All Is Fair

Chapter 3 - Fallout

Stevo. 15

"Sergeant, may I have a word, please?" The rebel corporal said politely as the force field that maintained their cell reactivated behind him.

Stevo glanced around the rest of the group. The shock of their recent revelations had abated somewhat, but that had only left the numbing sense of absolute betrayal gnawing quietly at them. Each of them hadn't just lost friends; they had lost people as close as brothers and sisters, thousands of them. Almost the entire division. It was nigh on impossible for any of them to think of anything else. Stevo nodded, pulled himself to his feet, and crossed the room to the guard.

"What can I do for you, Corporal?"

The man sighed, reaching up and unsnapping the clasps of his helmet before lifting it off his head. He had light, sandy-colored hair, a prominent, aquiline nose, a strong chin, and piercing grey eyes. He also wore an expression that made Stevo think that he was about to deliver news that would result in a punch that would rearrange said features.

"I'm sorry to say that the medical team hasn't updated the records yet; I don't have any more news about any of the names you gave me," he started. Stevo frowned. It wasn't great news, and he had hoped for something much better, but it was nowhere near bad enough news to explain his expression.

"I suspect there is going to be a 'but.'"

The Corporal grimaced. "I have been ordered..." he pinched his nose, took a deep breath, and looked up into Stevo's eyes. "There are survivors on the beach. Marines. They're refusing to surrender and are firing on anyone who gets near their hold-out position. They're making it impossible for us to recover the dead and wounded. We don't want any more casualties, but command is ordering us to hit them with artillery if we can't get them to stand down."

Stevo blinked at him. "You're asking me to help you convince them to surrender..." It wasn't a question.

The Corporal just nodded.

"You don't know Marines very well, do you, Son?"

"I know enough to understand that I am asking you to betray every oath and bond of brotherhood that you hold dear."

"You want me to ask fellow Marines to put down their weapons and surrender. I'd have more luck convincing them to execute their own mothers."

The guard sighed. "This room is monitored, obviously." He looked around, his eyes falling on the little boxes at the top of each of the room's corners. "Everything you and your people have been discussing has been monitored. We both know that you have worked out what really happened out there. We're not your enemies," he shook his head, his eyes imploringly holding Stevo's. "...and I don't want any more good men to die needlessly. I'm asking you to help me stop that from happening."

"Fuck," Stevo turned to glance back at the rest of the group. Despite the Corporal speaking quietly, it was a small room, and there were no other sounds to drown out the conversation. The other captives had heard everything. Each of them looked as conflicted about the request as he did, but it was Mac who stood first.

"Ya gotta do it, Sarge. Otherwise, they're just gonna die for those treacherous bastards. The imperium doesn't deserve their sacrifice, and it doesn't deserve your sense of honor."

Trust a fucking Scot to cut to the heart of the matter.

"We are Marines. We don't fight for a cause," Jennings added softly, standing up beside Mac. "We fight for the man beside us. We honor

them,

not the assholes who betrayed us."

Stevo's eye finally moved to Wooly. If anyone were going to provide a counter-argument, it would be him. The man lifted his gaze to meet Stevo's, and his expression turned to one of steely determination. "Too many have died already," he nodded. "I won't lose another brother for them. If you won't do it, I will."

"I'm going to need my armor," Stevo finally said as he turned back to the rebel corporal.

The man huffed out a sigh of relief and nodded. "That won't be a problem. If you could follow me, Sir."

"Don't call me 'Sir,' Corporal. I work for a living."

There was a tug of a smile pulling at the rebel's lips as the security field deactivated, and he gestured for Stevo to head out into the corridor. The sergeant cast a look back at Mac and the others before heading out.

"How many are there?" He asked after a few minutes of following the corporal's lead.

"I'm not sure. They're in heavy cover, so getting an accurate count has been difficult, but at least a dozen."

"Fuck, twelve pissed-off, and cornered Marines. No wonder you were having a hard time. Have you lost anyone?"

The corporal's mouth opened, but he frowned and closed it again. "There are things I'm not allowed to disclose," he started. "I think the Captain wanted to debrief you properly. If you don't mind, si... Sergeant, that should be a question for her."

"Hmmm. Guess we're sticking with 'cryptic' as today's theme then."

The rebel flashed an apologetic smile but said nothing.

