“I’ll bet,” Loris said. “Ram it up your ass, Commander.”
“And how are your friends sinking our ships?”
Enador paused for a beat, as if he really didn’t understand the question. “We haven’t touched a boat since the last imulsion shipment. We don’t sink them, Indie. We commandeer them.”
“Two trawlers and a frigate.”
“I told you—we’d keep them, not sink them.”
Trescu didn’t bat an eyelid. “I had hoped we could work together.”
“Now what? You going to beat the crap out of me? Break a few teeth?” Loris strained to look past Trescu at Hoffman. He probably hadn’t worked out who was in charge here. Maybe he thought they were pulling some nice-and-nasty double act. “Does he do your dirty work for you, Colonel? We thought you liked to do your own.”
The asshole couldn’t have known how near the mark that comment was.
“Very well.” Trescu glanced at his watch. “My father gave me this. It still keeps good time. Very fine workmanship. I shall count five minutes on it, by which time I would like an answer to my question.”
Hoffman wasn’t sure what effect this was having on the two Stranded, but it was certainly unsettling him. The longer Trescu sat there doing nothing, the less Hoffman knew what was coming next. And that was the idea, of course. Uncertainty—fear—softened up a prisoner more than actual pain. He got the feeling that Trescu would suddenly punch Loris in the guts to make the most of that shattered pelvis.
Is that what I’d do? Why did it even cross my mind?
The fact that he could even imagine it shamed him. He wanted to walk out and not have to watch this, but he stood there, complicit and conflicted. The worst thing was that he believed Enador about the ships. He really did. It wasn’t the gangs’ style not to brag about their kills.
Trescu’s fine gold watch ticked away audibly in the silence. He studied it, distracted, then ran his thumb across the glass as if to clean it.
“I am waiting,” he said.
Hoffman waited, too, expecting that blow to land at any moment. Eventually, Trescu sat back in the chair and sighed theatrically.
“Very well. You had your five minutes.” He took a radio earpiece much like the old COG issue from his breast pocket and pressed it into place. “Burkan? Please come to the isolation ward now.”
Hoffman hadn’t interrogated anyone for more than fifteen years. Nobody took grubs alive, so the COG had a serious case of skills-fade when it came to questioning prisoners. His stomach knotted as Trescu got up and walked over to the window to gaze out as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Loris and Enador had obviously braced themselves for the worst. Enador’s jaw was set in defiance, but one hand gripping the sheet betrayed his anxiety. Maybe Trescu had a point.
The door opened and a burly Gorasni sergeant walked in with Enador’s teenage son in a restraining arm-hold. The kid was red in the face. Enador looked him over.
“Son, what have they done to you?”
“Nothing, Dad.”
I get it, Hoffman thought. This isn’t going to be pretty. Kids could—and would—kill you just as easily as an adult. This one made bombs. Hoffman reminded himself that kids younger than Nial Enador were considered grown men in other cultures.
Burkan said nothing. Hoffman waited for him to start roughing up the boy. Trescu just looked at his watch.
“One last time,” he said. “And that is something I never usually concede. Mr. Loris, tell me where your camps and arms caches are.”
So … he was going to lean on Loris, and the suspense would rattle Enador, who would do anything rather than see his kid harmed, and …
“You’re finished, COG—and you, Indie.” Loris struggled for breath as he sat up a little more. Hoffman preferred enemies who earned his contempt, but these bastards were as tough and committed as any Gear. “Your world order’s gone up in smoke but you won’t accept it. Believe me—you’ll end up just like us Stranded, except we’ve had years of practice, and we’ve weeded out our weaklings. You’ll just fall apart. Natural selection. It’s a bitch, isn’t it?”
“So it is,” Trescu said.
Then he drew his sidearm and put it calmly to Loris’s head. There was no threat, no pistol-whipping, no yelling, none of the plain old-fashioned brutality Hoffman had expected. Trescu just pulled the trigger.
The loud crack filled the room. Blood sprayed the scrubbed wall behind the bed and the yellowing starched sheets.
It was over instantly.
