Chapter 32: Memories

Sailors and Marines from the Success and the Victory looked at the assembled fleet with awe. At the core sat ten kilopod transports, all currently empty pending a truly massive pickup of no less than 10,024 sponsors, plus an unusually large number of concubines and dependants, all destined for the Marines and all destined for one colony. Four Aurora-class transports, three laden with the families of the escort ships' crews and one with Filles de Roi, sat at the perimeter. And in a protective ring around that, Confederacy warships guarded the transports like protective sheepdogs.

"In Flanders fields the poppies blow"

Sergeant Ken Kowalski stood stiffly at At Ease, his boots and belt shiny, a poppy peeking out from behind his wedge cap. Behind him on Camp Shackleton's main parade square, Marines and a platoon each of Navy and Fleet Auxiliary sailors stood likewise, wearing their full dress uniforms. A company from the Thule Cadet Corps stood as disciplined and proud as any company of Marines. Each serviceman wore a poppy in his or her wedge cap just like Kowalski.

"Between the crosses, row on row,"

Around the perimeter of the parade square stood the ragged ranks of concubines and dependants, many of them standing at the same At Ease as their sponsors. Some of the younger children were held protectively by their mothers, clutching the mothers in turn as they realized that today was a solemn day, an important day. They were too young to understand why, and so were a little unsettled.

"That mark our place; and in the sky"

In ships and orbital facilities in space throughout the Thuleat system, on-duty service personnel were observing the goings-on. They too were wearing their dress uniforms, wedge caps, Sam Browne belt, shiny shoes, freshly-pressed creases. They were standing at At Ease, like Kowalski and his battalion. For this was the most sacred day in the Confederacy, more than Christmas, or Passover, or Daliwal. This was Remembrance Day, November the Eleventh. Back on Earth it went by many names, like Warriors' Day, or Veterans' Day, or Armistice Day, and in some lands on a day other than this one. On colony and ship of the Humans, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, on the exact same hour and day and month that the Great War's armistice had come into effect ending the four years of largely ineffectual slaughter, all humans stopped work for two minutes and remembered those who had fought and died for the Confederacy and for Earth.

"The larks, still bravely singing, fly"

"Mom, what's a lark?" asked a very young dependant as his mother quickly hushed him. Kowalski hoped his two were being good for their already heavily-pregnant-again mothers. This was his second chance at being a father, and he loved it, but he knew sacred ceremonies like this one bored the little ones, and boredom made them restless.

"Scarce heard amid the guns below."

The saluting gun on the roof of the Camp Headquarters fired once. It was manned by sergeants representing the Confederacy Navy, Marines and Fleet Auxiliary, by Sub-Decurion Redburn as the sole member of the Civil Service, and commanded by a Thule Corps of Cadets Sergeant.

"We are the Dead. Short days ago"

Kowalski reflected on his own life, on those he had to remember who fell in combat. He was an old man, older even than the Old Man himself. As an 18-year-old youth, he'd gone south to the United States and volunteered to serve in their Marines. He was quickly at war in Viet Nam, where he saw buddies reduced to body parts by enemy shells and booby-traps. Now he was in space, on planets with climates far removed from the fetid jungles of southeast Asia, and he was still seeing comrades dying messily in battle.

"We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,"

This Remembrance Day, even the AIs were remembered. Not only humans had been lost in sunk warships and wrecked colonies, but many an AI as well. They had as their representative the base fire truck, operated by the Camp's AI, pulled up to the right of the cenotaph. In a long line along the front of the monument, Marines and sailors dressed in representative uniforms of historical services: a French poilu from the First World War, a British infantryman of the Second. One man was dressed as a U.S. Marine from Kowalski's first war, bringing up memories happy and sad to the old sergeant.

"Loved and were loved, and now we lie,"

Not only Marine and Navy warriors had been killed, either. Human casualties included dependants and concubines. Some of those concubines had given their lives heroically, working to save their offspring or their colonies from invading Sa'arm.

"In Flanders fields."

The saluting gun fired again. Thule was relatively peaceful, but Kowalski was aware that this was effectively part of the Confederacy's front line. As much as he hoped it would remain peaceful, he was painfully aware his second family was at risk. His first three children, long grown, were out in space as well, his sons in the Navy and his daughter a concubine at some watery research planet he'd never heard of. She'd given him yet another granddaughter. His other grandchildren were a more mixed bag, some still on Earth and others making their own way as sponsors or concubines in space.