She set the container carefully on the helmet they’d liberated from the Presidential Guard, sitting on the floor beside her. They were running desperately short of food, right along with everything else, and she didn’t want an incautious foot knocking it over while it cooled. Then she ran both hands through her short, oily, dirty hair and closed her eyes, and her expression darkened with the despair she would never have let anyone else see.
Not that the confidence she still tried so hard to project was fooling anyone. Not after the last week.
She winced as her hand brushed the cut on her temple and the angry, swollen bruise that covered the right side of her face. Those were souvenirs of the same bitter skirmish which had cost her her mess kit. And it had cost her Carlton Carmichael, too.
Her expression crumbled, tears flowing slowly down her cheeks, as her brain replayed that hideous moment with merciless clarity. The Solarian Gendarmes dropping on them without warning. The breaching charge opening the roof of her cellar command post. The crackle and hiss of pulser darts. The explosion of grenades. She’d killed two of the Gendarmes, punching the darts from her Solarian-built pulse rifle through their body armor at point-blank range as they plummeted through the cellar’s shattered roof, but most of her command group had been down already. She’d gotten a third as she turned toward the preplanned escape route, but then the lump of ceramacrete, blown from the wall by enemy fire, hit her in the face. She’d gone down, her face covered in blood, and she’d heard a voice—one with an off-world accent—shouting her name.
“Alive, goddamn it! The facial-rec says that’s Blanchard, and we fucking well want her alive!”
The Gendarmes’ fire had ceased almost instantly, and she’d fumbled for her sidearm—not to fight, but to disappoint that voice—but she’d been so weak, so dazed. She couldn’t seem to find the pulser butt and feet were crunching through the rubble towards her. They were going to—
Then the sound of fresh pulserfire had filled the cellar once more. Someone had charged across her, counterattacking from the escape route. More screams, more explosions. Somebody jerking her up out of the rubble, flinging her over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry, and Carlton’s voice shouting.
“Get her out of here! Get her the hell out of here! Fall back to—”
She would never forget the horrible suddenness with which that voice cut off.
It’s over, she thought bleakly. We’re done. We came so frigging close, but we’re done.
She covered her face with her hands, eyes closed as she fought the sobs. If they’d only been able to crack Lombroso’s final perimeter. If they’d had him—and the goddamned Trifecta execs—in their custody when Yucel and her butchers arrived! But they hadn’t. All they’d had was the support of three-quarters of the planetary population. All they’d had was the right of men and women to die for what they believed in. And that hadn’t been enough when Yucel’s warships started killing towns and cities from orbit.
They’d taken out six of them in a single, tightly sequenced wave of kinetic energy weapons. Close to half a million dead in the space of less than fifteen minutes. There’d been no surrender demands, no warnings to allow the evacuation of noncombatants. There’d been only incandescent lines of fire shrieking down through the nighttime skies and fireballs rising at their kiss, fiery with vaporized human lives and hope. And after the mushroom clouds dissipated, President Lombroso had taken to the air waves to blame their destruction on the MLF and call on every “right-thinking” Mobian to turn upon the terrorists who’d driven the system’s lawful government to such draconian tactics as the only way to end their bloody campaign of murder and destruction.
Breitbart had pulled their people out of every other city and town after that, both to disperse them as targets and as the only way he could “defend” Mobius’ urban population. He’d even considered surrendering…until Yucel and Yardley changed his mind by publicly hanging two hundred Liberation Front fighters who had surrendered. After that, all any of the others had thought about was how many of the bastards on the other side they could kill before they died.
At least we’re still too frigging close to Trifecta’s precious real estate for them to drop any more KEWs on us, she thought. She scrubbed her face fiercely with the heels of her hands, wiping away the tears, then forced them back down, reaching for the cooling can of beans with her right hand. Michael was right about that. They aren’t going to flatten any more of the good side of Landing than they can help. And it’s not like they aren’t going to finish us off even the hard way in another couple of days.
The last pockets of resistance here in Landing might last as much as another week. Maybe even ten days. It couldn’t be much longer than that. She hoped at least some of the regional cells might be able to go to ground—survive, at least, even if all their hopes for Mobius’ future had been crushed. But the writing was on the wall here in the capital. And even if any of the dispersed cells survived, the entire central cadre was gone.