Hoffman was aware of Nial gaping—he was a kid, just a kid—but the next second went on forever, a ringing silence that turned into one thudding beat of Hoffman’s heart.
The second of silence was many things; disbelief, shock, even that weird moment of horrified realization that a thing like that could never be undone, and how very short that terrible, irreversible moment was. Hoffman had seen many men die in far worse ways, men who were his friends, but he’d also pulled a trigger and felt less of a man for doing so. The past rushed after him and stood breathless at his side like someone he’d crossed the road to avoid. It would never leave him alone.
And then that second was gone. His heart hit that second beat, and another, and now it was hammering. Trescu took two unhurried steps to the other bed and put his pistol to Enador’s temple. Nial was screaming abuse and struggling in Burkan’s armlock.
“I will find it just as easy to kill your father.” Trescu reached out and grabbed the kid one-handed by his collar, hauling him up so that they were almost nose to nose. “You’ll come with me now, Nial, and we’ll talk sensibly, yes?”
“Don’t touch my dad!” The boy burst into tears. “Leave him alone! You lay a finger on him and I’ll fucking kill you!”
But he wasn’t going to kill anyone, and he wasn’t going to hold out for long now. Trescu looked like he knew it. It was a neat mind-fuck. Hoffman hadn’t seen it coming.
“Burkan, clear up this mess and see that Mr. Enador is comfortable,” Trescu said. “There’s no need for you to be present, Colonel.” He indicated his earpiece. “Everything Nial and I discuss can be monitored by your splendidly efficient Control personnel.”
Hoffman finally found his voice. But it didn’t sound like the man inside, the man who’d seen one death too many, and sometimes walked the knife-edge between never being able to pull a trigger again and never being able to stop. Trescu probably thought he’d lose his nerve and let the boy go.
“Just remember to record every detail,” Hoffman said. “And leave us to do the rest.”
He had to go. He adjusted his cap, feeling for the metal badge and lining it up with his nose, and grabbed the handle. The clatter of boots at a run outside grew suddenly louder and the door burst open and hit him. Hayman stood in the doorway, white-faced and furious. The old girl must have seen some bad shit in her time, but Hoffman had never seen utter shock on her face before. It took her a few seconds to take in the room and speak.
“Get the fuck out of my hospital, you animal,” she snarled. “And make sure you never end up in my ER. Because I’ll let you bleed out on the goddamn floor.”
She was talking to Trescu, but Hoffman had the feeling he was included. He didn’t need prompting to get out anyway. He paused to look into Hayman’s face just so she knew he didn’t buy all that territorial shit.
“Take it up with the Chairman,” he said. “I’m going to be too busy working out how they managed to blow up another trawler. All hands lost, in case you give a damn.”
Hoffman seized the moment of silence to stalk out to the parade ground. What next? The upside of a continual stream of trouble was that he never had time to dwell on anything, and nobody expected him to. He had the Pelruan locals to worry about. And Michaelson—what the hell was the navy playing at? Couldn’t they even manage to defend a few fishing vessels now?
I’m going to put my boot up your ass, Quentin. We have to do better than this.
Hoffman paused to call Anya on the
radio. He could feel his hand shaking as he put it to his ear.
I hope that’s just old age.
“You okay, sir?” One of the Gears on base security duty, Jace Stratton, jogged up to him with his rifle ready. The shot must have been heard halfway across the base. “Negligent discharge?”
“No.” Hoffman needed to get a grip of himself before he walked into Ops. He’d take a few minutes in his quarters. “Just Indies showing us how to deal with prisoners. Stand down. Nothing we can do.”
Stratton glanced past Hoffman as if he thought trouble might be coming through that door at any time. He didn’t seem that much older than the kid who’d just seen his father’s buddy shot through the head. But he’d been through a war on the front line, and he’d watched his family killed. That put some years on a man.
“You just say the word, sir,” Stratton said. “They executing them now? Is that how it’s going to be?”
Trescu’s right, the asshole. Think about Andresen and the others.
