OLD SOLDIERS NEVER DIE
The mission went to hell just as our ship was lifting out of what was left of Jakarta. A Caliphate interceptor spotted us and managed to put a pair of missiles into our starboard engine. Some shrapnel from the explosion penetrated all the way into the engineering section of our ship.
The bitch of it all was that the mission was over and we were almost home free. Another thirty seconds and we would have been out of range.
The ship managed to stagger along for a few minutes - just long enough for us to get out of the Indonesian combat zone. But there was no way we could get back to North America. Our pilot tried for Australia, but even that was asking too much from our damaged ship.
We went down somewhere in New Guinea. I can't really characterize it as a 'crash landing'. It was more of a just plain 'crash'.
The date was April 1st, 2087 and it was my third mission. I was 22 years old.
April Fools.
For the first few seconds after I blinked awake, I could only focus on the fact that it was incredibly hot and my head was killing me. After those confused few seconds, I realized that I was laying in the middle of a copse of trees. Mottled yellow sunlight was filtering through the branches and leaves of the trees while insects buzzed all around me.
Once my head cleared, my first instinct was to find out what was going on. I had to see to my people. I had to...
I tried to roll over, figuring that if I could get onto my hands and knees, then it would be easier to get up.
A hiss of pain escaped me as bright spots of white light began dancing in front of my eyes. I'm pretty lousy at stoicism. That's yet another one of my many failings as an officer and a gentleman.
"Easy," a familiar, rough voice said quietly.
It took some effort, but I managed not to puke.
"Sergeant Major?" I finally managed to croak out.
"Yes, sir. Don't move. I stuck a med-patch on you. Let it do its job."
I stopped struggling. I didn't dare nod in response to what the Sergeant Major had said. My head felt like it might fall off if I tried that.
It made sense that the Sergeant Major and I had survived the crash. I was wearing armor - the best in my unit. The Sergeant Major, on the other hand, was a mutant and he was legendary for the amount of punishment he could suck up.
"What's going on?" I asked.
The Sergeant Major didn't reply. Instead, he lifted my head slightly and put a canteen to my lips. Suddenly aware of the fact that I was thirsty, I drank greedily.
Once I had enough, I asked again, "How's it looking, Sergeant Major?"
"The ship's a loss, sir," he finally replied. "The crew and the rest of the squad are dead. I figured it wouldn't be a good idea for us to stick around what was left of the ship. We're about a ten klicks from the wreck."
I closed my eyes. My squad had consisted of six men and women. The ship itself had a crew of three.
Nine dead wasn't much in the greater scheme of things of the late 21st century. After all, it was a rare week that didn't see a terrorist attack kill dozens - or hundreds - of people. Chemical and biological attacks were no longer a novelty. Even nuclear weapons were occasionally used. For example, Jakarta was nuked five years ago by a not-terribly stable Pakistani government after the Pakistanis decided that the Indonesians had provided a bio-engineered Hantavirus variant that a Pashtun separatist group had let loose in Karachi.
But the nine dead people back in the ship weren't just another bunch of names on a casualty list. They were mine. Supposedly, I had been their commanding officer.
Up until then, I'd never lost a man under my command. I can't even begin to explain to you how that felt.
"Any sign of hostiles?" I finally asked, not being terribly specific about the identity of the enemy. New Guinea was a free-fire zone between the Pacific Alliance, China and its allies, and the Caliphate. At any given moment you might run into American, Australian, Chinese, Indian, Indonesian, Japanese, Malaysian, or even Vietnamese troops on New Guinea. Three- and four-way fire fights had been known to happen. And sometimes the guys who had been shooting at you last week were the guys helping you this week.
Calling New Guinea a hellhole was a strong understatement. Just about everyone on the island that hadn't been smart enough to run when Asia went insane and the shooting started was now dead - and that amounted to millions of people. Logic told me that the bodies were long since decomposed, but I was willing to swear that you could still smell the corruption in the air.
The Sergeant Major shrugged, "No sign of any bad guys. I popped our meson signaler right after we got here and I got a solid orbital contact. So a pickup should be on the way. But they'll have to take their time or they'll get shot down just like we did. So there's no telling how long it'll take 'em to get to us."
