Theirs Not To Reason Why: A Soldier's Duty Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  Teaser chapter

  PRAISE FOR JEAN JOHNSON AND THE SONS OF DESTINY NOVELS

  “Jean Johnson’s writing is fabulously fresh, thoroughly romantic, and wildly entertaining. Terrific—fast, sexy, charming, and utterly engaging. I loved it!”

  —Jayne Ann Krentz, New York Times bestselling author

  “Cursed brothers, fated mates, prophecies, yum! A fresh new voice in fantasy romance, Jean Johnson spins an intriguing tale of destiny and magic.”

  —Robin D. Owens, RITA Award–winning author

  “A must-read for those who enjoy fantasy and romance. I . . . eagerly look forward to each of the other brothers’ stories. Jean Johnson can’t write them fast enough for me!”

  —The Best Reviews

  “[It] has everything—love, humor, danger, excitement, trickery, hope, and even sizzling hot . . . sex.”

  —Errant Dreams

  “Enchantments, amusement, and eight hunks and one bewitching woman make for a fun romantic fantasy . . . humorous and magical . . . a delightful charmer.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “A paranormal adventure series that will appeal to fantasy and historical fans, plus time-travel lovers as well. Jean Johnson has created a mystical world of lessons taught, very much like the great folktales we love to hear over and over. It’s like Alice in Wonderland meets the Knights of the Round Table, and you’re never quite sure what’s going to happen next. Delightful entertainment . . . An enchanting tale with old world charm, The Sword will leave you dreaming of a sexy mage for yourself.”

  —Romance Junkies

  “An intriguing new fantasy romance series . . . a unique combination of magic, time travel, and fantasy that will have readers looking toward the next book. Think Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, but add one more and give them magic, with curses and fantasy thrown in for fun. Cunning . . . creative . . . lovers of magic and fantasy will enjoy this fun, fresh, and very romantic offering.”

  —Time Travel Romance Writers

  “The writing is sharp and witty and the story is charming. [Johnson] makes everything perfectly believable. She has created an enchanting situation and characters that are irascible at times and lovable at others. Jean Johnson . . . is off to a flying start. She tells her story with a lively zest that transports a reader to the place of action. I can hardly wait for the next one. It is a must-read.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  “A fun story. I look forward to seeing how these alpha males find their soul mates in the remaining books.”

  —The Eternal Night

  “An intriguing world . . . an enjoyable hero . . . an enjoyable showcase for an inventive new author. Jean Johnson brings a welcome voice to the romance genre, and she’s assured of a warm welcome.”

  —The Romance Reader

  “An intriguing and entertaining tale of another dimension. It will be fun to see how the prophecy turns out for the rest of the brothers.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  Titles by Jean Johnson

  Theirs Not to Reason Why

  A SOLDIER’S DUTY

  The Sons of Destiny

  THE SWORD

  THE WOLF

  THE MASTER

  THE SONG

  THE CAT

  THE STORM

  THE FLAME

  THE MAGE

  SHIFTING PLAINS

  BEDTIME STORIES

  FINDING DESTINY

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

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  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  THEIRS NOT TO REASON WHY: A SOLDIER’S DUTY

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Ace mass-market edition / August 2011

  Copyright © 2011 by G. Jean Johnson.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN : 978-1-101-52929-4

  ACE

  Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My thanks to everyone who helped me with this. To Cindy and Ace Books at The Berkley Publishing Group for knowing I could write more than just romance. To my beta editors Alexandra, NotSoSaintly, Stormi, and my sci-fi pinch hitter Buzzy (beautiful, scary lady), who stepped in to be my fourth gem-polisher on this task. To Dr. Ivezic, the University of Washington’s Astronomy Department, and astronomers everywhere, amateur or professional—any astronomical and stellar mistakes in this book are naturally my own fault. (Alas, Triple A doesn’t make the right-sized map for my needs, so I kind of had to wing several things.)

  My thanks also go to scientists of all types. Science fiction is the springboard for so many ideas; I hope my stories give each of you a lift toward new ideas to explore and things to create. Even if what I write is impossible or improbable, may it at least inspire you. In turn, may your efforts inspire new generations of writers to dream, imagine, and inspire yet others.

