“No, I didn’t save them all,” he said. “But I’m going to change things, and make sure I save everyone else in the future.”
Marcus looked up at him, that I-don’t-believe-you tilt of the head that was probably just bewilderment. Elain took his hand, and Adam’s.
“We can do all this on the doorstep,” she said, “or be like normal people and go sit down in the kitchen. Marcus, go get the drawing you did at school to show Daddy.”
Marcus went upstairs, all sensible sobriety, and disappeared along the landing. Elain squeezed Adam’s hand.
“He’s okay, darling,” she said. “He’s all very grown-up since he started school. But he’s got this thing about making sure he knows where I am and that I’m safe. It’ll pass now that you’re back.” She had that look, the one that said she was about to ask something she’d promised not to raise. “I know this isn’t the time to ask, but how long are you going to be home?”
Adam had made up his mind. He didn’t want anyone to misunderstand his motives. He’d had enough of the fighting, but it was a different kind of disgust, one that would change things instead of just turning his back on them while other men and women couldn’t.
I don’t want anyone to think I’m a coward. I don’t want Marcus to think that, most of all. This is for him, too, because I’m damned if I’ll see him lined up and used as a Gear.
“I’m not going back,” Adam said. He’d rehearsed how he would justify his decision, in case Elain thought he was too scared to fight. “I’m going to take that post at the DRA. Weapons research. Because nobody in this day and age should fight wars by walking infantry into battle or firing damn hundred-year-old cannons or starving each other to death in sieges. There will be deterrents. There will be weapons that mean politicians stupid enough to carry on this war are going to face the same risk of dying as the men and women they send to fight it. I’m going to create those weapons. I’ll make these ghastly little demagogues think twice.”
Adam meant that like he’d meant his marriage vows. It was absolute, an oath, and he would live it. He could feel his pulse pounding in his throat. Elain just looked at him, tears in her eyes, and smiled.
“You will,” she said. “Damn right, you will, Doctor Fenix.”
“Just Major,” he said. “My promotion came through. But it won’t change my mind.” He took the torn page of newspaper from his pocket and held it up for her. All the promotions were published in the press. “See? Second paragraph.”
Elain read it. “Good grief, so many Royal Tyrans. You have to leave some glory for the other poor regiments, Adam. Oh, look—Helena Stroud, Captain. She’s going to make General. Count on it.”
Adam took the page back and smiled. Helena was welcome to as much gold braid as she wanted.
He noted, too, that Lieutenant Victor Hoffman, 26 RTI, had been promoted to Captain and decorated with the Sovereign’s Medal for his defense of the Anvil Gate garrison. Adam wondered just what that unlucky man had endured for so little reward, and if he’d ever meet him to ask that question.
CHAPTER 20
I did you a favor. I knew you would be torn. The COG took away your natural sense of justice and replaced it with a rule book to deal with people who respect no rules. What are two more executions to Gorasnaya? Retribution. What are two more to you? A dilemma you cannot handle.
(MIRAN TRESCU, EXPLAINING TO VICTOR HOFFMAN WHY HE TOOK THE UNAUTHORIZED DECISION TO EXECUTE MIKAIL AND NIAL ENADOR)
ROAD TO VECTES NAVAL BASE, PRESENT DAY: STORM, 15 A.E.
“He’s probably just gone off somewhere,” Anya said. “We’d have found the body if he’d been killed.”
Bernie slowed the Packhorse to ten klicks because that was the speed limit through the camp, but there was nothing to run down anyway. The devastation shocked her. It looked like the Stranded camp on the coast after they’d torched every last hut to stop the COG getting so much as firewood from it.
“Sorry, ma’am.” Bernie tried to concentrate on the mike in her hand. “He’s not a running-away kind of dog, but you’re right–polyps don’t haul off prey and lay up with it. As far as we know.”
“We’ll keep looking. Soon as he shows, I’ll call.”
“Thanks, ma’am. Mataki out.”