This time I did nod - and winced from the pain. Actually, I was beginning to feel better. The med-patch was working. Of course, a lot of that was quick-healers, stimulants, and pain-killers. The patch would get me on my feet, but I'd pay for it later.
"So it's just a matter of who finds us first," I said.
"Yeah," said the Sergeant Major. "The Cals probably saw how badly they damaged us. If they're smart, they figured we wouldn't make it home and sent word to their units in the region to keep an eye out for us."
My helmet was laying next to me. With some effort, I reached over and picked it up. Examining it carefully, I was satisfied to see that it was undamaged.
"Do you figure we'll have to fight?" I asked.
He shook his head, "No way to tell. If Cal trackers are after us, they'll most likely find the ship first. Maybe they'll concentrate on the wreck and miss us."
I couldn't help but laugh. It sounded bitter even to me, "So far today, the Cals haven't made many mistakes."
A small smile appeared on the Sergeant Major's face and then quickly vanished.
"I'm not going to con you, sir. We're in trouble. But we've still got a good chance of getting out of this alive."
I was a brand-new Second Lieutenant, only two months out of Officer Candidate School. The Sergeant Major... well, he'd been around for a long, long time. As crazy as it sounded, some people said his paperwork went all the way back to the pre-Alliance Canadian army. Hell, after a couple of beers too many, the company clerk once swore to me that it went all the way back to World War II - but that was clearly bullshit.
Basically, the Sergeant Major was assigned to my squad to keep an eye on me for my first few missions. His job was to make sure I didn't screw up too badly while I was learning the ropes.
It occurred to me that he hadn't done his job very well.
Looking around me, I could see that we were pretty well hidden from sight. We were in the bottom of a heavily vegetated ravine that split the side of a hill. New Guinea gets a lot of rain and the ground cover was pretty dense.
"Did you set up scramblers and mines?" I asked, even though I knew the answer.
"Yes, sir," the Sergeant Major answered as I expected. "But we don't have a lot of either." He hefted an assault rifle, his hands automatically checking it for probably the hundredth time.
I was feeling much better now. I carefully sat up and then checked my gauntlet readout. It actually looked good. My armor had 82% power and all of its systems were either green or yellow.
The Sergeant Major handed me the canteen again. I took another swig and then handed it back to him.
"Finish it," I told him. He drained it without hesitating. Either way, we weren't going to be here long enough to have to worry about conserving water.
"I'm sorry I got you into this, Sergeant Major," I said tiredly as I double-checked my helmet to make sure the neck contacts hadn't been damaged or fouled.
His dark eyes looked me over carefully, "Sir... what happened wasn't your fault. All the calls you made were good ones."
I didn't see any point to arguing with him. Instead, I pulled the helmet over my head and secured it. Almost instantly, the outside world with it's sticky heat and rich, organic smells was cut off.
My sensor package instantly sent me a report. Nobody was in the immediate area except for me and the Sergeant Major. But there was a worrisome energy signature off to the east.
I examined the readout carefully and suddenly felt my stomach drop and my heart start racing.
"Gotta contact," I said, trying to keep my voice calm. "Something with a fusion power plant near the wreck."
"Caliphate?" asked the Sergeant Major.
I didn't nod my head - that doesn't work too well when you're in armor.
"Can't absolutely tell, but it sure looks like the signature of a Djinn combat suit. I'd have to go active to make sure and I'm not interested in doing that."
The Sergeant Major chuckled grimly. Going to active sensors would be like sending up a flare - except worse. Everybody within a hundred klicks would know exactly where we were.
"If we can see it, than it can probably see us too," he said mildly. "We don't have many scrambler arrays."
I watched the readouts carefully, the Djinn was quartering the area around the wreckage of the ship.
"He's not headed straight for us," I pointed out. "That probably means he doesn't have a solid lock on us. He suspects - or knows - that we're in the area, but he's not sure where."
"So he's searching?"
"Looks like it."
"He'll spot us eventually, sir. It's just a matter of him straying close enough to us that his sensors can get through the scramblers."
Scramblers are fist-sized field projectors whose sole job is to hide men and equipment from enemy sensors. Using them is pretty simple - lay them out in a circle and then get inside the circle. The more scramblers you deploy in that circle, the better off you are. But if you have too few scramblers, then you can only hide for a little while. Modern sensor systems are computerized and have some very sophisticated operating programs. The programs constantly adjust their scanning methods to adapt to the environment and to possible counter-measures.
