The General suppressed a smile. “I think we can manage that.”
25
Benderville
Oilfields Coast
Northwind
February 3134; dry season
The recon force set out the next morning from Benderville. The encampment began stirring into motion a couple of hours before the usual time, while the sky was dark, with only a pearly glow of coming sunrise along the inland horizon. As Sergeants, Will, Jock, and Lexa were all awake in the early-early. They stood by the supply truck drinking flash-heated tea—strong and sweet with sugar and condensed milk—from their mess cups prior to waking the rest of the infantry.
“Responsibility,” said Lexa, yawning widely, “is a bitch. Last to bed and first awake and behaving myself all the time to set a good example… why did I let you talk me into letting them promote me like this?”
“Because you trust me to have your best interests at heart?”
“Lemme think about it.” She paused for a moment, then shook her head. “Nah. Can’t be.”
Jock said, “It was the uniform—you couldn’t resist him in it. I could see you looking at him and drooling.”
“Go on. As if I’d take a chance on losing a perfectly good buddy that way.” She finished the last of her tea. “Must have done it out of the kindness of my heart. Somebody has to teach the new kids which end of the laser rifle the pretty red light comes out of.”
“That’d be you, all right,” said Will. He looked at his watch. “Time to wake the children up for breakfast.”
He and his fellow Sergeants began moving among the soldiers huddled in their sleeping bags. “Wakey wakey,” he chanted as he passed from one drowsing bundle to the next. “We’re burning daylight.”
The harangue was a familiar one from his days in Basic Training, though he’d never expected to find himself on the delivering end of it. Jock’s voice, coming from further off, provided a rumbling echo, punctuated by Lexa’s cheerfully obscene exhortations from over on the other side of the camp: “…and pull on your socks! Save it for Fort Barrett, boys, we’ve got work to do.”
After a hurried breakfast of hot tea and cold rations, the task force began to move out. The Balac Strike VTOLs went first, rising from the ground in swirls of dust to head out in the day’s search pattern, one VTOL covering inland, and one the seaward sector. As they climbed they dwindled to bright dots against the pink sky of dawn, catching the light of the rising sun like a pair of fast-moving morning stars.
The aircraft would be ranging ahead of the column, on the track suggested by last night’s encounter. Will hoped that the boy had given a fair representation of the truth. He hadn’t acted like a liar, but even the most truthful of youngsters wasn’t above shading or coloring a tale, sometimes not even on purpose.
The noise of the lifting VTOLs faded, and was replaced with the sound of other engines stirring to life: the troop trucks, the scout cars, the Joust tank, the General’s Koshi. Will saw the last of his squad onto their Shandra scouting vehicles, then mounted up himself.
The graded dirt road south of Benderville dwindled in short order to a rutted track, the sandy ground to either side held in place—barely—by sparse brown grass. A hot wind blew out of the coastal interior. Sand came with it, stinging against bare skin, drifting into the folds of cloth and bends of flesh, sifting down into the cracks of instruments and machinery. As the day wore on, the constant sand and grit would be worsened by the passage of the task force’s vehicles, and by the heavy footsteps of the Koshi. Will thought longingly of the hot showers in Fort Barrett; he knew that by evening he would be grateful for the chance to sluice himself off with a bucket of lukewarm water.
“Another lovely day at the seashore,” he said to the squad corporal, over the rumble of the Shandras’ engines. “Just remember, there’s daft folk in the big city who’ll pay good money for an experience like this.”
26
The New Barracks; Tyson and Vanvey ’Mech Factory
Tara
Northwind
February 3134; local winter
Ezekiel Crow woke up scared.
He had returned to his own quarters, at the close of the previous evening’s interlude with Tara Campbell, in a state of such near-euphoria that he had been hard-put not to show it. It would not have done at all for a Paladin of the Sphere to have been caught laughing aloud in delight as he walked through the halls of the visiting officers’ quarters. The same elevated mood had carried him off into a sleep filled with pleasant dreams.
The next morning, however, brought with it an emotion close enough to terror to leave him shaking. He had not realized the extent of his self-imposed isolation until part of it went away. It was as if he had been living behind walls of thick glass that muted everything outside. Now a window had opened, letting in a world of sight and sound and smell more intense than he had ever believed existed.
Distracted and thoughtful, he made himself tea in the kitchen nook, standing barefoot in his black pajamas and measuring out the tea leaves with careful hands. When the water sang in the kettle, he poured it over the leaves in the pot and waited, brooding, while they steeped.
He was not certain that he could handle this. He had ideals, he had goals, he had a hard-bought knowledge of all the things that needed to be done—things that those who were currently supposed to do them weren’t doing well, and sometimes weren’t doing at all. None of the careful plans he’d worked out over the years since his first life died in the rubble of Chang-An had taken into account something like this.
He didn’t know if it could last. He didn’t know if he should want it—if he should even allow it—to last. His life had no room in it for hostages to fortune. He had worked hard over the years to keep himself unattached—to people, to places, to anything—for the sake of the freedom of action that comes from having nothing to lose.
All would be well, even now, if only he hadn’t been made aware of everything that he was missing.
He took a clean cup from the cabinet. Like the teapot, it was of inexpensive local make, its appearance plain bordering on ugly. He’d bought the tea set when he came here, and he would leave it behind when he left. No hostages; no attachments.
He poured a cup of the fragrant tea and drank it slowly, still thinking. When he was done, he set the cup aside and went over to the communications console. There he typed in a message to Tara Campbelclass="underline"
My lady—
Please do not take it amiss that I am out of touch today. I find I must go inspect the ’Mech conversion program in place at Tyson and Varney. It would be lamentable if a hitherto excellent and reliable firm were to begin slacking off for lack of supervision. Believe me when I say that I am looking forward to speaking with you again this evening, after the day’s work is finished.
Respectfully,
Ezekiel Crow
He sent the message, then proceeded to wash and dress and put on clothing for the day. He wore his usual plain civilian clothes; they helped to keep him unnoticed and out of trouble.
That done, he headed out in the direction of Tyson and Varney, where the plant manager was surprised to get an unscheduled visit from Northwind’s current Paladin-in-Residence. Nevertheless, he happily took Ezekiel Crow on a tour of the hangar where the next generation of battle-modified IndustrialMechs was under construction. As Crow had expected—in spite of having deliberately implied otherwise in his letter to Tara Campbell—everything at the factory continued on track and in order.
Over tea and sandwiches in the plant’s executive cafeteria after the inspection, Crow gratified the manager by praising Tyson and Varney’s good work, and by promising to take any of their concerns to the Prefect. The manager, beaming with relief at what he assumed to have been a narrow escape, was inclined to be chatty.