After a few more turns and another few minutes of walking, Stevo was led past two armed guards and into what appeared to be a storeroom. Stevo had thought that their equipment was vastly superior to anything the rebels possessed - that had been based on the woefully inept training and laughable inferior armor used by the rebels on the beach. So he had assumed that their vastly more advanced equipment would have been treated as closely guarded research pieces. He had to admit that the stealth troops who had captured him had been using infiltrator gear, something he had only seen used by Imperium special forces. That had thrown something of a spanner into his theory, but stepping into the room to find dozens of complete sets of Marine armor casually stacked on shelves against each wall was still the last thing he expected.

"Over there," the corporal pointed to a familiar set on a shelf against the far wall. Stevo nodded and stepped into the room and up to it. Marine armor was personalized, not only to the body shape of the man wearing it but to his bio-electric field as well. It meant that, if captured, it would be almost impossible for it to be used by an enemy, but it also meant that Stevo couldn't just pick up any piece of armor; it had to be his own.

The armor was a fully encased body suit, meaning it couldn't just be clipped on but had to be stepped into, given time for the scanners to confirm that Stevo was the assigned user, and then it would seal him in, the rear of the suit folding closed around behind him. Stevo waited a few seconds for all this to happen, listening to the familiar whirs and clicks that pulled the various segments together and sealed them in place. It was a sound he had heard countless times before, the most recent being with the rest of his rifle squad on the carrier before the assault on the beach. He smiled to himself as he remembered it: Dusky teasingly flirting with Ryan, and Ryan doing his best to sound cool as he flirted back; she knew he didn't have a chance,

he

knew he didn't have a chance, the whole squad knew he didn't have a chance, but she would tease him mercilessly anyway. Back when he first joined the squad, he used to blush and get flustered at the relentless innuendos, but he had eventually started playing along and pushing the boundaries just as much as she did. Stevo dreaded to think what would have happened if one of the higher officers had walked in during the middle of that. Someone would have faced a disciplinary board... and it would have been worth it.

The day, a year or so ago, when Big G joined them, was one of the funniest memories Stevo had of his time with Bravo Squad. He and Mac had sat on one of the benches, listening to the increasingly racy and sexually laced banter between the two but watching Big G listen with rapidly widening eyes and an ever-falling jaw. He had then turned to Angel, who looked him in his eyes and, without a shred of the humor that the rest of the squad was displaying, told him that his balls were only liable to stay attached to the rest of him if he kept his own attempts at flirting to himself. She managed to keep that straight face, and not burst out laughing right up to the point when Big G turned as pale as a man of his color was capable of getting. Rev mockingly shook his head, said, "Y'all are going to hell," and laughed along. Mac had laughed so hard that he almost filled his armor's built-in waste system.

It was good to smile. It was nice to remember them, at least as they had been, and not for their last moments, and Stevo let the warmth and the fondness of the memory fill him as the armor sealed around him. It had been less than twenty-four hours since they had hit the beach, less again since his men - his friends - had been lost, and he knew that the grieving process hadn't even started properly yet, so a chance to smile at a memory that would soon be filled with the utter agony of loss was one he was happy to indulge in for a few moments.

Unfortunately, the moment came to an end with the hissing in his ears that told him the atmospheric seals had engaged, and the armor was good to go.

He turned back to the Corporal. "So, are you allowed to tell me your name?"

The rebel soldier frowned. "Actually, I'm not sure. I haven't been specifically ordered not to. It's Paul, Paul Matthews."

"Alright, then, Matthews. Lead the way."

With a nod, the younger man turned on his heel and led the Marine sergeant through the maze of corridors and to a large, reinforced door. It was a different one than the one they had entered the previous night - or the early hours of that morning, to be more accurate - not that Stevo could tell from the landscape on the other side of it, it had been shrouded in total darkness when he and Mac had arrived, but he certainly hadn't taken that route to the cell to get there.

The morning was in full swing, the sun well on its way toward its Zenith in the sky as Stevo was led out of the bunker and onto a small rise that looked out over the beach. It was a scene of total devastation. From this vantage point, it was possible, with little more than a lazy turn of his head, to take in the full dreadful, apocalyptic scene before him.

The beach was a blackened and burning patchwork of smashed trenches and smoldering craters. It was clear that this had once been a place of astonishing natural beauty, with its warm climate, its calm turquoise waters, and its gentle, refreshing breeze - the one that Stevo couldn't feel at all in his armor, but he could tell by the movement of the grass around his feet that it was there. Now, though, it looked like a sadistic maniac had spent hours torturing the face of the beach with a poorly wielded-blade. The remaining trenches scarred the landscape; burning tanks were still smoking closer to the waterline, and the odd wreckage of crashed aircraft littered the beach and rocked lazily in the shallows.