I hadn't known the Sergeant Major long, but I recognized the deceptively low-key tone of voice. He figured that a fight was coming. The problem was, it was a fight that we'd lose. The Djinn was designed for the most dangerous kind of high intensity combat. My recon armor wasn't a match for it. And all the Sergeant Major had was his rifle.
There was nowhere to run. If we tried that, and left the minimal concealment of the scramblers, then the Djinn would be on us long before we found a friendly unit.
The best thing to do was wait and hope that the Combat Search and Rescue guys found us before the Djinn.
I rechecked my sensors. According to them, the Djinn was heading the wrong way for the moment. But that was nothing to celebrate. As he searched the area, the Djinn would be going in all kinds of directions as he tried to give his sensors as many different angles to work with as possible. I ordered my onboard computer to give me a sensor update every thirty seconds - every ten seconds if the Djinn got within three klicks of our position.
"What's the plan, sir?" the Sergeant Major asked.
"We hide and wait for our pickup. We fight like hell if the Djinn finds us first," I answered.
His face expressionless, the Sergeant Major nodded. He'd just been checking to see if I understood the situation.
"So, since we've got some time to kill, are you a chess player?" I asked him. It was a lame attempt at humor. The book said something about trying to take the pressure off when things were tense.
He shook his head, "No, sir. Poker was always more my kind of game. Someone I knew a long time ago was pretty good at chess. She tried to teach me the game, but I couldn't get interested."
"Girlfriend?" I asked aimlessly, just to be saying something. Actually, I was using the squad data net channel to check on how the Sergeant Major had emplaced the mines and scramblers. Not surprisingly, he had done everything right.
"Nah. She was just a kid when I met here. Thirteen years old. But she was the smartest person I ever met. She... I sorta adopted her. Where'd you learn the game, sir?"
"My father," I answered. "He learned from my grandfather - who was really good at chess. From what my father says, my grandfather probably could have become a rated grandmaster. But he was never interested in that sort of thing."
The Sergeant Major cocked his head and looked at me, "I didn't know that."
The fact that the Sergeant Major had heard of my grandfather wasn't surprising. After all, my grandfather was pretty famous. Normally, everyone in the service ignored my family name and I actually rather liked that. Back when I was a kid - y'know, like, three or four years ago - it had been impossible to go anywhere and do anything without people kissing my ass because of my family. The Army made it a point of pride to ignore that sort of thing.
My sensor readout updated. The Djinn had circled back around to our side of the wreck site. He was taking his time checking out the area.
"From what Dad told me, gramps was into a lot of things," I said as I went through a quick diagnostic of my armor's weapon systems.
"He was pretty good with the ladies," said the Sergeant Major with a nod as he loaded an anti-armor round into the assault rifle's grenade launcher.
"Wish I'd inherited that from him," I replied with a forced chuckle.
"Dunno, sir. That civilian doctor back at base seems to like you a lot."
Thank God I had my helmet on. Because of that, the Sergeant Major couldn't see the expression on my face. Carol and I had been trying pretty hard to keep our relationship secret. Apparently we hadn't been as successful as we thought.
"How serious is it between you and the doc?" asked the Sergeant Major.
"It's serious. I... well, it's serious." Carol and I had talked about marriage. We both knew that it was a crazy idea for the moment. But someday I'd be rotated out of a combat unit and into training or support. Maybe then...
The Sergeant Major didn't push the point any further.
By then I'd figured it out. The Sergeant Major had read the same book I had. He was trying to keep me talking so that I wouldn't panic or otherwise do something stupid.
"How about you, Sergeant Major?" I retaliated. "Any family back home?"
He didn't answer immediately, but then he nodded slowly, "Yeah. I'll always have my girls."
Hmm, he'd mentioned girls, but not a wife. That wasn't hard to figure out. The lifers have a divorce rate that's astronomical. So the Sergeant Major's marriage was finished, but he had some daughters.
It was hard to see the Sergeant Major as a family man.
"How old are they?"
He hesitated before answering, "They're all grown up and gone. But that doesn't really matter. To me, they'll always be my girls."
"What are their names?"
"Kitty, Jubes, and Laura."