Another tear trickled, and she blotted it angrily with her free hand. Breitbart had made her his field commander because he’d realized how much better at that she was. But he hadn’t expected his “field commander” to order him out of the city. He’d argued—violently—against “running away,” but she’d been adamant. He was the one who’d built the MLF in the first place. He was the only hope of ever rebuilding it, and however faint that hope might be, it was all they truly had. And so, finally, manifestly against his will, he’d agreed to get out of the perimeter, contact one of the cells they thought was still uncompromised outside Landing.
But he never made it, either, she thought, shoveling some of the still just-too-hot-for-comfort beans into her mouth. God, I wonder if he’s even still alive?
She chewed methodically, making herself fuel the body she didn’t expect to need very much longer. At least—
The door popped open, spilling light into the barren room, and Danny Gibson burst through it.
“Kayleigh! Kayleigh!”
“What?” she demanded a bit indistinctly, then swallowed her current mouthful. “What is it?” she asked more clearly.
“There’s somebody on the com! Somebody asking for Michael. I think you’d better talk to her.”
He held out his hand, and she took the handheld she’d left with the three surviving members of her command group while she snatched a little desperately needed sleep. Breitbart had left that com behind when he set out to wiggle through the Gendarme/Presidential Guard checkpoints because it had been used for too many of the Liberation Front’s communiqués before the Sollies arrived. Being caught with it in his possession would have earned an instant pulser dart in the ear, and Blanchard had issued two communiqués of her own—as Commander Alpha—since his capture in the faint hope that it would convince Lombroso and Yucel that “Commander Alpha” was still in the field, and not in their soccer-stadium prison cage.
Now she crouched over the tiny display and blinked. A young woman looked up out of it. She wore a uniform Blanchard didn’t recognize, but it definitely wasn’t Solarian.
“Ms. Blanchard?” she said in a crisp accent Blanchard had never heard before.
“Yes,” she confirmed warily, wondering what kind of trick Yucel and Yardley had come up with this time. It might be something as simple as triangulating on “Commander Alpha’s” com, she thought, but somehow that seemed less alarming than it might have been if there’d been any hope of surviving in the end.
“Please hold a moment,” the younger woman said, and disappeared, replaced by a wallpaper that showed some weird golden, bat-winged, scorpion-tailed lion on a five-sided red patch. It looked vaguely familiar, although she wondered what the creature might be. She started trying to chase down the elusive almost-memory, but before her weary brain got very far, another face appeared. This one was male, considerably older, with blond hair, icy blue eyes, and a neatly clipped beard.
“Ms. Blanchard,” he said, “I’m Commodore Aivars Alexso
vitch Terekhov, Royal Manticoran Navy. We’re here in response to Ms. Summers’ message.”
* * *
Michael Breitbach sat on the lowest tier of seating, staring out over the squalid, filthy confines of Svein Lombroso Memorial Soccer Stadium. The once immaculate playing fields had long since been trampled into mud by the thousands of civilians confined in it, and the stench was incredible.
It made an excellent prison, he thought…as long as no one cared particularly what happened to the prisoners. The Gendarmerie intervention battalions and what remained of the Presidential Guard didn’t. The fact that none of the horde of men, women, and children in the stadium had been proven guilty of supporting the MLF meant nothing. Anyone who had been proven guilty—or who even looked like he might be guilty—never made it to the stadium in the first place. There were plenty of impromptu firing squads and mass-produced scaffolds to deal with people like them. They’d get around to sorting out their other prisoners eventually, and if they lost a few—or a few hundred—to lack of sanitation, disease, or exposure first, that only meant they’d have fewer to sort.
He turned his head, looking up at the towering seats around the stadium’s perimeter. The “nosebleed seats,” he thought. That was what people always called them, but they were the best ones in the house at the moment. That was where the Solarian Gendarmes stood with their pulse rifles and their tribarrels, gazing contemptuously down on the hapless Mobians below them. It was absurdly easy to guard a prison like this. Just seal all the ground-level entries and exits, and then ring it with guard posts and heavy weapons emplaced all around its rim.