It took a few moments, but he finally found the spot on the enormous beach where he had been captured, the smoking remains of Almark's fighter giving it away, and the deceptively small column fort they had spent the night in a little way away from that. The beach, in its entirety, was enormous. More than twelve miles from end to end and facing the water, it was clear that they had come out of the base on the Western flank, the same flank he had attacked the day before. In his mind, the flight from the forward trenches that had ended in that column fort had taken them much further toward the center than it actually had. Between the crisscrossing trenches and the less-than-direct route they had taken through them, they had barely traveled a mile toward the center of the beach. The Eastern part of the beach, the direction he had been headed, stretched out into the hazy distance. Looking at it now, there was no way Mac, Angel, and he would ever have made it that far. Perhaps Emylee crashing, forcing them to hunker down and hold their ground, had saved their lives.

Matthews stayed respectfully quiet while Stevo took it in. "Were you out here yesterday?"

The corporal shook his head. "No, Sir, I was..." he frowned again, "Sorry, that is probably another one of those things the Captain will want to discuss with you." He turned to catch the disapproving look on Stevo's face. "Sorry... Sergeant," he corrected himself.

Stevo nodded. It was a fairly innocuous question, but Matthews was being careful; he couldn't be blamed for that. Stevo wanted information; knowledge was power in almost any part of life, even more so now, but it was clear he wasn't going to get it, and he didn't want to alienate his only point of contact by pushing it. "So, where are we headed?"

"Over there," Matthews pointed. Stevo followed his arm and gazed out over to the far right of the beach, the extreme western flank, the very ground Stevo had stormed during the battle. The surviving marines, by the looks of it, had taken refuge in one of the few surviving bunkers. It was a great defensive position, completely covered on most sides, except for some very easily defended doors, which led out into the equally defensible trenches and the main gun slit on the front. It was pretty big, but Stevo doubted it was large enough to hold a dozen Marines, not comfortably, anyway. If he were down there, he would have men in the trenches, too, protecting the flanks and acting as spotters for anyone approaching the blind angles of the bunker. A satchel charge against the back wall of the bunker's dome would be enough to bring the whole thing down on top of them, so men in the trenches would be needed to watch those approaches, and then more men would be needed to defend the spotters.

It was a good position; it would have been useless to him, though. He hadn't had the numbers to defend it properly, but a dozen cornered Marines? Yeah, that would be a very tough nut to crack.

"Alright, lead the way, I guess," he said, then let Matthews walk ahead of him, making a beeline for the closest entrance into the trench network. As the crow flew, it was probably about half a mile from the ridge to the bunker the Marines had occupied, but traveling the same distance through the warren-like trench network made that short journey take almost an hour, and by the time they got there, Stevo was completely disorientated. Eventually, though, the stooped Matthews stopped and turned back to face Stevo.

"This is the closest we can get without going all the way around to the other side," he said with a voice barely above a whisper. "They're about thirty meters that way," he nodded his head toward the sea. "I thought you'd appreciate being able to approach them in plain sight. Sneaking up on them seemed... unwise."

Stevo chuckled and nodded. "We'll make a Marine out of you yet, Corporal." He ignored the blinking expression on the rebel's face and craned his head to listen for any sort of movement or conversation from the Marine emplacement. "Do you have a white flag... and a stick?"

"Errr... let me go check."

Of all the things that had happened since he had been captured, Matthews turning around and running off, leaving Stevo - alone - thirty meters away from friendly forces, completely unguarded, was perhaps one of the strangest. There was literally nothing stopping him from rejoining the Marines and carrying on the fight; there was nothing stopping him from turning around and making a break for freedom - although there was admittedly nowhere for him to go. It was either an enormous lapse in judgment from the rebel corporal or a massive sign of trust... and Stevo couldn't work out which would be worse.

After a few minutes, Matthews returned and handed him a hastily constructed white flag, apparently not surprised in the slightest that Stevo was where he left him.