I frowned to myself. Something about those names rang a distant bell...
Sensor update: the Djinn definitely had our scent. It was working its way up the hill slope.
Suddenly, I was calm. The waiting had been the hard part. But now I knew what was coming. There wasn't any point to being scared any longer.
"Trouble," I said to the Sergeant Major.
"How bad?" he asked calmly.
"He isn't heading right for us, but he's left the wreck and is moving into the hills. Now, it's just a matter of time. We've got maybe five or ten minutes."
The Sergeant Major nodded and clicked the safety off on his weapon.
"Here's the plan," I said, trying to keep my voice even. "When he gets within a klick, I'll engage him. While I'm doing that, I want you to get out of here and get over the ridge-crest. Maybe I can keep him busy long enough for you to get away."
The Sergeant Major gave me a long, hard look.
"Sir..." he began.
Sensor update: the Djinn was now in the ravine that we occupied. He was still pretty far downhill. But all he really had to do now was head upslope while keeping to the ravine. He'd bump right into us.
"That's an order, Sergeant Major," I said flatly. There really wasn't a lot he could do to help me. That rifle he was carrying wouldn't even scratch a suit of Djinn combat armor.
The Sergeant Major hesitated, and then closed his mouth. Actually, I was rather relieved. I hadn't been sure that he would obey my order.
"I it comes to fight with the Djinn, we've still got a chance," I lied. "If I can keep the Djinn busy long enough, then Search and Rescue might deign to put in an appearance."
Normally, I wouldn't even think of trying to con the Sergeant Major. But if there was one thing about the Army that I maybe knew better than him, it was combat armor. He might not know that once I got into combat with a Djinn, I was pretty much dead. It was just a matter of how many seconds I would last.
It was a forlorn hope, but if the Sergeant Major could put the crest of the ridge between him and the Djinn, and I could inflict the right kind of damage on the Djinn's sensor systems before I died, then the Sergeant Major might be able to get away.
Hey, it was a lousy plan. But it was all I had. Maybe at least one of the men who had the bad luck to fall under my command would survive the day.
"If we get home," I continued - I was anxious and half-babbling, "maybe you could introduce me to your daughters. I'd like to meet them."
He gave me an odd look, then he nodded, "Yes, sir."
Sensor update: the Djinn was heading straight for us. No hesitation and very fast. He had us made.
"Okay. Get out of here," I said to the Sergeant Major just before I activated my boot jets. There was a sudden storm of shredded leaves, flying branch fragments, and rich loam. I rose into the air, lifting out of the cloud of debris that my jets had produced.
The Djinn saw me immediately and also went airborne. There was no point to being subtle. We had a lock on each other now and we couldn't lose it. Being on the ground just made us more vulnerable. Cover and concealment were immaterial at this range and our defensive systems were most effective when we were airborne.
I could just barely see the Djinn. At first he was a dark dot on the horizon. But then the chameleon coating on his armor reacted to my presence and shifted the color of the outer layer of his suit to blend seamlessly with the color of the sky behind him. He vanished to my sight, but I could still see him with my sensors.
At 200 meters altitude I began ripple-firing my micro-missles at the Djinn. As I suspected, they didn't even touch him. But I had timed the rate-of-fire right and the Djinn was forced to put all of his effort into point-defense with his onboard laser.
The goal wasn't to kill the Djinn. That really wasn't possible. But by slow-firing an overlapping spread of missiles at him, I had forced the Djinn to take the time to knock the missiles out of the air. My plan was all about buying time for the Sergeant Major.
As the Djinn dealt with the last of my missiles, I raced off to the west, paralleling the ridge line. The Djinn killed my last missile and then took a shot at me.
My onboard sensors screamed a warning as his laser tickled my armor. The laser couldn't punch through, but it was providing a target lock for his plasma gun.
I almost waited too long. I cut power to my jets and dropped end-over-end as the plasma bolt - hot as the sun and moving an appreciable percentage of the speed of light - described a white-hot bar of light that reached from the Djinn all the way out to the horizon. As I tumbled to the green jungle below, it almost seemed like I could reach out and touch the beam.
Of course, I hadn't really dodged the plasma bolt. Nobody was that fast. But a Djinn had a small time gap between the moment his suit laser acquired a target and the time his plasma gun finished cycling. I'd taken advantage of that gap.
