The Fields of Juniper

Routine. That was the word: routine. This was a routine mission. Marshal Dulle Dedmun was tired of routine. Save for the day he passed the Golden Trial and was accepted into the ranks of the Marshals, the past fifty years of his life had been routine; training, studying, drilling, and all of the other routine nonsense. His family had been a routine one. His mother and father worked for a planet side food distributor. The Marshal struggled to separate himself from this routine life only to be pushed into a routine patrol leading a squad of the Auxiliary’s dregs.

Marshal Dulle stood there at the edge of the wheat field, the scene of carnage at his back. Tucked under his left arm was his glossy gray and black helmet with its black tinted face shield. His right hand rested on the hilt of his sheathed sword, and his rifle rested on a nearby fallen tree. The rays of the setting sun shone on his face, and a breeze caught his blonde locks of hair.

“We should head back to the ship and report,” Senior Red said, daylight fading. The many bodies of the slain, an entire colonial settlement, were slowly swallowed by the creeping tide of night. Marshal Dulle had not noticed the Senior Auxiliary, a soldier of some three-hundred odd years, walk up behind him.

“Why? What’s the rush, Senior?” Dulle chuckled. “Do the dead frighten you so?” the marshal baited. He turned only enough to see the Auxiliary. The marshal’s shadow had grown to over 3 meters now, nearly a full meter taller than the marshal himself.

The soldier did not bite. Senior Auxiliary Tunic Red had seen sprouts mightier than this one–this one having just reached his first century–come and go. “Marshal, this is a routine observe and report mission,” a hint of annoyance in her voice. “But all we have is a field of rotten wheat and dead colonials. No one to observe. No raiders in sight. Might as well report,” Red said, taking off her dark matte green helmet to hock a glob of mucus, her rifle slung around her back.Dulle grimaced; he would never take up smoking. He would hate to see what smoking did to regular people.

Red hacked and coughed and spat globs of mucus the entire journey from the forward-operating, deep space outpost, The Long Hand, all the way to this agri-world, Juniper. Dulle hated everything about the Senior Auxiliary. He hated her shabby appearance only disguised by her armor. The dingy gray hair on her head, and smell ofbody odor mixed with tobacco smoke. He hated the way her lips wrinkled from her centuries of smoking when she talked or spat. He hated her beady little eyes. He hated that she was an Auxiliary, meaning she failed to pass the Golden Trial, and that she was a disgrace to their warband, The Greyhounds. He hated that she drank and ate her body weight daily and had zero dignity befitting an auxiliary soldier of a Marshal warband. The leftover powers of the Wyrdtree still in her body kept her from consuming herself to death. He hated that he had been assigned as the Marshal of this patrol, because she had been the Senior Auxiliary for this patrol for nearly two-hundred years and had little in the way of accomplishments. He hated her, and she knew it because she hated him too.

“What about this seems like raiders to you, Senior?” Dulle asked.

“The dead people, Marshal,” she replied, motioning to the bloodied field clearly accustomed to the scene–a song and dance she had played a part in too many times.

“I can see that. But if it were raiders, why has nothing in the settlement been taken? Why do none of the bodies have bullet holes?” Dulle pressed. The bodies were all mangled and misshaped by whatever violence had occurred, but there were in fact no bullet holes.

“I know, Marshal, that’s what we told you,” she hocked another loogie. “I ain’t no Investigator, Marshal. I observe and report. And if need be, shoot,” she put her helmet back on–for which Dulle was grateful– with a small hiss as the helmet sealed itself back to the rest of her armor.

“An Investigator would not be here for at least three sun cycles, and by that time whatever killed these people would be gone,” he said, shaking his golden hair back so he could don his own helmet. “We need to find a lead, and act on it,” he said, his voice now coming through the internal helmet comms.

“Yes, Marshal,” Red replied, rolling her eyes, grateful this sprout could not see through the tan-green tinted polymer of her helmet’s face shield. Red watched him turn to the other five Auxiliaries coming toward them from across the gory field. She huffed a chuckle when she saw him try to hide a heave. Dulle shot her a look. She made no move, pretending she had done nothing.

“Get in standard formation, I’ll watch from above. We’ll move east, away from the settlement,” Marshal Dulle commanded. Night had fallen completely.

“Yes, Marshal,” the Auxiliaries replied, getting into a spaced line and readying their rifles. Dulle lifted up off the ground ten or so meters, and then began to float forward, slowly, to keep pace with the soldiers, who could not fly, beneath him.

“Night vision,” Red said.

