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Page 29.
22. Surrender Procyon
 Jesse Bowman sat by a window in a field command outpost in a desert on one of the Procyon planets. A chill wind blew through thin air outside.
Bowman, formerly aide to Cyrus Mbe, but now an admiral of the star fleets, clutched the papers in his hand, feeling them get soggier and soggier with sweat. He was about to surrender the entire allied military fleets to the victorious Ankhmen and their Raskian underwriters. Bowman sat with thirty Procyonian generals in a large, wood-floor room. In one corner, three female officers were hurriedly burning some remaining bundles of documents.
Jesse cast a glance over his shoulder at the Procyonians. Old grizzled veterans of ancient space wars whose very names were legendary: Zemelman, Pochin, Tiehfahr, Vitane. They were of the same burnt color as the dark-brown tobacco they chewed, burned by the light-streams of a trillion stars. Two or three junior officers sat with their heads in their arms. Many had committed suicide. The old ones waited for the final indignity, hum-hawing or smoking or snoring, collapsed like old sacks in their chairs. A few appeared drugged.
Waiting.
The capital city was in flames on the horizon. Its dull death rumble drifted across the jumbled slums and sleeping suburbs to the proud old redoubt at the edge of the Mountain of the Gods.
Waiting.
Jesse looked out. The window sill wood was covered with dust and flaking paint. It had been raining out, and a moist, cold air blew in. Sounds rose and fell heart-shakingly over the general clamor of explosions and air screams and vehicles. The light was poor. He smelled dingy walls and wet, gravelly back-courts. Outside, ground cars drew up with loud engines and banging doors and a brief fusillade of gunfire. Then only voices yelling, feet pounding, wood splintering, hallway echoes. Jesse shivered as he held the surrender papers.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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