The world was going to hell again, and yet the thing that worried her most was a lost dog. She wasn’t sure if that made her insane, insensitive, or smarter than most. But animals were easier to love than humans. The thought of the poor little bugger lying hurt somewhere or just hiding in terror upset her.
But he’s an attack dog. He won’t piss himself and run. He’s been hurt. Killed. I let him down. He trusted me, and I wasn’t there for him.
“That’s what you get for not securing him yourself, you stupid cow,” she said aloud. “Never trust anyone else to do the important things for you.”
She parked the Packhorse in the compound and noticed that the rat bike was already there. Sam must have burned through the woods, because she hadn’t overtaken Bernie on the way back. There was a sense of urgency everywhere. It was reassuring in some ways, because she’d been certain that another setback like this would kill morale in New Jacinto stone-dead. There were only so many times you could stand looking at ruins and vow to rebuild.
Whatever else the bastards say about us—the COG doesn’t give up easy.
But there were no bastards left, not unless you counted the Stranded now scattered to the four winds. The world she lived in was now wholly COG. Even Gorasnaya had settled grudgingly into it like some argumentative but ultimately reliable ally.
To the west side of the base, there was a brand-new sea view and a lot less dry land. It was a big, vulnerable gap in the defenses.
Bernie worked her way across the parade ground, skirting the cordoned-off crevasses and subsidence, and tried to take in a new coastline. Bricks from one of the broken buildings clinging to the cliff were still toppling into the sea as she watched. The massive guns were gone. But it was nothing new. Ephyra had been ripped up and demolished on a daily basis too. She’d just started to think that it was all slowly improving.
Should have known better.
The barracks blocks were heaving with displaced civvies. Her quarters were taken but she couldn’t work up enough energy to be pissed off about it. Everything she owned was in her backpack anyway, so she was suddenly plunged back into the nomadic state she’d existed in for years on her long journey back to Jacinto. There was a vague comfort to it, the knowledge that she could just get up and go if she really had to. She could even sail out of here.
But I can’t do that to Vic. Not now.
Control had moved to the infirmary wing. She reported in and Mathieson gave her a meaningful jerk of the head to indicate a meeting was taking place in the next room.
“Don’t wander away too far, Sergeant—the Colonel wants to see you.”
“Is he going to be long?” She draped her arm on her slung Lancer. “I was planning on getting my hair done, you see.”
Mathieson wasn’t used to her. The look on his face told her he wasn’t sure if she was joking or not. Her armor was filthy with polyp fluids, her arms were covered in scratches and bruises, and she was sure she stank of smoke, dog, and cordite. Mathieson broke into a smile a fraction at a time.
“He’s in with Trescu and Michaelson.”
“The triumvirate.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because there’s three of them, sir.”
“I mean—never mind. Where are you going to be?”
“Sergeants’ mess. Unless you’ve got new tasking for me.”
“No, go get yourself a coffee and clean up. I’ve lost track of who needs an extra pair of hands until Major Reid gets back.”
The mess—a couple of basement rooms, one of which had been an ice store—was deserted, and there wasn’t any coffee. She poured herself a glass of the rum that the locals made from sugar beets and settled at the bar, chin resting on her hand. Eventually sh
e heard Hoffman’s boots approaching at his usual fierce pace and wondered how to open the conversation this time.
He just stared at her for a moment.
“Shit, woman, you look like death warmed up.”
“You always did know how to make a girl feel special, Vic.”
He gave her a pat on the back, typically awkward, and then relented and put his arms around her. It went beyond affection. It felt more like he hadn’t expected to see her alive again, a really desperate, crushing hug.
“Okay, what’s wrong?”
He tried to force a laugh, very un-Hoffman. “What isn’t?”
“Tell me you’ve not assassinated Prescott.”
She was joking, or at least she thought she was.
“Look, there’s something I’ve got to show you,” Hoffman said.
“There’s nobody else I can talk to about this.”
“You’re scaring me now, Vic.”