“Yes, Senior,” the other five Auxiliaries replied. They each flicked a switch on the side of their helmets with an audible click. There was a small whine as the night vision spun up, then what was once darkness was a world of blue-grey against black. The smart display in their helmets drew a thin, but noticeable, blue outline on everything projected directly on their face shields. Red looked up at the marshal, who was scanning ahead of the group from his height. He folded his arms, as much as they could in the thick metal plate of his coralite armor, across his broad chest plate. Immature as the Marshal was, he still cut a gallant figure in his armor like a demigod of antiquity dressed in the armor of courtly, shining knights.

Red watched him for a moment more then turned her attention back to the area in front of her which was gradually transitioning from soft well-maintained grass to dry underbrush where dead leaves and twigs crackled and snapped under boot.The patrol moved slowly, taking care to scan the more untamed environment thoroughly, looking for any sign. Afteran hour of searching they found a few spatters of blood about three kilometers away, which confirmed their direction. Continuing onward, the patrol saw a few night critters native to the planet and habitat scurry about avoiding the aliens, avoiding them. They saw more signs: a broken twig, a gash in a tree, a set of odd imprints in the soft ground. Eventually, from up in the air, Marshal Dulle spotted something.

“There are more bodies ahead,” Marshal Dulle declared over comms, the senses of a marshal were exceedingly more keen than any mortal’s. The soldiers came to the bodies– if they could even be called such–about eightkilometers from the original massacre. Their surroundings changed to dense alien woods.

“More like parts. Body parts,” one of the other Auxiliaries said, Anym was his name. He might have just celebrated his first century; Red could not accurately recall. It was difficult to tell exactly howmany people were killed, but it was clear the patrol was headed in the right direction. “Filthy raiders,” he added. Marshal Dulle grunted in agreement. Red only sighed quietly.

“Hold position. I am going to do a quick run ahead of you,” Dulle said, and flew off, a gust of wind followed his wake. The Auxiliaries did not move, on full alert without their marshal escort. After a time, Red hand signaled to the others for a comms channel change. She switched channels but set the previous one on monitor for when Dulle contacted them.

“It’s about time he flew ahead. Scouting out should have been the first thing that sprout did. Is Command even training these new marshals right anymore?” Red lifted off her helmet just enough for her mouth to clear another glob of crud, before seating the helmet back on her head. “I’m including some comments about his competency when we get back to the Hand,” she cleared her throat again but no loogie to spit. She hated this sprout, Marshal Dulle Dedmun. Hated his naivete. Hated his pretty, perfect hay colored hair. Hated his childish drive to prove himself.Hated the way he looked at the Auxiliaries and Pages with utter disdain, as if the Order of Marshals would be better off without the failures. Hated the way he treated her as though she were filthy. Sure, Red knew she was not the most comely woman, but she bathed.

Dulle judged her, and Red hated that. Sprout hadn’t seen what she had seen. Done what she had done. Killed what she had killed. Valiant Marshals, thousands of years old, had been slain in battle, but Red survived. So what if she smoked worse than a smithy’s chimney, gorged on food, and drank herself into oblivion whenever she got the chance. Red was old, she could feel it. Red cursed her fate. Why deny herself her pleasures when any mission could be her death? The only reason she stayed in service was because the First Marshal Commander of The Greyhounds asked her to stay. Needed her to stay. She saw how the times were wearing on the commander. He just celebrated his twentieth century, yet he was among the youngest of the First Marshal Commanders in the order. She was recruited into the warband the same day he was promoted to First Commander, nearly three-hundred years ago.

“I’m sure he just wants to do well, and gain some approval,” another of the Auxiliaries, Cross Jo, broke Red’s train of thought. She looked over to the two-hundred-year-old Veteran Auxiliary, who stood rather casually given the situation.

“You’re right,” Red admitted, a bit begrudgingly. “However, his impetuousness will get people–us– killed. He needs more training, Command should have started this one under a Senior Marshal before being given his own command.” She turned toward Jo then tipped her helmet forward in a certain manner to see him better.If not for the smart display of her helmet identifying and outlining him constantly Jo would have been practically invisible. Even under night vision, the new active camouflage feature, designed to function similarly to the camouflage ability of cephalopods, of their HEVCP (Hazardous Environment Volatile Conditions Protection) suits prevented the Auxiliaries from being easily spotted.

