Elizabeth Moon
Rules of Engagement
In memory of the victims of the Jarrell, Texas, tornado, May 27, 1997, and especially Brandi Nicole Smith and Stacy Renee Smith, and their mother, Cynthia L. Smith.
Acknowledgements
The usual suspects (you know who you are . . . ), with special thanks to Ellen McLean and Mary Morell for helping with the psychology behind the pathology. Mary managed to read the first draft and make intelligent comments even as the rain poured down, the roof leaked, and a dead mouse turned up in the guest room. This is heroic manuscript help. Diann Thornley let me pick her brain about what kinds of things are taught in junior officers’ leadership courses. Ruta Duhon helped me think through one of the final bits of excitement over lunch one day, probably because she was tired of hearing me complain that I was stuck. Anna Larsen and Toni Weisskopf each contributed a specific nudge to the emotional side of the plot. Kathleen Jones and David Watson took on the task of “cold reading” the final draft aloud, and did it in just a few days. Their comments markedly improved the new final draft. Debbie Kirk, as always, found more typos than anyone else and gently nudged my erratic spelling back toward consistency. Certain anecdotes contributed by persons who asked not to be named added grit to the fictional reality.
Special mention must be made of the bits of Texana which decorate this story. Some are real (other Texans know which), some are fictional, some are Texas mythology of the future. The misappropriation and distortion of Texas history and traditions by characters in the book does not in any way represent my attitude towards that history or those traditions. Readers with a knowledge of history and a sense of irony may be amused by the juxtaposition of certain characters’ surnames; the intended references all predate the 20th century. (It was tempting, but not that tempting, to play in contemporary Texas politics.) Any coincidence of name is purely accidental. The movements mentioned as ancient history in the text are, however unfortunately, alive and sick in the 20th century; it would be not only useless but dishonest to pretend that the New Texas Godfearing Militia did not derive its nature from elements all too close to home, in Waco, Fort Davis, and even Oklahoma City.
Chapter One
Halfway up the cliff, Brun realized that someone was trying to kill her. She had already shifted weight from her left foot to her right foot when the thought penetrated, and she completed the movement, ending with her left foot on the tiny ledge almost at her crotch, before she gave her brain a “message received” signal.
Instantly, her hands slicked with sweat, and she lost the grip of her weaker left hand on the little knob. She dipped it into her chalk, and reached for the knob again, then chalked her right hand and refound that hold. That much was mechanical, after these days in training . . . so someone was trying to kill you, you didn’t have to help them by doing something stupid.
She argued with herself, while pushing up, releasing her right leg for the next move. Of course, in a general way, someone was trying to kill her, or any other trainee. She had known that coming in. Better to lose trainees here than half-trained personnel in the field, where their failure would endanger others. Her breath eased, as she talked herself into a sensible frame of mind. Right foot there, and then the arms moving, finding the next holds, and then the left leg . . . she had enjoyed climbing almost from the first day of training.
A roar in her ears and the sudden sting on her hand: she was falling before she had time to recognize the noise and the pain. A shot. Someone had shot at her . . . hit her? Not enough pain—must’ve been rock splinters—then she hit the end of her rope, and swung into the cliff face with a force that knocked the breath out of her. Reflexively, her hands and feet caught at the rock, sought grips, found them, took her weight off the climbing harness. Her head rang, still; she shook it and the halves of her climbing helmet slid down to hang from the straps like the wing cases of a crushed beetle.
Damn . . . she thought. Reason be damned, someone was trying to kill her—her in particular—and plastered to a cliff in plain sight was not her idea of a good place to be when someone was shooting at her. She glanced around quickly. Up—too far, too slow, too exposed. Down—150 feet of falling in a predictable vertical line, whether free or on the rope. To the right, nothing but open rock. To the left, a narrow vertical crack. They had been told not to use it this time, but she’d climbed in it before, learning about cracks and chimneys. If she could get there . . .
She pushed off, and the next shot hit the cliff where her head had been, between head and right hand. Splinters of rock sprayed her hand, the right side of her face. She did not fall. She lunged for the next hold, not in a panic but with the controlled speed of someone who knew just where each hold would be. Whoever it was had some reason not to fire on automatic, at full speed. But now they knew which way she was going. They could adjust their aim . . . she took a chance, and her foot slipped on one hold. For an instant, she hung from her arms, feet scrabbling . . . then she found the hold, and the next. The sheltering crevice was just ahead—this time it was her left hand that slipped, when she reached too far, and even as she cursed, the next shot shattered the hold for which she’d reached, loosing a shower of rock.
She didn’t hesitate. The breakage offered new holds; in a second she was into the crevice, yanking hard on the rope for more, for enough to move into deeper cover. What she hoped the shooter didn’t know was alignment of the crevice. Here, she was as vulnerable as on the cliff face, apparently held in a vertical groove. But the forces which had made the crevice had produced an almost spiral fracture. Not ten feet above she could be safely hidden from the shooter.
The rope from below dragged at her. No more slack. They hadn’t understood . . . or were they part of the plot? She yanked again, unsuccessfully.
Mitchell Langston Pardue, Ranger Bowie of the New Texas Godfearing Militia on Our Texas, sat in his heavy carved chair and waited for the Captain to finish reading his report. He stroked the carving on the right arm—supposed to resemble the Old Texas animal called a dilla, whatever that had been—and thought how he could imply that the Captain was an idiot without actually saying so.
“Mitch, you payin’ attention?” Pete Robertson, Ranger Travis and Captain of Rangers, had a querulous waver in his voice that made Mitch want to slap him upside the head with something heavy. He was getting old, with a wattled neck like a turkey gobbler.
“You bet, Captain,” he said. “You say we need about thirty more of them nukes from Familias Regnant’s space fleet, in order to top up the first depot. Your timetable for hittin’ the Guernesi is runnin’ behind a little . . .”
“It’s stopped in its tracks like a mule in a swamp,” the Captain said. “An’ if we wait too long, they won’t make the connection we want.” The Guernesi had reacted with vigor to the theft of a shipload of tourists, and had gotten them back, though with casualties. Then they’d imposed a trade embargo, and blown up a couple of ships to make their point that they held a grudge about the ones who had died. “We’ve gotta get more weapons. And there’s somethin’ wrong with our main agent at their space fleet headquarters—the last signal we got from him makes no sense.”
“He’s gettin’ old, though,” Sam Dubois, Ranger Austin said. “He’s had one of them proscribed procedures . . .”
“He was rejuvenated,” Mitch said, using the correct term. “They started rejuvenating their most senior NCOs about ten, fifteen years ago, and he’s one of ’em. If they hadn’t, likely we wouldn’t have got anythin’ from him.”