“It’s academic.” Hoffman carried on walking. All the administrative offices—CIC, the infirmary, Prescott’s office, even some of the barracks buildings—overlooked that space, making it impossible to cross unobserved. “We’d have shot the bastard anyway.” He opened his radio link. “Anya? Tell Prescott that Trescu shot one of the prisoners. And get hold of Gavriel for me.”
“He’s called in, sir. He wants to come down and see you.”
“Send a ’Dill to collect him. I don’t want civvies splattered all over the road.”
“Will do, sir.”
Hoffman’s quarters were a couple of small attic rooms in the roof of the HQ building, nothing fancy. He took the fire escape to avoid conversations he didn’t want to have yet. As soon as he shut the door behind him, he ran cold water into the washbasin and rinsed his face. He wasn’t even sure why. It just made him feel calmer.
They killed our guys. I should have done it myself. Shit, what’s wrong with me?
Hoffman felt like a traitor to Andresen’s memory for wasting even a scrap of conscience on those bastards. The nagging voice started up in his head again, the one that reminded him that he’d once been judge and jury too, dispensing justice with a single round, because it had to be done to save lives.
Okay, yes, I get it. Self-loathing. Transfer. Hypocrisy. All that shit. Trescu and me, cut from the same cloth. But knowing that doesn’t stop it.
He ran his palms over his scalp and sat down on the edge of his bed to stare at the bare floorboards. For a moment, he could have been in his old quarters at Anvegad, right down to the small window with the endless view.
We do the same thing over every day until we die.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat there. It was probably just minutes. Then the stairs creaked, and he lifted his head just enough to see a pair of boots planted firmly in the doorway.
“Vic?”
Hoffman sat upright, hands on his knees. Bernie leaned against the door frame.
“I just needed to compose myself before I see our glorious leader,” he lied.
“Bullshit.”
“You’ve heard.”
“It’s hard to miss a gunshot in here. Or Hayman in full rant demanding to see Prescott. It’s all over the base now, Vic.”
“Saves me explaining, then.”
Bernie squatted on her heels to look into his face. Her bruises were already yellow and fading. “A few months ago you were ready to blow John Massy’s brains out for what he did to me, and not a second thought about it. Why is this different? Those tossers killed Andresen and crippled half a dozen more Gears. I’ll volunteer to slot the other two personally.”
There was no lying to Bernie. However many years they’d been apart, she still knew him better than anyone alive. And she knew the old Hoffman, the real one, the confident NCO before he became something he should never have been.
“I think it’s Anvil Gate,” he said. “The last few days—every damn thing seems to remind me of it.”
Maybe he’d done too good a job of not talking about the siege. Anyone old enough to remember it knew it had been desperate and didn’t fit the COG’s ideal of honorable combat. But they didn’t know all the details. The only ones who did were dead, except Hoffman himself.
“We make a habit of not telling each other things, don’t we, Vic?” Bernie said.
When Hoffman had told Bernie that they were the last two of their generation left of the 26th Royal Tyran Infantry, he hadn’t been sure how true that was. Since then he’d worked through the battalion list as it appeared on the day before he’d taken up his commission, the NCOs and enlisted men and women, and he realized it was completely accurate. They were the last survivors.
“Where were you thirty-two years ago?” Hoffman asked. “The summer of Anvil Gate? Shit, I can’t even work out the real year. The old calendar. Let’s stick with the new one.”
It was now recorded as 17 B.E., Before Emergence, seventeen years before the Locust erupted out of nowhere and brought mankind to the brink. Bernie shook her head.
“I was in Kashkur too,” she said. “But I was at Shavad. And I hadn’t seen you for some time.”
That was what felt so strange. There were huge gaps in time, years when he hadn’t even known where Bernie was or if she was even alive. Yet he’d first met her forty years ago, and it felt like continuous time, every void filled and closed in his mind.
“I better tell you, then,” Hoffman said. “But let’s clear up this pile of shit first.”
It was time he told her what the official record didn’t say about the siege of Anvil Gate. He was sick of secrets.
He vowed he was never going to keep one again.
