War

         War.

         An ugly word that the human race can't shake.  Trust me, I know.  I grew up under the rule of the Earth Central Command.  Born and raised in the Core.  Thirty seven worlds that had managed to gain citizenship under the steadily more stringent rule of the central government back on Earth.
         There were one hundred and fifty three other worlds under the auspice of that rule, and the mighty ECC Navy sent its fleets of massive ships on regular patrols around its realm, heavy carriers laden with fighters like some pregnant beasts.  The troop ships with their marines, clad in the most advanced Maverick Five armor.  Battleships with more fire power than most people could imagine.
         All for the purpose of crushing man under their heel with the fear of the violence they could unleash if provoked.
         Worse than that were the Peace Keepers.  The forces I used to belong to.  We were the police for the state.  But when my grandfather was in the Peace Keepers they were just putting down a bloody rebellion, and they were trying to make things better for those that survived the colonial insurrection.
         The people in the core worlds and the inner rim couldn't understand why the 'primitive idiots' out in the outer rim would try to destroy the thing that gave them stability and medicine, and all the accoutrements of civilization.  What they never knew was the harsh conditions the outer rim was forced to live in.  Kept in an iron grip by a government that feared their ability if they ever rose up.
         I was starting to learn some of the truth as the rules kept closing in on the people.  The oppression circling tighter on worlds in the inner rim as more and more corrupt politicians got into power and realized that these people had the power to defy them if they ever got a mind to do so.  And that fear made them respond.
         Unfortunately, they responded the wrong way.  Instead of trying to help those people, and getting them to love them for the extra things they could have given them, they withdrew more and more help.  They up-armed their military constantly, even giving the Peace Keepers the feared Maverick armor.  Only Mark Four units mind you, not the mark fives, or the mark six marauders the special forces were using.
         But still, police on the street wearing towering suits of gleaming black power armor with enough speed and power to rip through a concrete wall, or tear a man in half before they even realized what happened.  That was when the people started to fight back.  Little things at first, then gradually bolder strikes.
         I had been following the cell in my area, trying to get a hold of at least one of the bastards that was starting to get the locals into a real tiff about the laws I was forced to uphold.  I turned a blind eye any time I could get away with it, but that was rare enough not to matter.  So, one Friday, after work, I came to the beginning of the end of my career.
         I had been hunting this damned elusive unit for nearly three months, frustrated by how they stayed one step ahead of me.  But Friday was dinner with my family, so I put that behind me for the moment and sat down with my sister, her boyfriend, and our parents.  We had a nice enough evening, joking back and forth about how I was terminally single.  Teasing our folks about getting old.
         I chatted a bit with my sister and father about how the cell was still evading me and how frustrated it was making me.  My sister gave me a hug and said that I was bound to catch a break at some point, and my dad patted me on the shoulder and told me to keep my chin up.  And I went home to my empty flat with my armor storage unit across the hall from my bedroom.
         Stopping in the doorway of that plain white room with its armored walls I sighed.  The gleaming black armor stared back at me with its expressionless faceplate and I felt the depression that I had been suffering from over my lack of ability to collar one of the perps settle back in.  I let my eyes drift to the only thing in the room that wasn't Peace Keeper issue.

         My grandfathers old hand cannon.

         It was a massive thing, firing half inch caseless rounds that were a full inch and a half long.  Each round was so powerful that it could rip through the standard tactical plate in use twenty years before.  It only held seven rounds.  Eight if you put one in the spout.  Not like my mark ten plasma pistol.
         Each of the five magazines I carried for it held twenty five shots.  Cased plasma, each one able to burn a hole three inches wide through that same armor, and the body inside it, before exiting out the back, leaving nothing in its wake but a smoking crater.  Much more advanced, not a bit more civilized.
         With a sigh, I flicked the light off for the last time and turned to bed.  I had no idea how much my life would change in the next twenty four hours.  If I had, I might have just shot my sister in the head and been done with it, but at the time, I was still blissfully clueless.
         Sometime around four in the morning the concussive blast that rocked my building set me bolting out of bed.  I ran to the front windows of my flat and opened the blinds.  In the pervading gloom of the predawn shadows, the orange glow of the fires that had opened the back corner of the marine base six blocks over were starting to light the sky under the plume of smoke that rose above the mess.
         Leaning in, I saw my career crumbling.  Those rebels had never hit so valuable a target, and while I was constantly on the chase, I was always a step behind them.  I knew there would be a review now.  They had ripped into the worst corner of the marine facility.  The bays that held the Maverick Fives, and worse, was so very close to the Maverick Sixes.
         They had managed to find a way to breach the security of the ECC Marine Corps and the fact that I had yet to catch a single one of the bastards meant it was going to be laid squarely in my lap.  I had no idea how squarely, but I knew I was in for it.  I scanned the area for another few minutes before I closed the blinds on the carnage and went to my workstation.

