“I just shoot bad bastards. Was that a question?”
“Only if you have an answer.”
Hoffman had to think about that one. It was what Margaret would have called … elegant. “You love all this intrigue shit, don’t you?”
Michaelson smiled. He could give as good as he got with Prescott. Hoffman couldn’t. In that lonely desperation that usually tormented him when he was lumbered with a secret he didn’t want to have, he almost took the encrypted disk out of his pocket to show him. Maybe Michaelson even had some encryption key that would open it.
But it felt like too much too soon. These were dangerous times. He’d talk to Bernie first.
“I don’t love it,” Michaelson said. “I just accept it’s another warfighting skill I have to have.”
“Yeah,” Hoffman said. “Me, I prefer a chainsaw.”
CHAPTER 19
I can’t do anything else to help Anvil Gate until we clear the UIR out of Kashkur. The pass must stay closed, and I can’t lose any more aircraft there. The UIR has offered to allow the evacuation of civilians from Anvegad if we withdraw from the garrison as well. They’re quite elegant blackmailers, but I think the outcome is the same for the population either way.
(GENERAL KENNITH MARKHAM-AMORY, CHIEF OF GENERAL STAFF, TO COLONEL JAMES CHOI)
ANVEGAD, KASHKUR: THIRD MONTH OF THE SIEGE, 32 YEARS EARLIER.
“I think you must surrender, Lieutenant,” Casani said. “We can’t go on.”
It was exceptionally hot in the council chamber that afternoon. The stench of the city was sometimes relegated to the background because hunger took priority, but at other times it was hard for Hoffman to ignore. The smell of smoke from burning garbage and bodies was almost a relief.
Hoffman had lost twenty kilos; he was one of the luckier ones. And while he sympathized with Casani and the thousand or so citizens who’d died of dysentery, starvation, or simply taken their chances and fled over the walls, he had less intention of surrendering now than he’d ever had.
Anvil Gate had gone past the point of compromise. They said that throwing good money after bad was the hallmark of a fool. Hoffman’s defense of the fort had cost lives, but deciding now that it had all been a mistake simply pissed on their graves. If it had been worth any of their lives, then he’d die before he opened those gates to the UIR.
His orders were still to defend the fort. Nothing had changed. If he’d been told to hand it over, he suspected he would have stayed there alone, even though he now missed Margaret so much that he’d almost cried himself to sleep some nights. He could think of little else beyond ending—winning—the siege now.
“I never made you stay, Alderman,” he said.
“But we have no guarantee of a safe evacuation without your forces withdrawing too. That’s the offer on the table from the UIR. No compromise.”
“I can’t take that offer, and you know it.” Hoffman felt the responsibility for the fate of the civilians sitting squarely in his lap, refusing to budge. Whatever decision he took would be wrong. “I won’t be blackmailed by the UIR or anyone else.”
Casani looked terribly haggard. It was partly hunger, but probably mostly the ordeal of watching helplessly as his city fell apart so fast despite its long and defiant history. Hoffman had switched off some weeks ago, and only allowed himself to feel whatever he needed to keep his Gears alive. He hardly dared think of home. It just made matters worse.
And the rations store had been raided again.
It was impossible to keep the garrison thief-proof now because so many of the internal walls of the fort had been smashed by mortars. There had always been a loose and uncertain boundary between city and garrison anyway, but now it had vanished, and the honesty and trust it relied on had vanished too.
We’re all animals, deep down. And not so deep, either.
All the time that the ration packs had been disappearing in ones and twos, he was simply angry. But the Pesangs would go out and hunt some of the local wildlife to make up the shortfall. Now it had reached the stage where the thefts were compromising his Gears’ ability to fight, and everybody knew that the penalty for stealing essential supplies in wartime was death. The Kashkuris here might have thought that nobody really meant that, because this war had been a permanent fixture for three generations, but this was an extreme situation—not stealing paper clips, but robbing fighting Gears of food during a siege.
Hoffman meant it. He had to. He was letting his Gears down if he didn’t.