  My thanks and my gratitude go out to all the military personnel who allowed me to ply them with ve
rbal cookies and whiskey in congenially ruthless interrogations over the years, helping this story come to life. (Any errors are either my own or the result of futuristic-wishful thinking.) Most important, my thanks go to every single person who has in the past or currently serves their country, regardless of nationality. You stand between the innocent and the profane, putting your lives on the line for little recognition or fame. Yet you are there. You are the big damn heroes in life, and I just wanted you to know that some of us do realize that, and deeply appreciate it.

  Keep your heads down and stay as safe as you can.

  Jean

  PROLOGUE

  The Future is an ever-changing place, a point of transition between what is and what will be. Obscured by a veil of possibilities, it contains all the joys of Heaven, and all the terrors of hell. You may struggle to turn your Fate into your Destiny, but the Future is inescapable; it will drag you forward kicking and screaming. But, wherever you end up, it is—to borrow from Shakespeare—a place “to be, or not to be.”

  That is the Future.

  ~Ia

  JUNE 3, 2487 TERRAN STANDARD

  OUR BLESSED MOTHER

  INDEPENDENT COLONYWORLD SANCTUARY

  It was horrible. Terrible. No fifteen-year-old—and barely fifteen, at that—should have had to face such a frightening, unrelenting truth. But she had to. She had no choice.

  Her eyes were open. She was sure of that much. But in the grey glow of predawn, brightened occasionally by the usual morning electrical storm, her bedroom looked out of place: banal and slightly surreal compared to what she had just seen. Crowded, but banal.

  There were actually two beds, a narrow one for herself and a broad one that her brothers shared in quiet sleep, with a meager aisle between them. A long counter underneath the window served as part desk, part bureau. Every toy, every book, every datachip was tucked in its place, because there was literally no room for a mess. Neat and tidy. Innocent.

  Behind the evidence of her eyes, this whole building—her parents’ small but prosperous restaurant—lay in smoldering ruins. Inside her head, she could see the broken plaster boards, scorched plexi tiles . . . and the body of her birthmother, sprawled and bloodied, eyes open but unseeing.

  No . . . no! Covering her eyes, elbows braced on her knees, the girl on the narrower of the two beds tried to shut out the images. She couldn’t banish them; she could only shove them aside. When she did . . . others took their place. Her elder brother fighting to survive, her younger brother dragged away by brute force, a laser bolt shaded in cruel dark orange arrowing for her own throat. No! No, no, no!

  She shoved harder at the images, tried to force her way around them, but it was like wading through a muddy river, a hard, cold, murky struggle that swept her relentlessly downstream. It didn’t matter which fork she chose, the flow of Time itself dragged her inevitably to the end. To the horrific images of an inevitable end, where rapacious invaders tore whole worlds to shreds. Her world, and the others. Choked by the roiling, cold waters, she couldn’t see the right way to go, the best path to survive, a way to escape the lifeless, frozen wasteland lying ahead.

  . . . NO!

  There had to be a way out. She refused to accept that this . . . this vision was unbreakable. That it was unstoppable, inevitable. Clasping her arms around her knees, squeezing her eyes tightly shut, she forced her inner self to climb out of the waters sweeping inexorably onward to their ugly end. To climb onto the banks of the river—the banks of all the rivers in her mind, to stop herself from drowning in the ice-cold waters of Time itself.

  There has to be a way out. There has to be.

  Determined to find that way, some path that could be followed through the tangle of lives and possibilities, she searched through the stream-scattered plains. She didn’t stop to check each creek; instead, she leapt from bank to bank, looking for the point where all the rivers turned into rivulets, where all of them ran into a dried, barren, hopeless desert. It was hard to see, though the more she moved and searched, the more light there was in this dark, grey, foreboding place inside her head.

  Slowly, as the grey of twilight changed to the amber gold of dawn, she found a thin trickle, a single stream . . . a thread of hope that led through a tiny hole in the barrier of the desert, expanding into an oasis of triumph and beauty beyond that frightening wall of inevitability.

  Here—this is the path! This is what I want . . .