Twisting to one side and kicking my jets back into action, I sent a quick and all but unaimed particle accelerator bolt back at him. That bolt drained 10% of my stored power in one shot. But then - God is great - I got unjustifiably lucky for the first time that day. The bolt hit the Djinn dead center and literally knocked him for a loop.
I yelled in triumph and accelerated, grabbing some altitude as the wind screamed past me. I dared to hope...
Far, far, faster than I thought possible, the Djinn stabilized himself. Too late, I realized that my sensors were again warning me that I was being painted by the Djinn's laser.
Everything went white as my shields flared and overloaded. And then I was falling again.
My armor's internal suspension kept me alive. It hurt like hell when I landed, but I was still full of painkillers and stimulants from the med-patch that the Sergeant Major had previously treated me with. I didn't even lose consciousness, but I sure as blazes was stunned. For what seemed like an eternity, no matter how much I tried, I couldn't seem to get my act together and actually do something.
Something was jabbing painfully at the inside of my chest as I struggled to take a full breath. Despite the fact that I was in my armor, I could smell the jungle. That was a bad sign, because it meant that my armor was holed. And anything that could get through the armor was sure to have done a lot of damage to the soft, fleshy stuff inside.
That probably accounted for the distinct odor of burned meat.
Making a supreme effort, I managed to get my arms underneath me and push myself up onto my knees. Apparently, I was out of power. Without servo-assistance, my armor was now a prison. The weight of it was too much for me to easily move.
My sensors were out. But I could still see through the eye slits in my helmet.
The Djinn was standing next to me. Not for the first time, I noticed how much that suit looked like the armor that my grandfather had worn in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
The range was too close for any of the Djinn's mounted weapons. So he was pointing a very heavy pistol of some kind at me. I wasn't familiar with the model, but it looked like it fired a projectile. Since my power-assist protective webbing was offline, my armor probably wouldn't be able to stop a shot from that weapon at this range.
He said something - I think in Farsi. My helmet translator was on the fritz and wasn't able to help. But I got the gist of it. He wanted me to surrender. I wasn't sure if it was good luck or bad luck for me that the Cals were looking for a prisoner.
"Peter Anthony Stark, Second Lieutenant, 598-11-3255," I gasped at him as I kept trying to catch my breath. Off hand, I wasn't sure if he could even hear me.
He kicked me in the chest with a blow that would have done credit to a sledgehammer. The impact knocked me onto my back and whatever it was in my chest that was broken screamed.
Actually, I didn't really hold that against him. I wasn't playing ball and he probably didn't know much about my armor. For all he knew, I might have some sort of hidden weapon that could blow him apart.
As I flopped slowly and painfully onto my side, I saw something that made me wonder if I was hallucinating. It was the Sergeant Major. He was about twenty meters away in the shadows of the treeline, watching me and the Djinn. He was holding a scrambler in one hand. I'd heard of scramblers being used as emergency personal stealth equipment, but I'd thought that was just a story. They really weren't designed for something like that. And the one that the Sergeant Major was holding probably wouldn't keep him hidden from the Djinn for very long.
Still laying on the ground, I twisted my head inside my helmet and tapped my chin against a special control. A small power cell mounted in the back of my helmet clicked active, giving me a slight trickle of emergency power. I blew it all to flash-overload my radar system. At that close range, the resultant electro-magnetic howl screwed up every sensor in the Djinn's suit.
The now half-blinded Djinn trooper shouted something at me that sounded like a string of curses. Then he shot me in the stomach. The pistol was a rail-gun, so it wasn't particularly loud. But the kick as the projectile hit me was incredible.
I could taste blood and other, less distinct, fluids in my mouth. But just before everything went even hazier, I could have sworn that I heard a strange metal-gliding-on-metal sound.
It sounded something like 'snikt'.
Take it from me, the "first you're conscious, then you're unconscious, then you're conscious again" thing is a real drag. Flickering in and out of awareness, I heard what sounded like voices with Australian accents.
A face I didn't recognize - a pretty black girl - was leaning over me with a concerned look on her face. Behind her, I could see some kind of metal compartment roof. When she noticed my eyes were open, the black girl looked off to the side and urgently called, "Sergeant Major, he's awake!"