Hoffman perched onto the bar stool next to her and slid something out of his breastplate. It was a data disk. He held it up between his forefinger and middle finger for her inspection like it was a cigar he was about to light. “Tell me what this is.”
“Not the payroll details, judging by your face.”
“I don’t know what the hell’s on it. All I know is that it’s encrypted, none of the COG Command keys can open it, and Prescott didn’t want me to see it.”
“Where did you get it?”
“I broke into his desk.”
“Well, bugger me. Honest Vic joins the fallible human race.”
“What’s so secret now that he couldn’t tell me when we were going down for the third time?”
“He’s the kind of man who thinks the time of day is classified information. It could be anything.”
Hoffman gazed at the disk as if it was going to combust if he stared at it long enough. “I really need to find out what’s on here.”
“Ask him. Go on, have it out with him, once and for all. I’ll back you up. I’m bloody sure Marcus will, too.”
“Had the chance.” Hoffman drummed his fingers on the bar for a moment. “Failed.”
Hoffman folded his arms on the bar and rested his forehead on them for a moment. It was a rare lapse for him, a naked moment of weary vulnerability. Bernie struggled to think what Prescott might be up to. There were no secrets left in the world worth keeping, unless the Chairman had discovered a secret stash of coffee he was hoarding for himself. All the things that governments fretted about were beyond irrelevance now.
“Give it to Blondie,” she said. She hated to see him ground down like this. “He’ll be into that in no time. But just ask yourself what you’ll do when you find out what he’s hiding. You might not want to know.”
“Whatever else I screw up, I always know how to pick a sensible woman.”
“I’ll do now, will I?” It just slipped out. She wanted him to understand that he’d hurt her all those years ago and that while she might have forgiven, she hadn’t completely forgotten. “Last game in town?”
“Look, I’m not proud of how I treated you. But I’ve grown up. I’m sorry.”
“We’re sixty years old, Vic—it’s about bloody time.” She regretted it as soon as she said it, and knew she’d made her point. “And talking of secrets, are you ever going to finish telling me about Anvil Gate, or do I have to wait for your memoirs?”
Bernie had tried patience and sympathy. She’d dragged the story out of him a line at a time, but been interrupted or thwarted so often in the last few weeks that she wondered if she was meant to know the truth. Her best chance now was to provoke him.
“No. No, you don’t.” Hoffman reached for her glass, and she thought he was going to drink what she’d left, but instead he pushed it away to the far end of the bar. “Let’s finish that story right now. Every last damn word of it.”
VECTES NAVAL BASE WORKSHOPS: NEXT DAY.
It was definitely a day for telling the truth.
Hoffman felt as if a few years and a ton or two had lifted from him as he walked through the workshops in search of Baird. He’d never been sure if Bernie would stare at him in disgust when he told her the full story of Anvegad. But she’d nodded, said she would have done the same to the Indie officer, and agreed that the Kashkuri guy had got what was coming. For some reason, she didn’t seem to understand that it was the Indie officer who haunted him, not the Kashkuri.
She’d also asked him if Sam knew her father had turned down the chance to escape with her mother. Bernie cared about those things. She’d been the one who finally told Dom how his brother Carlos had died. She knew what a tough call it was to decide whether to burden someone with the truth about a loved one, good or bad.
No, I never told Sheraya. So Sam probably doesn’t know, either. And Pad didn’t tell her, because he told me so.
And where the hell did he go? Is he still alive?
Samuel Byrne’s decision was one of those things that would either be too painful to bear knowing or a precious revelation, and Hoffman had never known which. It was time he found out. He was the last man around who knew the sacrifice Byrne had made. That was something to be remembered and honored, not some dirty secret to be taken to the grave.
There were dirty secrets, but he wasn’t going to bury those, either. He held Prescott’s data disk gripped tightly in his fist. The workshops were big, echoing spaces that smelled of old oil and burning rubber, and today they were busy, full of people trying to salvage or repair what they could from various ships and vehicles. The hammering and drilling of metal hurt his ears. He tried to avert his eyes from the searing white welding arcs.