         The next two hours of my life went fast, as I dug through my files.  I searched for any clue there that showed that they would get so bold.  This was about ten times more advanced than anything they had done, and I was becoming confident that there was nothing that they could use to pin the hit on my failure when the knick came.
         The heavy metal rap of armor shod knuckles on my door interrupted my search.  I glanced at the clock.  A quarter past six in the morning.  Early for the end of my career.  Getting up I walked to the door as they rapped on it again.  Glancing at the screen I sighed.  They even sent my unit, Cavanaugh and Marcella.
         I liked Marcella well enough, he was a good kid.  Cavanaugh, well, he was a dick to start, and the fact that he wanted my spot did not bode well for this meeting.  I opened the door as he raised his hand to pound on it again and had to dodge sideways to keep from having him rap on my forehead.
         "You need to come downtown with us," Cavanaugh grated through his helmet mics.  "We have something that might give us the leader of the cell..."
         I froze for a second, my brow furrowing into a frown as I looked up at him.  "They caught one in the attack?" I snapped.  My luck may have changed.
         "Yeah," Marcella said, his voice far too nervous for my liking.
         "And?" I asked.
         "It was your sisters boyf--" he cut off with a grunt as Cavanaugh elbowed him in the gut to shut him up, and rightly so.
         He had just told me what internal affairs was thinking.  And I was the primary suspect in their case.  I was a dead man.  If they hadn't already grabbed my parents and my sister, they would be on their way there now.  We were all about as screwed as we could get, and the only way out alive was going to be a fight.
         "Well," I sighed, letting the tiredness in my voice cover my nerves as my mind went into overdrive.  "You better come in and inventory my gear then and make sure it is all there before you take me in, guys."
         I said a silent prayer of thanks to whoever was listening when Cavanaugh nodded.  "Damn right we do," he snapped stepping over the thresh hold.  I said a second prayer when he pulled his helmet, confident I didn't have my gun on me.  He had scanned me I was sure, and I let my mind race as I contemplated how I was going to manage to take out the both of them while they were in suit and I wasn't.
         That they had their helmets off was a massive boon, but they were still going to be faster than me, and ten times stronger.  "Back here," I gestured to the hall.  "On the left," I added as they strode in, flipping the light on as they passed through the door.  Stepping in after them, the soft gleam of the stainless slide of my grandfather's pistol caught my eye and I knew I had found salvation finally.
         Provided the old gun didn't blow up in my hand, or worse.  I had never fired it and had no idea what to expect, other than the fact that it was supposed to kick like a mule.  Stepping to the left, I placed myself in front of it, my hands held loosely behind my back.  It was simple really as Cavanaugh looked over Marcella's shoulder as he took an inventory of my gear, slipping the gun from the stand and carefully chambering it.
         "So, IA thinks I am the leader of the cell?" I asked.
         "Shut it, traitor," Cavanaugh snarled.  "We don't want to hear any of your rebel bullshit."
         Well, I didn't have a problem shooting him, but I felt a little bad for Marcella.  He really was a good kid, but it couldn't be helped.  Good as he was, he was also loyal.  Raising the gun, and aiming at Cavanaugh's head I smiled easily as I realized that for once I felt free.  I hadn't felt that in years.
         "Well, you screwed up, Cavanaugh," I said softly, watching as he turned to me, his visage a mask of disgust.  At least it was for the first half a second.  Then the upper half of it disappeared in a fine pink mist across half the room as the thundering crash of the shot echoed around the tiny space.
         Spikes of pain drove themselves up my arm as I dragged the gun across the intervening space between Cavanaugh's toppling body and Marcella's spinning figure, his gun already coming up with a speed I had never realized we had.  The thought of why these suits were so terrifying to the public drifted through my mind as my muscles bunched trying to move faster as time seemed to slow.