  But when she looked back, the complexity of the path confounded her. It stretched well past anything she herself could affect in her own lifetime—and not just her own life-time, but her own life-place, tying into yet more rivers and streams that ran through fields beyond this single, visible plain. Cautiously tracing her way back, she found nodes of influence, little nudges, artificial canals and bolstering dykes, levees built up to prevent the flooding of failure, and aqueducts bringing in knowledge from other realms. Twists and turns, knots and braids artificially plaited into the naturally woven strands of what should have been reality.

  Along every centimeter of the intertwining streams she followed, images flickered in the waters, showing her meager glimpses of the way to make that one slender stream of a chance survive. Make, not just help.

  My God . . . This will take more than a lifetime to make happen. She hurried back toward her entry point, only to stumble and fall to her knees, seeing the drastic changes wrought in her own future, just to make all of it possible. No . . . no . . . No, there has to be a better way. Some side-stream I could take . . . some other option!

  Scrambling to her feet, straining to see through the shifting, flowing waters, she searched the currents in the meadows stretching out to either side. Time did not have the same meaning in this place as it had out there, beyond the boundaries of her mind—she knew her brothers were now awake, that they were quietly getting dressed for breakfast and for school, somewhere out there beyond the edges of her consciousness—but she couldn’t stop searching. Couldn’t stop looking for an escape. For a way out.

  There wasn’t one.

  Not for everyone.

  With eyes that were learning to skim the images rippling and shifting in the lengthy tangle of waters crisscrossing the plains, she saw there was no safe path for herself. No quiet life to be led. No escape from her fate; not from what she had to do, not with this radical of a departure from all of her childish dreams and expectations. No avoiding what would happen to herself, nor what would happen to her family, to her friends and neighbors if she ignored this single, meager thread of possibility.

  Worse, when she turned to look back at the future, looking out across the other rivers and their subsidiary streams, the way they dried into curdled, cracked mud and crumbled into sand . . . there was no other hope for anyone else.

  Not a viable one. Nothing that would bear fruit. Just the one, rivulet-sized chance to avoid that distant, inevitable, widespread desert of destruction. One chance to stop everything from turning into nothing. One chance to avoid annihilation.

  But . . . if she redirected all those streams and rivulets, gouging out a new set of paths for the waters to take . . . If she changed the riverbeds of all those lives, both here and elsewhere, fighting to redirect the course of everything, there was hope. If she drastically altered the flow of her own life, she could have a chance at saving the rest.

  . . . Most of the rest. Some could be saved, she realized; many, in fact. But not everyone.

  Not everyone.

  It was a horrible, terrible choice for a fifteen-year-old to have to make.

  CHAPTER 1

  Thank you for allowing me this rare opportunity. I don’t have a lot of time to spare—I’ve never had a lot of time, to be honest—but there are certain things I’ve always wanted to share. Indulging your request will give me the chance to review some of the things I’ve done, and explain some of the reasons why I did them. Like a stage magician revealing how the trick is done, I’ve wanted to communicate the whys of my actions, but I haven’t alwa
ys had the opportunity before now. And, now that I finally have the time, I feel the need to speak. So I thank you for your offer to interview me.

  I won’t waste your time with the trivial details of my childhood. I was happy for the most part, well-loved by my family, had a reasonably good education, and usually had good food to eat and clean clothes to wear . . . the usual, and therefore boring. Instead, I’ll start with the day I joined the military. That’s not the moment it all began, of course, but you could say it’s the best starting point I have.

  ~Ia

  MARCH 4, 2490 T.S.

  MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA PROVINCE

  EARTH

  “Name?”

  “Ia.” Back straight, hands clasped in her lap, she waited for him to comment. She pronounced it EE-yah, not the EYE-ah most people assumed. “Just like it says on my ident.”

  The brown-uniformed recruitment officer quirked his brow and sat back at that. Light from the glow strips overhead gleamed off his service pins for a moment, allowing her to read the badge holding his name. Lieutenant Major Kirkins-Baij. “I know what it says on your ident, young lady. But given how the Terran United Space Force has roughly two billion soldiers to keep track of, it helps to have more than one name. Usually, a Human has at least three: a family name, a personal name, and an additional name. Some even have two family names, like myself.