Shep paused a step inside the door to stoop and pat the head of Odin, Nina’s aging black and gray Norwegian elkhound who inspected each new arrival with his acute canine senses.
Nina moved away from the bar and intercepted her mentor. The clinging of glassware, the shuffle of shoes, and the gentle chatter continued uninterrupted as the guests milled about waiting for the next set of songs to play.
“Shep, hey,” Nina greeted. She loved him as a daughter loved a father, but many daughters come to know, with time, that their fathers are not always honest. The videotape sent to Nina last summer had not revealed the whole truth of her missing year, but it had revealed many lies.
“Nina, my God you look terrific,” he inspected her first then glanced around at the low-ceilinged rectangular room. “I reckon I missed the whole shindig?”
“Sh-sh-Shep! Woohoo!”
The boisterous voice came from Denise who shuffled across the vacant dance floor wearing a short white bridal dress with a glass of red wine balanced precariously in one hand.
“Why now here is quite the sight,” Shep removed his hat and planted a quick peck on the newlywed’s cheek. “Lookit you. Congratulations honey. Where’s Jake? I owe him a handshake.”
Denise slurred, “He’s over-well he’s over there somewhere. Anyway, Shep, I’m sooo glad you came for the reception.”
All three of the participants in the conversation knew that statement to be a lie but it sounded much better than the truth. General Shepherd had not traveled to Annapolis for the wedding, he just happened to be there that weekend because his 1 ^ st Corps-particularly the 1 ^ st Mechanized Division-had been pulled from the lines due to casualties and a lack of combat readiness. Or put another way, they had suffered quite a beating while fighting Voggoth.
1 ^ st Mech alone had suffered nearly seventy-percent casualties. A fighting force once numbering 10,000 men, three brigades, and numerous support units had been cut to ribbons by The Order’s hordes. Their vacation had come as a result of combat ineffectiveness.
“Can’t stick around for long, though,” he shot Nina a glance that served as a message.
Denise, of course, did not need to hear whatever grim message Shep brought. Perhaps she sensed what was to come and moved away to greet other partygoers.
Shep watched her go.
Nina put words in his mouth, “I know, I know, she’s too young to be getting married.”
“She’s eighteen, right?”
“Seventeen. But listen, the way things are going we don’t really have a lot of time to wait. I’m just saying, I want her to be happy; to have what I never had.”
What I lost.
Shep replaced the cowboy hat on his head. “I’m figurin’ that seventeen these days isn’t quite what it used to be. Besides…” he narrowed his eyes and watched Denise wiggle between tables, “after all she’s been through, she deserves at least one day like this.”
Nina whispered, “It’s bad news, isn’t it?”
Shep breathed deep and then answered in a slow exhale, “The Phillipan and Hoth are gone. The Order broke through at Wetmore the day before yesterday. Whole damn front is collapsing.”
Nina cast her eyes toward the floor in both sorrow and a soldier’s prayer. She had worked often under the command of General William Hoth. She had respected him; liked him. Now-like General Prescott last summer-Hoth’s experience and cunning were lost and the war grew that much more hopeless.
At that moment she felt silly-guilty-for wearing a party dress.
She muttered, “There wasn’t anything specific on the news.”
“Yeah, well, I figure Trevor is tellin’ the news boys not to panic. Probably not a bad idea; it’s bad enough as it is.”
Nina shook her head slowly in disgust. It had not been that long ago when The Empire appeared unstoppable. With a fleet of dreadnoughts, a capable even if somewhat rough around the edges military, and a streamlined bureaucracy that avoided the missteps and poor communication of the pre-Armageddon government.
Then Evan Godfrey and his political hacks had taken over. The Emperor himself had been thought assassinated. And a grand ‘peace treaty’ left them vulnerable.
As bad as things appeared to be, it could have been worse. While investigating Trevor’s apparent assassination Nina unknowingly led Jon Brewer and a dreadnought to a hidden base of The Order’s floating off the east coast. There they had found the beginnings of a second invasion force; one that certainly would have hit the east coast simultaneously with the western invasion. The war would have been over in days.
“What happens now?”
General Shepherd told her, “Everything out West is lost. We’re retreating toward the Mississippi. It’s not pretty, Nina. The Order is nipping at our heels trying to get us before we can get behind the defenses Brewer is building. And it’s slow going, too. We’re stopping, fighting rearguard, then going again. But it seems ol’ Hoth slowed them down enough. From what Jon says, it looks like Voggoth is going to have to set up camp and do some farming before he can hit the Mississippi.”
Nina knew the slang term ‘farming’. It described how The Order replenished their ranks. Most of Voggoth’s war machines straddled a blurry line between creature and machine. While they were not alive by any reasonable measure, they still needed to ‘grow’.
Nina asked the obvious question, “When are you guys shipping out?”
“Some of my advanced teams are boarding trains already. I’m expectin’ to bug out in a couple of days. You too, I’d guess.”
Nina’s eyes fixed on him with a determined stare. She answered, “Good,” because that was her way: she wanted to fight.
Shepherd’s attention diverted as he spied the groom across the empty dance floor. Jake, a young man with black hair and a Middle Eastern complexion, wore the gray pants and white shirt of a cadet, but soon those clothes would be turned in for soldier’s BDUs. A lot sooner than should be expected, but with the enemy closing in the luxury of academies, parades, and graduation ceremonies could no longer be afforded.
“Let me go say hi to the kid,” Shep touched Nina on the shoulder as he made to leave. “Or should I say, your son in law?”
She replied with a half-hearted smirk. The general strolled away and Nina returned to the bar where a goblet of merlot-and that mirror-waited. In the background the DJ made an announcement about some request or another.
Nina eyed herself in the reflecting glass again. The troubles of the future were legion, but her mind kept drifting to a forgotten past.
Snapshots of those missing days came from the videotape and photographs given to her by Ashley. On that video tape she had confessed her love for Trevor, and him for her. So why had they not remained together? Why had he let her go?
One idea haunted her in the middle of the night. Had she betrayed Trevor during that year? She knew she had been under the influence of The Order during that time. She also knew that Trevor had been taken captive by Voggoth’s forces some time that first year.
No matter how hard she gazed at her reflection, Nina could not find the answer.
Crazy, I’m crazy for feeling so lonely. I’m crazy, crazy for feeling so blue…
The song eased tenderly from the DJ’s speakers. And as the melody caressed her ears, something switched on inside the cold warrior’s heart. A feeling of warmth, like a toasty blanket draped over her shoulders on a chilly winter night.
It felt-it felt familiar.
Couples formed on the dance floor and swayed.
“May I have this dance, miss?”
Nina stumbled from the bar stool, chased by a ghost. She did not know if the specter’s voice came from her memories or some residual image imparted to her when the Old Man had built a bridge between her mind and Trevor’s.
She felt her cheeks blush, her body wobble. She found some kind of comfort in Patsy Cline’s crooning voice,