         I didn't hear the second shot, but the spike of pain told me that I had fired, as did the massive recoil of the gun as Marcella's face disappeared in the detonation of the explosive tipped light armor piercing round that went off against his skull.  His body crashed backwards, the quarter ton of polyceramic armor and molymer fiber making the floor shudder under the impact.
         I glanced around, my ears ringing so loudly I couldn't hear a thing and realized everyone for three blocks had probably heard the shots.  That tied it.  I stripped out of my sweats and donned my under suit with a purposeful speed.  It wouldn't be long before the authorities were all over me like stink on shit, and I knew it.
         Ten minutes later I settled the black helmet onto my head and watched as the HUD scrolled up the back of the obsidian faceplate.  As the system finished booting I called up a private line in the cellular band and called my sister's personal phone.
         "Rebecca," she chirped, her voice cheery and innocent as ever.  To innocent considering that the explosion had rocked half the city, and according to my dead partners had given her boyfriend to the Peace Keepers.
         "Sis...Where is Paul?" I asked softly.
         "He's busy at the moment," she said happily.  "Said he had to take care of some things."
         I paused.  Was it possible she didn't know?  That he had used her like that?  Was she just a pawn in the rebellion that had no idea she had given them information across the pillows with her mate, never realizing that he was going to sacrifice her if he got caught?
         "We have some problems, sis," I said softly, unsure of how much to tell her at that point.  "Where are mom and dad?"
         The long pause told me more than anything she could have said.  The sigh that followed underlined it all too well.  "They're safe, Thad," she said.
         "So you know about Paul?" I asked.
         "Pinched," she returned crisply.  The calm lack of emotion surprised me.  She had always been so responsive emotionally to everything that it gave me pause.
         "You know he probably isn't going to survive?" I asked, knowing all too well the tortures that they reserved for rebels to extract more information.  I didn't want to upset her, but I wanted her to understand.
         "He is already dead, Thaddeus," she said softly.  "As of two hours ago."
         "Are you sure?" I asked, incredulous that she could have that kind of information.  And that the Peace Keepers would have killed him that fast.
         "I handed him the pistol myself, Thaddeus," she grated, her ire starting to rise.  "One round in it.  He was torn to pieces from a grenade, but they would have saved him for interrogation.  I watched him pull the trigger."
         "Well, they identified him," I said softly, trying to sooth her obviously raw nerves best I could.  "They sent Cavanaugh and Marcella for me about fifteen minutes ago, and unless you want me to join Paul, I could use a ride to wherever 'Safe' is."
         "Roger," she sighed.  "Hoped they wouldn't figure out who he was.  Didn't really want to screw you over like that," she added.  "Where are Cavanaugh and Marcella?" she asked.
         "Better bring a couple boys to get their armor," I said.  "As long as you don't mind mopping some blood and brain matter off their collars."
         "How?" she asked, her voice startled.
         "Gramps' old hand cannon," I said.
         "Oh my gawd," she breathed.  "Are you alright?"
         "Wrist hurts like a mother," I admitted, wincing as I flexed it a bit.  Yeah that was going to take time to heal.  "How soon can you be here?" I asked.
         "We will be on your doorstep in fifteen minutes.  Are you loaded and ready?" she asked.
         "I will be," I agreed, reaching down to grab Marcella's limp arm.  After I dragged them both to the front door, I went back and clipped on my side arm and spare magazines, loading the assault rifle and slipping it over my shoulder.  I snapped ten magazines for it into place, and four more for my marksman's rifle, slapping the last into it and charging the weapon.  The rest of the ammo and grenades went into a duffel.
         Looking around the room at the sterile white walls I felt a sense of both sadness that I was leaving it behind, and relief that I was finally a free man, able to spend what days I had left helping my fellow men against a threat greater than any of us could imagine at that point in time.
         A threat we would learn about soon enough, but there was still time for that lesson later.  The roar of an aerodyne brought my head around and I walked out, leaving my lights on and the computer still searching old files.  My old life was gone, it was time to find a new path to walk among the stars.

         The path to freedom.