“Alderman, I’m not a diplomatic man,” he said. “The food thefts will stop. One way or another, they will stop. My Gears found a man with a pantry full of COG rations. Geril Atar.”
Casani had his chin resting on his fist, his mouth against his knuckles, looking halfway between prayer and trying to stay silent. Dust motes drifted in the shaft of sunlight that had managed to infiltrate the heavy drapes drawn against the heat of the sun. The place was airless. It felt as if the city was running out of oxygen as well as everything else.
“Atar has two children,” Casani said at last. “He’s a clerk. He’s not a traitor. Desperate, yes. A threat? He’s watching his family starve.”
Hoffman found himself about to suck in a breath to rage at Casani about what Gears had to do, and why they deserved to eat what little was set aside for them, and how the civilians had equal allocations according to their levels of activity. He was about to let rip on why taking food from a Gear endangered not only them but a widening circle that rippled outward. But as soon as the first word formed in his mouth, he knew that was irrelevant. All that mattered was doing what was necessary to stop it from happening again.
Should have done it from the start. My fault.
Hoffman knew that if he’d been Atar, he’d probably have done the same, but he wasn’t, and he had responsibilities to his men.
“We arrested him,” Hoffman said. “He admits he did it. Hard to deny, anyway. You know what I’m going to say next.”
“I’m not sure that I do, Lieutenant.”
“You’re the civil leader here. I expect you to carry out the lawful punishment.”
“Are you serious? Execute a man who’s starving to death anyway?”
“Your call, Alderman. If you won’t do it, I will.”
As soon as Hoffman said it, he knew he couldn’t climb down. The trigger was as good as pulled. Casani wouldn’t take any notice of him again, the thefts would continue, and things would spiral down even further. If anyone was going to come out this place alive, Hoffman had to keep control.
Casani sat back in his seat and started to argue, more to himself than to Hoffman. “What are we living for if we have no compassion? These are my neighbors. Friends. I can’t kill one to save others, even if it would achieve that.”
Hoffman cut him short. “You can take your people out of here. I’ll get a message to the Indies to let you go.” Hoffman watched the decision materialize in front of him. “If you head north, they’ll have a lot of trouble shelling a scattered crowd anyway. Many of you will make it. But if you stay here, you stay under COG law. Do you understand?”
Hoffman had simply run out of time and energy. He could only see the objective. He got up and hauled Casani to his feet, gripping his biceps, and pushed him toward the door. Atar was in a small side room down the corridor, guarded by Bai Tak.
The Pesang didn’t look at Hoffman as he pushed Casani in front of him to the door and opened it. Atar was sitting on a wooden chair with his head in his hands; thirtysomething, thinning dark hair, still looking tidy despite the privations. An ordinary guy—no more or less. He got up when Casani entered the room.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I had to do it.”
“I know,” Hoffman said, “I’m sorry as well. But you know what the stakes are.”
It had to be done quickly. Dragging it out was unfair to the man, and this wasn’t personal in any way. Maybe that made it worse. Hoffman put the pistol in Casani’s hand.
“Do i
t,” he said. “It’s the law.”
“I can’t. Not even a hearing? Not even a—”
“You don’t have a goddamn choice, Alderman.”
“How can I blame him? How can I say I wouldn’t do it myself? He’s watching his family die.”
Hoffman wondered if it was hunger that had cooled him down to this tick-over level. He saw the world very clearly, and it was like this; without minimum rations, his Gears wouldn’t be able to fight. They would die one way or another, but they had followed the rules, written and unwritten. This man hadn’t, however understandable his desperation.
Sam Byrne wouldn’t even let me bend the rules to get him and his wife and his unborn kid to safety. That’s a Gear. That’s a man. His life counts.
It didn’t really matter who pulled the trigger as long as the civilians understood that theft of food in this siege was a crime that had consequences. Hoffman took the sidearm back from Casani’s hand—always unsettling, that, touching a hand that wasn’t familiar—and checked the chamber again. He motioned Bai Tak to stand clear. Their eyes met for a moment, and Bai didn’t look shocked at all. He understood. This was survival.