He looked away again. He was astounded, frankly, that he’d made it to the stadium, but he was under no illusions about what would happen ultimately. In fact, he’d considered identifying himself when he was captured—or at least claiming membership in the MLF—as a way to make sure that what he knew about any surviving MLF cells died with him. But if he had, it might have made them wonder why he’d done something so suicidal and led to the very interrogation he needed above all things to avoid. He’d already figured out three different ways to kill himself when they finally got around to emptying the stadium and processing its inmates. In the meantime, though, he was perversely determined to stay alive as long as possible. It probably meant nothing, in the end, but it was the only defiance he had left, and—
The shockwave shattered the enormous HD screens at either end of the main football pitch. People who’d been moving from one seating tier to another were flung from their feet, and Breitbart’s teeth jarred together. He jerked to his feet, wheeling towards the incredible thunder of the explosion, and his eyes went huge as the enormous mushroom of fire and smoke erupted over Landing.
He gawked at it, trying to understand. It was hard to be sure from ground level, especially with the stadium’s walls blocking his view, but it looked too close to be a KEW strike on any positions Kayleigh might still be holding. Only that was crazy! Why in God’s name would Yucel be striking a target in downtown Landing? Christianos Frolov would be furious, and—
Something shrieked overhead, and he whipped back around, staring up as at least two dozen dagger-winged assault shuttles plummeted from Landing’s skies. A golden manticore on a red field adorned their vertical stabilizers, and eight of them swooped directly on the stadium. Breitbart went to his knees, covering his head with his arms, and a cascade of fireballs, born of precision guided missiles and bow-mounted pulse cannon, came down on the Gendarmes manning the weapons emplacements like a fiery hobnailed boot. Screams of shock and terror erupted from the prisoners, but Breitbach lowered his arms, raising his eyes once more, his mind afire with speculation, wonder, and a wild, desperate hope, as still more shuttles streamed across the stadium and scores of battle-armored men and women plunged from them on counter-grav harnesses.
* * *
“I thought the banquet went well, Sir,” Admiral Culbertson said as he crossed to the table, coffee cup in hand, and pulled out a chair.
“I thought so too,” Lester Tourville agreed, and beckoned for the mess attendant to go ahead and serve. The breakfast dishes appeared with metronome efficiency, and Lurks in Branches, Tourville’s treecat companion, bleeked happily from his highchair as the plate of stewed rabbit arrived in front of him.
“I was especially pleased by my conversation with Ms. Terekhov,” the Havenite said. “I know there are still a few rough spots out there, Craig, but overall, I think most of our people are handling it well.”
“Yours better than mine, overall, I’m afraid,” Culbertson admitted.
“I expected some stiff spines.” Tourville shrugged. “And let’s be fair—my people’ve had longer to get used to this entire unnatural notion of ‘Peep butchers’ and ‘Manty Scum’ being on the same side.” His mustache quivered as he smiled. “Believe me, with Tom Theisman kicking our asses and Duchess Harrington kicking your people’s asses, the notion of coexistence caught on really quickly!”
“I can imagine.” Culbertson chuckled.
“I’ll admit, I do still have a few worries,” Tourville said. “Not on a professional level, but more of what may happen if, say, some of your Marines encounter some of my Marines in some hapless Montana bar.”
“That thought had crossed my mind, too.” It was Culbertson’s turn to shrug. “As the home team, I figure we’ll take the repairs out of my budget.”
“Deal,” Tourville snorted as he reached for his silverware. Then his smile faded as he cut the first bite from the medium rare breakfast steak. “Actually, I think the one person in Tenth Fleet I’m most nervous about is Commodore Terekhov. I hugely admire what he’s done out here, but, my God. If there’s anyone in a Manticoran uniform with a reason to hate ‘Peeps,’ it’s him. I don’t know if you’re familiar with what happened to his people after the Battle of Hyacinth, but I am. That’s why I was so pleased—astonished, too, but delighted—with how gracious Ms. Terekhov was after the banquet last night.”