“I don’t disagree, Senior. But you and I both know how stretched The Greyhounds are. One of the Third Marshal Commanders is currently commanding the Hand because the First and all the Seconds flew out to relieve the Adamant’s Fist on the battlefront. There is no available Senior Marshal for Dulle to learn under,” Jo said, right again.

Anym added his two credits, “Yeah, I’d take this patrol with Dulle over the trenches ofAurelius II any day.” Red clicked her tongue. Coward, she thought. The so-called Great Unity was intent on wiping out humanity, and Red was stuck with an incompetent marshal and a coward looking for filthy bandits on a backwater agri world. Red cursed her fate.

Guy, the youngest Auxiliary and newest addition among them, spoke up. “I see both sides of the argument here. Fighting the neoxenos hordes who want to kill all humans is essential, but we can’t leave people like these at the mercy of these faithless raiders,” Guy said noncommittally, trying his best not to get on anyone’s bad side. The wind brushed through the trees. Every hair on Red’s body stood on end. She shouldn’t have felt the cool wind through her armor and gear. She looked up through a gap in the otherwise dense canopy of the forest at Juniper’s two moons. Full and beautiful. One bright white like a heavenly orb of white quartz the other golden like a great yellow agate. She had seen them plenty of times, perhaps hundreds of times over the years, while conducting patrols, but they suddenly seemed off. Out of place. She could not state exactly what was off about them, even in all their heavenly majesty, she just knew they weren’t right.

Red averted her gaze back to the dark woods about her, trying to stay on alert. Some small but persistent will continued to pull at her focus. The beams of moonlight stabbed through the blackness like swords of white and gold thrust through a magician’s coffin. And there she could feel it. Through the rays of moonlight, beyond where her helmet’s sensors and technology could reach into the black beyond, it drew closer to her without moving at all. The inexorable pull of the thing that occupies oblivion moved her forward without end, yet her position did not change. She could hear pounding, like distant thunder. It was as though she were tethered at the waist to this thing, and the invisible forces of the universe pulled them further and further together. She was prisoner to its icy grasp for all time. The constant near rhythmless drumming drowned all other sound. Then the deep spoke to her. Red, it called. Red. It called again. Red.

Red!

RED!

“Senior Red!” Jo called, gripping her shoulder, snapping her back to this reality. “Red, are you alright?” He asked, worried. Red could feel the beads of cold sweat rolling down her face. The air of her helmet was thick and sticky;it made it harder to breathe. Her eyelids were weighed down by films of sweat whichrefused to depart from her eyelashes. “Red?” the concern apparent in Jo’s voice.

“Y-ye-yes,” Red steadied herself, then briefly lifted up her helmet just enough to hack up a lump of near solid mucus. “Yes, Veteran Jo. I am fully operational,” setting her helmet properly on her head.

“Don’t worry, Vet,” Guy piped up, “Senior was just having flashbacks of the war,” an ill attempt at banter. Red, Jo, and Anym just stared holes into Guy, who cleared his throat awkwardly, and then apologized.

“Not funny, Guy,” another of the younger auxiliaries, Meeks was his name, chimed in.

“No, I’m sorry,” Redsaid, looking at each Auxiliary in turn as they had gathered into a semi-circle about her. “I don’t know… I got spooked. That’s all.” Red said, trying to shrug it off. Jo was giving her a long hard look full of concern, which Red could feel from behind his helmet’s face shield straight through hers.

“Are you sure you’re not a wyrding type, instead of a wyzing type like the rest of us? Cause that’s the weird stuff that wyrders do.” Jo asked, letting go of her shoulder. Red chuckled. Wyzer? Wyrder? Those terms only truly applied to people elevated to superhumans, demigods really, through the Golden Trial. As Auxiliaries, they were failures. She knew what he meant. What he was asking. Was she going crazy–cracking–like wyrders do?

“No. I’m a failure like the rest of you dogs,” she said smiling inside her helmet. She got a few relieved snickers from the others. The regulatory systems of her suit kicked in bringing the internal environment, and her body, back to homeostasis. She did not even realize how hard her heart was beating until she could no longer hear it raging in her ears. She glanced back to void just to make sure there was nothing there only to see a pallid, warped form shrink back into the darkness. The word CONTACT was about to break from her lips when Marshal Dulle interrupted.

“PATROL! Back to site one! NO DELAY!” Dulle’s voice came over the comms, panicked. The other Auxiliaries wasted no time and took off back to the field, Red lingered a moment more, watching. Even though the auxiliaries would never reach the heights of a marshal, their prowess still far surpassed that of a “normal” human, the eight-kilometer distance back to the wheat field shrunk quickly.