“You’ll go deaf if you keep doing that,” he yelled.
Baird’s blond head popped up from the engine compartment of a Packhorse. He wasn’t wearing ear defenders. Cole was. He winked conspiratorially and took them off.
Baird straightened up and wiped his hands on a rag. “If it’s about your limo, Colonel, it’s going to take me some weeks to get around to emptying the ashtray.”
“Goddamn it,” Hoffman muttered. He liked Baird’s acid side as long as he followed orders. “You’ll just have to do something else to avert my wrath, then, Corporal.”
“Okay, my staggering range of skills is all yours.”
Hoffman debated whether to involve Cole in this. Knowledge put pressure on everyone. Baird would have to do a mucky job and keep it quiet from his best buddy, and Hoffman felt he owed Delta more than that. He couldn’t bitch about Prescott’s lack of candor if he didn’t practice what he preached. But he was also compromising these men by even mentioning the disk to them.
“You can say no to this, Baird.”
“If you’re trying to psych me up to say yes …”
“I’ve got an encrypted disk that none of the COG codes can open. And I shouldn’t have it.”
Baird got a look in his eye just like that damn dog did when Bernie said “Seek!” He loved this shit. He didn’t just enjoy solving puzzles; he needed to solve them before anyone else could. He took comfort and identity from being the smartest kid in the class.
“Well, that narrows it down,” he said.
“Prescott knows I’ve got it.” Hoffman dropped his voice as far as he could in the pounding, scraping, drilling cacophony around them. “That’s why you can walk away from this without any stain on your technical manhood. You too, Cole. You don’t have to get involved in this shit.”
Baird laid down the wrench. “Nice psyops, Colonel. You’ve got my undivided attention. Hand it over.”
“What’s Prescott gonna do about it?” Cole picked up the discarded wrench and continued working where Baird had left off. “Bust you down to private?”
“Better wash my hands,” Baird said. “Don’t want to leave any fingerprints.”
Hoffman shoved the disk into Baird’s belt. “I don’t know if it’s urgent or not. Might just be embarrassing pictures from his wild youth, if he had one.”
“I’ll be in my exe
cutive suite,” said Baird, and strode off.
Hoffman paused a moment to look for a reaction on Cole’s face. Cole just raised an eyebrow and went on tinkering with the battered Packhorse.
“I’ll let Marcus and Dom know what’s going on,” Hoffman assured him. “But I don’t want everyone knowing that the Chief of Staff’s been reduced to stealing data from the Chairman. Not good for morale. We’ve got to at least look as if it’s a united front.”
“Understood.” Cole frowned at the Packhorse as if he was changing the subject. “Baird makes this shit look easy. Damned if I know what’s wrong with this thing.”
“The man’s gifted. Don’t know what we’d do without him.”
“You ever tell him that? He’d appreciate it, sir, even if he gives you a load of bullshit about how he don’t care what anyone thinks.”
That was typical Cole. Hoffman gave him a slap on the shoulder. “Yeah, just for you, Cole. I’ll give him half an hour before I go find him. He’ll have it cracked by then and I can tell him what a smart boy he is.”
Walking around for a while was a good thing to do right now. People needed to see the top brass out and about, doing something useful or at least looking like they were. It also gave Hoffman quiet thinking time. By the time he’d covered the distance from the workshops to the edge of the Gorasni camp, he’d worked out that he was going to offer to tell Sam about her father, and give her the choice of whether to hear it. It was all too much like Dom’s situation. There was no painless way to tell someone their dead loved one had done something heroic and sacrificial. It would always be bittersweet.
The Gorasni refugees paused in their cleanup operation to watch Hoffman for a few moments, more curious than suspicious now, as if Trescu had put out the word that the COG bastard wasn’t wholly bad and didn’t need to be shot on sight. It was progress of a kind. Yanik waved to him as he went by. It seemed churlish not to acknowledge the man.