The Sergeant Major appeared next.
"Our ride finally showed up, sir," he said gruffly.
"Lucky," I whispered.
He nodded, "Yeah. But we made some of our luck."
"The Djinn?"
"I got him," he said, his face expressionless.
I looked up at him blearily, "How?"
"With a lot of help from you, sir. Thanks for the distraction. Whatever it was you did, he never saw me coming."
I grimaced, "You disobeyed orders."
A barest hint of a smile appeared on his face, "Prove it, sir. My story is that I was trying to get away, just like you told me. But somehow I got turned around and accidentally went downslope instead of upslope. By coincidence I stumbled into you and the Djinn. After that, you and I both improvised."
"That's bullshit."
"Yes, sir. But it's very good bullshit."
I closed my eyes, "We'll talk later."
"Yes, sir," I heard him say. Then I lost track of everything.
The Army spent two weeks patching me back together. I spent the waking part of the those two weeks mentally going over every detail of that last mission. I kept trying to find something, anything that I should have done differently. Something that would have kept my people alive.
Fortunately for me, the armor piercing round that the Djinn shot me with was way too powerful. It went completely through me and my armor without exploding - so it didn't do anywhere near as much damage as you might have expected. Mind you, what it did do to me was still pretty bad. When I left the hospital, I had cloned replacements for my legs, the lower part of my spine, and most of my guts. But considering everything, it could have been far worse.
I had a month of leave coming to me. Carol was trying to wrangle some time off and I was shamelessly using my family connections to expedite that.
The first day out of the hospital, I bought a ring and practiced several dozen different ways of saying, "Please marry me." Maybe it was selfish, but I wanted to make Carol a permanent part of my life as soon as possible. I didn't dare wait any longer.
Because now I knew that it was possible to wait too long.
As tradition demanded, I spent the rest of that first day writing letters to the families of the men and women who had died on the ship. Comparatively speaking, that made my time in the hospital look good.
Carol wasn't able to get free for the first couple of days of my leave, so I was at loose ends. And I'd seen plenty of my mother and father while I was in the hospital. Oddly, I didn't really know what to do with myself. It was customary to get drunk and disorderly as soon as possible when you got leave, but I wasn't in the mood. Basically, I just wasn't feeling very sociable.
Sitting alone in my Bachelor Officers Quarters billet, I suddenly realized that there was someone besides Carol that I wanted to see.
A quick check showed that the Sergeant Major was also back in the United States. His home address was listed as a town in New York State called Salem Center. Borrowing an aircar from the Oakland branch of my father's company, I was on my way to New York in less than an hour.
Much to my shock, at first it appeared that the Sergeant Major lived in a mansion. Further checking showed that the mansion was part of something that the aircar's navigational computer described as 'Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters'.
If anything, the idea of the Sergeant Major living at a school struck me as being even weirder than the thought of him living in a mansion.
Nobody responded to my efforts to communicate. However, there was an automated take-off/landing control system on the school grounds - which was sort of odd, but I didn't complain about the fact as I made use of it.
I landed the aircar in an open area between the mansion and a small lake. There was a boathouse on the edge of the lake. At a glance, I could see that someone was living in the boathouse. There was freshly chopped wood piled up by the side of the house and an ancient half-dismantled motorcycle was parked under a nearby shade tree. Some tools rested on a work bench next to the motorcycle.
The mansion, while in good repair, was obviously not being used for anything at the moment. For some reason, that bothered me. I guess that was because it was a school. There should be students.
Getting out of the aircar, I walked through the long, green grass towards the boathouse. By now, I was feeling uncomfortable. Clearly, I was on the edge of violating the Sergeant Major's privacy - if I hadn't actually crossed over that line.
But I knew that I had to see the Sergeant Major. I just wasn't sure why.
I knocked on front door to the boathouse, but nobody answered. At a bit of a loss as to what to do next, I considered leaving and coming back that evening.
That was when I saw the graveyard. It wasn't very far away and it rested on a low hilltop that overlooked the lake. I could make out the white headstones through the wrought iron fence.
Somewhere deep inside of me, I had figured most of it out by then. The stories that my father had told me about the old days - about my grandfather and the people he knew - had come back to me. So when I walked up the hill to the graveyard, I was really just trying to confirm what I already suspected.