“I’m familiar with what happened in a general sense,” Culbertson said. “I’ve never discussed it with him. As far as I’m aware, he doesn’t discuss it with anyone. But I can tell you that Sir Aivars Terekhov is far too professional to let his personal feelings get in the way of working with you and your people, Sir.”
“I hope so,” Tourville said softly. “I really hope so.”
* * *
“I told you you’d like the cooking,” Indiana Graham said cheerfully.
Damien Harahap looked up from his choo chee prawns and mushrooms and smiled in agreement. He was going to miss The Soup Spoon after the destruction of the Seraphim Independence Movement, he thought, and felt his smile try to fade at the reflection.
Because his face was accustomed to doing what he told it to, the smile turned into a grin, instead.
“You were right,” he acknowledged. “Although, I have to say I like ‘Thai Grandpa’s’ green curry with duck even better than I do this. Mind you, it’s very good, and I’m going to get him to add the recipe to my file before I leave.”
“You wouldn’t get it if you were staying here,” Mackenzie told him, chopsticks busy with her own favorite Pad Thai. He looked at her, and she shrugged. “He doesn’t share his recipes with anyone who might leak them to the competition. It took years for Dad to get him to share them with us.”
Her expression darkened briefly at the mention of her father, and Harahap nodded sympathetically.
And the sympathy, he reflected, was real. He’d spent too much time with these youngsters, and the thought of how he’d manipulated them made him feel something inescapably like guilt. It wasn’t the first time that had happened, and it probably wouldn’t be the last, but it was…sharper this time.
Probably wouldn’t have happened if I’d had Факел available, he thought. I’d’ve been out of here a week ago if all I had to do was whistle up Seong Jin.
That hadn’t been an option this time, though, so he’d left Факел and Lieutenant Yong in the Addi
son System, thirty-eight light-years from Seraphim, and caught one of Krestor’s shorthaul transports. He didn’t like it, and it had added the better part of a week and a half to his time in-system, but using Факел had been…contraindicated this time around.
There’d been a lot of tension lately between the Mendoza-Krestor, Interstellar partnership and the Oginski Group, which had coveted Seraphim for quite some time. Oginski already dominated both the Jubilee and Akron Systems; adding Seraphim would create a three-system, triangular route to anchor this end of a trunk line extending through the Włocławek-Sarduchi Warp Bridge into the heart of the Core. Oginski was also known for a certain bare-knuckles approach which had earned it a reputation as a rogue operation, even for transstellars in the Verge, and at least some of Mendoza’s and Krestor’s executives believed Oginski might take advantage of the currently unsettled circumstances out here. Exactly what they expected Oginski to do was more than Harahap could have predicted, but they were keeping a very close eye on any movement in or out of Seraphim that didn’t travel in a Krestor hull. Under the circumstances, it had seemed better not to be flitting around the system in a ‘fast personnel transport’ which had already visited Seraphim three times…operating in this case under cover of its bogus Solarian registry. Unfortunately, no one in Mesa seemed to have considered the minor fact that Oginski and Kalokainos Interstellar were closely allied…or that the Caroline Henegar was registered as a Kalokainos vessel. Under normal circumstances, that would have been a good thing, given Kalokainos’ many reciprocal trade relationships. In this case, however…
The inconsiderate bastards could’ve wrapped this whole thing up years ago, he groused mentally. And then I wouldn’t be stuck here waiting for my return passage!
Of course, he also wouldn’t have had time to add so many of the Saowaluk family’s recipes to his personal files, and that would have been a tragedy. Tanawat and Sirada Saowaluk were both first-generation prolong recipients in their early eighties—although Sirada ferociously warned everyone in sight that they’d better not call her “Thai Grandma!”—and they’d spent seventy-odd years honing their culinary skills, which explained why they were two of the best cooks Harahap had ever encountered. They were also gracious, welcoming, kind, and always friendly…and they’d lost their oldest son, Nattaphong, five years ago, when he was caught in the crossfire during a scag raid on “black-marketeers and profiteers.” Actually, they’d simply been a group attempting to set up a co-op outside the McCready Administration’s circle of cronies, and Nattaphong had only been looking for a less expensive source for bok choy.