Hoffman held the muzzle to Atar’s head. He wasn’t certain of the exact wording of the charge, but he knew it well enough, and there would be no appeal on technicalities.
“Geril Atar.” He felt an idiot intoning these legalities. What would a lawyer like Margaret think of his clumsy delivery? “You’ve admitted to an act of injurious theft as defined by the Military Emergency Measures Act, that by stealing rations intended for Coalition soldiers you endangered them and their ability to defend the COG. The penalty is death, and in the name of the Chairman of the Coalition of Ordered Governments, I shall now carry that out.”
Atar said nothing. Hoffman met his eyes, looked aside, and pulled the trigger.
He’d killed at close quarters before because that was what infantry did, but he’d never been an executioner. It felt strangely anticlimactic. Maybe that was the heat and the hunger, too. He lowered his weapon and tried to take in what he’d done.
I must talk to Pad. The thought kept going through Hoffman’s mind. Pad understands this. He says snipers do it in the cold of the moment, full awareness of the consequences of not killing the target, not a reaction to threat. He’ll explain it to me.
Casani was staring at the body on the floor, sobbing. Hoffman just wanted the civilians to know that the sentence had been carried out. If Casani wanted to say who did it, that was fine. The rations would be left alone, and his Gears would stand a chance of finishing the job here. There were thousands of other Gears depending on them doing that.
Hoffman knew his conscience would gnaw at him one day, but not half as much as if he hadn’t done it. He put the pistol back in his holster, beckoned to Bai, and called a medic to deal with the body.
“Tough, sah,” Bai said, following him down the corridor and out into the hot, stinking street. “You did right. Right don’t always feel good, though.”
“Thanks, Bai.” Hoffman had to blinker himself and simply look at the next objective. It surprised him that he could do that, but it was a detached kind of surprise, more a making of mental notes. “What have we got plenty of? What’s the one thing we actually have supplies of and haven’t used in this heat?”
Bai shrugged. There was almost nobody out on the street, and it was so quiet that Hoffman thought he could hear gunfire from across the mountains. The few Kashkuri sitting on their doorsteps or sweeping their paths just stared listlessly at the two Gears.
“Fuel?” Bai said.
“Got it in one. Get the platoon together, and round up the rest of the aldermen.”
“Sah, you thinking strange things?” Bai looked alarmed. “What are you planning?”
“Surrender,” Hoffman said. “Open the gates, and let the Indie bastards in.”
* * *
MAIN GUN EMPLACEMENT, ANVIL GATE.
Lau En and Naru Fel came back from reconnoitering the Indie lines at about two in the morning.
“Hoffman’s waiting,” Bai said. “Get a move on.”
“Has he gone nuts this time?” Lau asked. “Seriously. He’s not really going to hand over the fort to them, is he? He’s got orders.”
“Just tell him how many there are down there. He knows what he’s doing.”
Bai herded them into the small room that Hoffman used as a planning office, the one with the dead captain’s paintings still on the wall. Hoffman, Byrne, Evan, Pad, and Carlile were huddled around a desk poring over a street plan of the city.
“So?” Pad said. “How many for the fry-up? How many Indies?”
“About two hundred,” Lau said. “Very young, most.”
“Okay, we can probably get most of them inside the walls before we kick off.” Byrne was marking lines on the street plan. “It’s pretty basic, Lau. Most of this city is wood, except the gun emplacement and the structural things we need, so we’re going to burn it with them in it. We’ve got plenty of auto fuel and dry garbage loafing around. We soak everything with fuel, we rig a few flamethrowers, a few concealed gun positions, snipers, and then when they’re in, we block them in and ignite the materials simultaneously at multiple points. Rare, medium, or well-done.”
Bai knew roughly what Hoffman had planned, but he couldn’t quite work out how the Gears and the handful of civvies were going to escape being grilled along with the Indies.
Lau had obviously pondered this too. “How we get out?”
Carlile showed him on the street map.
“If we trap the bulk of them in this quarter, we won’t have to,” he said. “That’s almost one hundred percent wood structures, but the square here acts as a firebreak for the next block, and it’s all stone construction between this road and this one. We pull back to there, and if it gets really shitty, we go down into the tunnels and sit it out.”