The graveyard was well tended. According to the headstones, a lot of the graves were for members of the Xavier family. Those went as far back as three centuries. But most of the graves were more recent. And the names on those headstones were not even vaguely related.
For the next hour or so, I wandered around the graveyard, reading names and dates from the headstones and sadly noting that many of the people buried there had died young. I also wondered about the decision of so many people to be buried on the grounds of a private school - far away from family and birthplace.
Eventually, I found a grave for a woman named Jubilation Lee. She had been twenty-eight years old when she died in the early part of this century. Nobody else in the graveyard had her last name, yet her headstone bore the words, "Beloved Little Sister".
That was Jubes, of course.
And once I got over the surprise of finding the final resting place of Senator Katherine Pryde up on that lonely hill, it didn't take me long to recall having read that the Senator's oldest and closest friends had called her Kitty.
"Hi," said the Sergeant Major as I stood next to Senator Pryde's grave. He had come up behind me. As always, the man moved as silently as a cat. I didn't hear a thing until he spoke.
Something about him looked odd. It took me a second to realize that I'd never seen the Sergeant Major out of uniform. Seeing him in a flannel shirt, jeans, and work boots was strange.
"I'm sorry if I'm intruding, Sergeant Major," I said awkwardly.
He shook his head, "You ain't. It's good to have you here, sir."
I hesitated before saying what was on my mind. But in the end, I couldn't help myself.
"I found Jubes and Kitty," I said quietly.
He nodded slowly, saying nothing.
I looked back at the Sergeant Major, "What about Laura?"
He found his voice, "About thirty years ago, she didn't come back from a mission. I haven't heard from her since. I keep hoping that she'll turn up someday. That would be just like her, but... but it's been a long time."
We were silent for a while. A wind rustled the grass and brought the clean scent of distant rain. There was a growl of low thunder.
Looking around me, my eyes were drawn to a peculiarly isolated grave. The carving on the headstone was laconic. There was no name or dates or epitaph. The stone just read, 'Rogue'.
"That's Marie," said the Sergeant Major, as if that was all I needed to know.
Looking at that grave thoughtfully, I asked, "Why is it apart from everyone else?"
Although he was also gazing in the direction of Marie's grave, the Sergeant Major's eyes had that distant look of a man peering across the decades.
"Because that's the way she was, sir. Marie was apart. Always apart."
Normally, the Sergeant Major didn't look particular old. Only the streaks of gray in his dark hair betrayed him. Otherwise, he had the appearance of an exceptionally vigorous forty year old. But as we spoke together on that lonely hill, the Sergeant Major suddenly looked ancient to me.
My grandfather had been long dead the day I was born. It was hard to believe that the Sergeant Major had actually known him, talked to him, and had probably shook his hand.
As I stood in the graveyard, I wondered what it must be like to have your world slip away from you. To see everything familiar remorselessly ground down to dust. To have everyone you know die while you were always left behind.
That would be the worst of it - to be the last of your kind. Because then you would carry within you the sure knowledge that when you were finally gone, everything that you remembered about those you had cared for would be forgotten. All of the loves, the hates, the triumphs, and the failures. All of the good and the bad, the important and the petty. All finally gone. All finally stolen by time.
It would be a kind of living death.
And suddenly, I knew why I was there.
I don't talk about it a lot, because the late 21st century has a lot of reasons to be wary of faith, but while I may not be in church every Sunday, I do believe. And at that moment I knew that God, or Allah, or Buddha, or Fate, or whatever-the-hell you want to call it, was giving me something I desperately needed.
A chance. A chance to save my last man.
I gestured at the graveyard around us and said, "Tell me about them."
The Sergeant Major thought about it for a moment. Then he nodded and sat down on the carefully mowed grass, crossing his legs, and looking around thoughtfully at the silent stones.
I sat down with him.
Stumbling a bit at first, because he really wasn't a man of words, the Sergeant Major began talking.
Charles, Scott, Jean, Kitty, Ororo, Hank, Jubes, Kurt, Bobby, Marie, Peter, Sean, Remy, Laura - I heard those names and many more as the afternoon turned into evening. And as I supposed he always had, the Sergeant Major once again defied time and death.
This time, it was to briefly bring his family back to life.