He decided against raising the issue and hoped it was the latter of the two options. "THIS IS MARINE SERGEANT STEVE TAYLOR, BRAVO SQUAD, ABLE COMPANY, 381st DIVISION. I AM COMING OUT, I AM ALONE... HOLD YOUR FIRE!" He called out, but no answer was forthcoming, so he looked back to Matthews, shrugged, and said, "Here goes nothing," before holding the flag up high, standing himself up straight, and hoisting his body up onto the beach.

The business ends of three battle rifles were the first things he saw. Fortunately, they weren't the last.

Behind each of the rifles were three suspicious-looking Marines. "Hold it. That's far enough," one of them said as he reached the halfway point between the two trenches. Stevo stopped walking. "Bravo Squad, you said? With Able company?"

"That's right, yes."

"What was the name of your comms operator?"

"Big G," Stevo answered without hesitation. "He was killed yesterday, right over there." He nodded off toward the waterline and the marble column they had used for cover.

"Wrong!" the Marine raised his rifle.

"No, it's not." The sergeant asserted firmly.

"Well, we picked up Bravo Squad's radio operator yesterday, and his name isn't Big T."

"G, asshole, Big G... wait... you picked him up yesterday?... Ryan?"

"Sarge, is that you?" a hauntingly familiar voice echoed from inside the bunker.

The emotion hit him like a truck, and Stevo felt his knees threaten to give out from under him. "Ryan?"

"Fuck, help me up, dammit. No, I don't care! I'll be able to tell you if he's legit with one god damned look!" the voice wafted over the sand. Suddenly, two heads ducked out of the bunker, one of them clearly helping to support the weight of the other. The face was instantly recognizable, as was the massive grin on the wayward Marine's face. "Hey, Sarge, the fuck have you been?"

The three Marines holding the rifles were barged out of the way, one of them sent sprawling to the ground as Stevo ran to the trench, jumped in, and wrapped his arms around his presumed-dead squad mate. It could only have lasted a few seconds, but they were amongst the most cathartic moments Stevo had ever experienced. He pulled back, holding Ryan's arms, looking him over to check that he was not only real but alright... missing leg notwithstanding.

"You're here, you're alive."

Ryan smiled and nodded. "Yeah, it got pretty hairy when that arty landed, but it all missed me. Some of these guys dragged my mangled ass with them when they were getting the hell out of dodge. What happened to you?"

Stevo's face fell. Ryan spotted it immediately. "Who?"

"Only Mac got out with me..." Stevo sighed and shook his head while watching the smile on Ryan's face crumble. "Angel was wounded; I don't know if she's gonna make it. Rev and Dusky... they're gone."

"Fuck," Ryan murmured as he dropped to the floor of the trench, holding his head in his hands. "I knew... when I saw the bombardment... I knew there wasn't much of a chance. But..."

"Yeah, I know." Stevo slumped onto the ground next to him, momentarily ignoring the surrounding group of stooped Marines.

The two of them sat in silence for a few minutes before one of the others spoke. "How did you get out? All our comms are still dead."

Stevo looked up at him and the hopeful faces of the other Marines, too. Looking around, it only took a few moments to realize that there were more than a dozen men here, closer to twenty by a quick count. He sighed deeply. "I didn't."

It took a few seconds. "You're with the rebels?!?" More than one rifle was raised in his direction. Even Ryan was looking at him incredulously. "After what they did to us?!?"

"Apparently so," he murmured. "We need to talk; there are things you need to know."

********

Bethany. 2

Modern medicine was a marvelous thing, especially when it came to the wonders of contraception. Young Tony had given her what she needed; he had been inexperienced, he had been clumsy, and he would have struggled to find her clit with a map and a tour guide, but what he lacked in know-how, he more than made up for in youthful enthusiasm, willingness to learn and stamina. Holy shit, so much fucking stamina. Four loads he had fucked into her...

Four!...

She hadn't had a guy last more than twice since she was a teenager, and every single one of those loads had been drained into her more than willing core. There was something about that feeling that just did things for her, and not having to worry about STDs or unwanted mini-Bethanys meant she could indulge whenever the opportunity arose. She could still feel that fullness now, his deposits still inside her. The dull throbbing ache in her nethers, the satisfying burn in her muscles after they had been pushed into positions she had only ever imagined, and the warm glow that only came with a good, satisfying fuck. Bethany had been with guys who knew what they were doing; she'd had some good sex in her time - more than her fair share of disappointments, but there were a few highlights in there, too - but the patience of showing the young border guard what to do and where the important spots were had more than paid off.