoted me to Major General as an incentive. I can’t tell you how indifferent that makes me feel; but the retirement pay is more than adequate.

Eric also promoted Constance Madrid to Captain and took her on as his aide-de-camp. She wrote to me some time back saying how much she missed me, and how much she loves her new job, and how well she and Eric are getting along, and . . . I think they got married in June, but I didn’t get a wedding invitation. So, maybe they’re just good friends with benefits and aren’t actually married. I wrote her back that I miss her too, just to make her feel better about my being alone here without her. I do miss her sometimes.

Mysteriously, the enemy that we captured during our mission to the Epsilon sector completely disappeared from history. Even our many costly battles with the aliens have been rewritten to read as if we had been fighting Earth and other humans all along. No one ever mentions aliens, and those that do are laughed at, scorned, and humiliated.

I’ve stopped telling the story of my personal encounter. The younger inductees don’t believe me, and my old friends quickly change the subject. I hear that the new schools are teaching the history of the war without any mention of our alien enemy. I sometimes wonder how that can be possible; the complete ignorance of truth like that; how history is written by the victors, and that truth, their truth, is perspective; then I go outside and feed my giant chickens. At least I’m sure that they exist. I sometimes doubt everything else.

Rollo likes that I’m home all the time. I’ve taken over the farm just to the south of my property; the previous owners felt that they could do better on a new colony, although I don’t know which one they chose to relocate to. My new acreage is devoted to the raising of giant chickens: lots of native berries, acres of chicken feed and giant chickens roaming about. My flock has grown to over one hundred head.

Kaletown has been completely rebuilt. The spaceport is the envy of the colonial worlds. The casino district expanded to twice its original size, and the increases in food exports that were needed to keep our re-colonization going have yet to decrease, or even level off. Every aspect of production has doubled. The new colonial alliance owes its life’s blood to Wilson’s World and Kaletown in particular. The only drawback that I can see is that every idiot who thinks he can make his fortune in the big city comes here to this world whether he (or she) knows enough to tie their own shoelaces or not.

Regardless, every citizen on this planet is put to work; either in the service industry, production, or in the military. We’ve also built the first spaceship dry dock in the colonies. We build an average of one carrier, bomber and battleship per month, along with two or three cruisers and hundreds of fighters. I’m not quite sure how I feel about that.

I see 7170 on occasion. She’s stopped talking to me about marriage. She must have been afraid that she would die alone that one time she had spoken about it before the counterattack. I can understand that. I sometimes have that fear myself. One day I’ll probably find that she also has run away with some young prospect and left another opening at Emma’s. It’s only natural; the only constant in the universe is change.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to have someone around all the time. But, then, I have Rollo for company, and the brothels for tension release. I also worry about bringing another human being out to the farm; it’s not a life for everyone. And I don’t want to even start to think about kids; not in the state that our society is in today. I have my chickens for company and my farming bots for help. What more could I want?

I’m not sure how the cold war with Earth is going. News from the front is seldom complete, and often contradictory. For all I know, we may well be at war again; but that would most likely make the front page of the vid-news at least. Dad would have a tough time deciphering these new news briefs. I doubt that many of them even hint at facts, veiled or otherwise.

We have resettled all of the known worlds in the Beta and Delta sectors to at least some degree. News from the outer reaches of the colonies is always full of hope. There is even talk about expanding into a system farther to the south of us. Since Earth is no longer the center of our universe, we feel no need to clear with them the viability of expanding light years away from them.

My father once said, “We would be remiss if we did not remember our heroes for the great things that they have done for the sake of our freedom.” That said, I would be remiss if I did not remember the hero who had the most to do with our victory over our enemy.

First Lieutenant Lemonjello LaTourno gave his life for our cause. It was he who led a small, highly trained infiltration unit “behind enemy lines”, so to speak, just before we embarked on our final offensive. He and his squad were the ones who sabotaged Earth’s ability to interfere with our attack. He was personally responsible for the jamming of their communications with the enemy world, as well as disabling more than half of the Earth carriers that confronted us, or that would have confronted us; while they were still in dry-dock awaiting our possible return. That alone was the reason why we were able to traverse Alpha sector space without being attacked by Earth Defense forces at the end of the war. He was captured, convicted of treason and executed as we were mopping up on the enemy home world. One side’s hero is another side’s war criminal.

Regardless of my personal opinion of the LT, based on my personal experiences of his company, his convictions (for which I may have been mistaken) and his behavior towards me and my friends, it remains that soldiers like him are the main reason why we have our freedom . . . and also why we must remain vigilant against those who would take our freedom from us.

Me, I have traps to bait and chickens to feed.

1 Personal note: It must be nice to “get away from it all” in the middle of an all out war. I understand the need for it, but just can’t bring myself to understand the extents that people go to for the sake of a vacation from the unpleasantness.

2 That’s two million humans down from four billion

3 It’s stranger still that I recognized the subtleties of his many different alarms and crowing. Maybe I am becoming something of an animal psychologist; or at least a chicken language interpreter.

4 I would learn much later that few if any of the colonial survivors of this war had ever been to or seen our home planet.

5 I later learned that we had been jamming all communications between the Alpha and Epsilon sectors since before our counterattack was initiated. It seems that our General had even more foresight than he had surprise allies.

6 I was later to learn that they were the First Battalion from the newly formed Army of Wilson’s World.

7 I’m not sure that any of the aliens could be counted as civilians – they were, after all, created to be a fighting force.

8 The tactical data was provided in part by the scanning equipment aboard our carriers in orbit, and from the enemy’s own satellite system that was, of course, compatible with our own technology.