Lau didn’t look convinced, but he wouldn’t argue, and neither would Bai. They’d come this far and they were going to make this work. Bai made a conscious effort not to think of Harua, but he didn’t manage it.
It’s not going to happen to me. I’ll survive this.
Hoffman hadn’t said a word. Bai wondered if the execution was starting to sink in. The lieutenant was staring at the map in that defocused way that said he wasn’t actually seeing it but rehearsing something in his head.
“I’d better do it now,” Hoffman said at last. “We need to know if the Indie offer is still on the table. Got a comms channel for them, Sam?”
Byrne picked up the headset and listened while tuning the dial. “I know they use this one,” he said. “Not encrypted, so I don’t know how fast they respond to it. If this doesn’t get their attention, we can just call Brigade on an open channel and let the Indies eavesdrop.”
Bai sat back on the nearest desk. Hoffman was pulling an ambush on the Indies, probably the only chance they had of surviving but he still seemed thoroughly ashamed to use a surrender to do it. He really did take things like honor so seriously that lying over something this important was beyond his limit. He was an honest man. Rude, even insulting sometimes. But you knew where you stood with him, and Bai put all his faith in him because of that.
Hoffman took a deep breath, which made his cheeks look even more hollow, and put the mike handset to his mouth.
“This is COG garrison Anvil Gate, Lieutenant Hoffman commanding, to any UIR call sign in range. Please respond. Anvil Gate to any UIR call signs. Over.”
Hoffman put his hand over his eyes and rested his elbow on the desk. It took a while for the response to come back, a polite and calm voice like someone who worked in a bank rather than an enemy who’d been shelling them for months.
“UIR Control Vasgar to Anvil Gate. This is Major Toly. Go ahead.”
“I need to evacuate the civilian population of Anvegad.” Hoffman sounded rough, and he wasn’t acting. It seemed to hit the spot with the Indies. “Does your offer of safe passage for them still stand???
?
“It does. But we demand the surrender of your garrison too.”
Hoffman waited for a beat of five, now staring ahead at the captain’s painting on the wall in front of him.
“I’ve got no other options left, Major,” he said at last. “If you let the civilians leave, I’ll open the gates and you can move in. But I won’t open them until the civvies are clear of the fort. Is that understood?”
“You have my word,” said the major.
Bai saw Hoffman wince. “Then I’ll start moving them out now. If I see the slightest movement toward them, if I hear one cough that makes me think it’s a rifle round, then the deal’s off.”
Hoffman put the radio mike back in its cradle. He turned to Byrne.
“You’re driving,” he said. “We can’t get them all in vehicles, but we can move the priorities. You take your wife, you fill the rest of that truck, and you drive east, okay?”
Byrne looked at Hoffman for a long while, licking his lips nervously. “Can’t do it,” he said. “Sorry, sir. I’ll put her on the truck. She can drive. But I’m not leaving the lads. Or you.”
Hoffman shut his eyes for a second.
“I could give you the crazy-bastard speech,” he said. “But I have to move fast. Last chance. Go. Please go, Sam. Go with your wife and kid. I want you to.”
“Yeah,” Pad said. “We all bloody do. Get going, mate. Now.”
Byrne shook his head. “No, it’s about me. I can’t run from this. I’m the platoon sergeant. That’s what I am. I’ll catch up with her later.”
Byrne didn’t give anyone a chance to carry on the argument. Hoffman just rolled his head, exhausted, and gestured to the door.
“Okay, let’s crack on with this. Lots of fuel to move. Clear the city street by street, remember. Any civvie who decides to stay—either they have a rifle or they take their chances.”
Bai and the rest of the Pesang squad started going around the houses on the west side of the city, banging on the doors and ushering people out. Some still wanted to stay put and needed persuading, but a lot of the men were former Gears anyway and wanted to fight. Bai wasn’t sure if they understood what would be left of Anvegad after the gates opened, but it was too late to have second thoughts about that now. He moved on, door-to-door.