CHAPTER 5
Anvegad’s like a movie set. The buildings are straight out of a history book and there’s even a street bazaar. But God, it’s harsh up here, Margaret. I really miss you. Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn’t have stayed an NCO—but then we’d never have met. And you probably wouldn’t have noticed an enlisted Gear like Staff Sergeant Hoffman anyway.
(LIEUTENANT VICTOR HOFFMAN, COMMANDING OFFICER OF CONNAUGHT PLATOON, 26TH ROYAL TYRAN INFANTRY, COG OPERATING BASE ANVIL GATE, ANVEGAD, KASHKUR, IN A LETTER TO HIS NEW BRIDE)
ANVEGAD, KASHKUR—FIRST WEEK OF RISE, 32 YEARS EARLIER, THE 62ND YEAR OF THE PENDULUM WARS.
This was the ass-end of the world, Hoffman was certain.
No amount of fine Silver Era architecture or magnificent history was going to change the fact that Anvegad was a lonely rock of a place. He wouldn’t miss it when he left. Three months down, four to go. He was counting down the days to the end of the deployment on a calendar pinned to the wall.
It was one hell of a view from this window, though.
He paused mid-shave and reached out to push the wooden frame fully open, letting in cold air that made the foam on his face tingle. The plain spread out below him could have been from another world. There was nothing out there but stony yellow soil with occasional thornbushes and the pale line of a single lonely road running parallel with the imulsion pipeline into the refinery in the distance. Generations of goats had grazed the place to bare rock. On mornings like this, the refinery merged with a backdrop of mountains that looked like ragged purple clouds on the horizon.
It’s only a few more months. I can handle that.
The briefing document had given him a description of Anvegad, but no sense of what it felt like to be here. It was a natural fortress on a rocky cliff overlooking the pass into Kashkur from the south. Armies had fought over it throughout history to control Kashkur’s rich cities and silver mines. The silver had been mined out long ago, but Kashkur still had plenty to interest invaders—one fifth of Sera’s imulsion reserves.
When Hoffman’s COG transport rumbled down that road for the first time, and he saw the fort rising up out of nowhere from that crag, it looked like a mirage, a bizarre trick of nature. The air was so still and clear most mornings that every color, even the black shadows, seemed unna
turally vivid. Captain Sander, Hoffman’s CO, painted pictures of it.
That was his hobby—watercolors. He said this place was magical, the poor deluded bastard. Hoffman was marooned here as second in command to a goddamn artist—and an artillery captain, at that. Maybe COG command was trying to civilize him, the same way that Staff College had instructed him on the right fork to use at dinner and how to press his best dress uniform. He was nearly thirty. He didn’t need to be taught how to wipe his own ass, thanks. That still rankled.
Come on, you’re an officer now. If you can’t hack the internal politics … you should have stayed an NCO.
The spectacular landscape changed color as the sun rose. He’d have to take a picture for Margaret, or maybe she’d prefer one of Sander’s watercolors. Married or not, Hoffman was still at the stage of worrying that he was just a bit of rough for her, a novelty she’d tire of and then wonder why the hell she hadn’t married one of her own kind. She was a trial lawyer, for God’s sake—college educated, having dinner with people who’d probably expect the likes of Hoffman to park their cars or mow their lawns. She was well traveled in the kind of way that didn’t involve rolling into foreign towns with an armored division. She was out of his league. And yet—she’d married him.
Yes. A nice painting. She’ll like that. Or maybe some of the local silver jewelry. Or is silver too cheap?
Hoffman went back to shaving. The mirror reminded him unkindly how fast his hair was thinning. He studied his scalp, moving a little so that the harsh light from the single bulb caught the worst reflection, and then made the decision he’d put off for some time. He wasn’t going to turn into one of those insecure assholes who always fretted about their bald patch. Fuck it. It was just too much testosterone, that was all. He’d embrace it. He’d flaunt it.
His hair was buzz-cut anyway. There wasn’t much to lose. He lathered the shaving soap over his head and took the razor to it.
It’ll grow again if I change my mind. Or if Margaret doesn’t like it.