THE PLANET SHILOH, THE CONFEDERACY OF MAN

If it had been hot earlier that day, it was absolutely hellish by mid-afternoon. It was at least ninety degrees inside the CSX-410’s open cab as Raynor drove the huge machine toward the south end of the field. There had been a time, starting back before Jim had been born, when the machine had been able to guide itself. But the roboharvester’s navigation system failed long before his family acquired the secondhand machine, which forced Jim to sit behind the wheel and manually steer the harvester as it cut a broad swath through the field of triticale-wheat.

Raynor neared the edge and turned the robo-harvester back in the other direction. Suddenly, his thoughts were interrupted by what looked like a dust devil off to the north. The windscreen was dirty so he stuck his head out of the cab in order to see more clearly, a feat made even more difficult because his left eye was swollen shut and hurt like hell. Then Jim realized that what he was looking at wasn’t a dust devil, but a machine of some sort, coming his way. What the hell … ? Was it the neighbors? No, their crop was in, so there was no reason to roll their robo-harvester.

Raynor pulled his head back in, but kept an eye on the pillar of dust, as he guided the harvester toward the river. Then, once he was about halfway across the length of the field, he took a second look. What he saw surprised and worried him. The oncoming machine was a Confederate goliath.

Like every other kid on Shiloh, Jim had seen vids of the huge twelve-foot-tall walkers standing guard outside the Council headquarters on Tarsonis, marching through the streets in parades, and trudging through storms of lethal fire as their arm cannons dealt death to the Confederacy’s enemies.

But Raynor had never seen a goliath marching across the countryside before and felt a sudden stab of fear. Property taxes had been rising steeply for the last few years—and some farmers had been thrown off their land. Was that why the machine had been sent? To take possession of the farm? Maybe, but Jim couldn’t see any sign of the ground troops that would normally accompany a walker. What, then?

He took the mic off its clip, and was about to alert his father to the goliath’s presence, when Trace Raynor’s voice came over the cab’s speaker. “I can see it, Jim… . I’m on my way.”

Raynor looked back over his right shoulder, saw the column of dust his father’s beat-up truck was throwing up, and felt a sense of relief. Because even though he was good at schoolwork and could run every piece of equipment on the farm, there were a whole lot of things he didn’t know how to do. And dealing with the government was one of them.

But he was curious, so as the brightly painted goliath splashed through the river and lurched up onto the field, Raynor brought the robo-harvester to a halt and switched the engine off to save fuel. He could hear the tinny sound of the Confederacy’s anthem by then as the walker grew larger, and flags flew from dual antennas.

As his father arrived, the teenager took a swig of tepid water from the bottle on the floor before he exited the cab. The wheat crop was so sparse that his boots produced puffs of dust when his feet hit the ground. By that time the goliath had come to a halt, and stood not fifty feet away. As Jim entered the machine’s elongated shadow, he was aware of the subtle vibration that the machine transmitted through the soles of his heavy work boots. There was something else, too, an acrid odor that he recognized as the smell of ozone, which hung heavy in the air.

The walker had a blocky cockpit where the pilot was seated, mounts for two sets of missile launchers, and articulated arms that were equipped with shovel-hands instead of the autocannons Jim had seen in the vids. But the armored body and sturdy legs were the way he remembered them.

With the exception of the machine’s cockpit, which was painted dark blue, the rest of the goliath was red. A unit number was visible on both sides of the cockpit, and four dropship-shaped silhouettes had been painted onto the area just below the front canopy, along with that of a Hellhound—the Kel-Morian equivalent of the Confederacy’s Avenger fighter craft. The mech was relatively clean except for a thin patina of dust, and the flags that had been flying so proudly a few minutes before hung motionless as if drained of spirit.

Trace Raynor’s truck rattled as the engine shut down, the door opened, and he jumped out. He had a shock of gray hair, a neatly trimmed beard on a face so weathered it resembled a topographical map, and a body without an ounce of fat on it. His brown eyes were bright with anger as he came over to stand next to his son. “First the bastards raise our taxes so high we can barely pay them—and now they send a machine to trample our crops! They might as well shoot us and put us out of our misery.”

Jim understood his father’s resentment, but wondered about the wisdom of saying such things out loud, especially if the goliath was equipped with external audio pickups. But the thought was preempted as servos whined, and the canopy above what was painted to look like a snarling mouth opened to reveal the cockpit within. A uniformed marine rose to wave at them. “Good morning, folks!” his much-amplified voice said, booming through twin speakers. “My name is Farley … Gunnery Sergeant Farley… . I’ll be down in a sec.”

Farley gave a voice command. One of the goliath’s massive shovel-hands rose up to meet him, he stepped onto it, and was gently lowered to the ground. The moment he stepped off, servos whined as the walker assumed a position akin to parade rest. “You must be Trace Raynor,” the marine said, as he came forward to shake hands with the farmer. “And, unless I miss my guess, this is your son, Jim, proud member of the class of 2488. Good going, young man.”

“Thanks.” As Jim shook hands with the marine, he was impressed by Farley’s high-wattage personality and the strength of his grip. There was something odd about the way he looked, though—the marine appeared to be too young for his middle-aged persona, and Jim noticed there was something strange about the way his jaw moved as he spoke. He had heard stories about how the Confederacy’s doctors could “grow” new faces for people. So maybe the marine had suffered some terrible wounds and been given a more youthful look. There was no way to be certain, but Jim thought it was totally cool.

The marine’s whites were barely wrinkled, which was no small trick, given how cramped the goliath’s cockpit must have been. A double row of medals hung on the left side of his chest, a gleaming belt encircled his waist, and his shoes were mirror-bright. All of which made quite a contrast to Trace and Jim Raynor, both of whom looked slovenly by comparison.

Recruiters were a common sight on planets like Shiloh, although they had never made the rounds in a goliath before, which said something about the wars. It had been going on for several years by that time, and even though the Confederacy’s spokespeople claimed that everything was going well, recruiting goals were increasing just as fast as taxes were. Which meant that when kids like Tom Omer and Jim Raynor graduated from upper school, they were targeted.

Realizing that he wasn’t in immediate danger of being thrown off his land—not yet, anyway—Trace Raynor allowed himself to relax a bit. “Nice to meet you, Sergeant,” he said. “Although I’d sure appreciate it if you could avoid trampling my wheat on your way out.”