She rubbed her sleeve across her mouth. “I hid.” Her accent was heavy, not Tyran at all. She’d come across the borders. “I hid in the drains.”
“Shit, you better come with us.” Pad held out his hand to help her to her feet. “We’ll get you cleaned up. You’re not local, are you? What’s your name, sweetheart?”
It was a perfectly ordinary question. It was simply what you said to scared civvies to break the ice and get them to do what you asked. Hoffman found himself trying to imagine how this woman had survived, and only then did he begin to realize how she might see them.
Enemy. Hostile. The ones who did all this.
Pad pulled her upright. She paused for a moment, unsteady, then launched into him, screaming in a foreign language, fists pummeling. He held her off one-handed, rifle still gripped tight in the other, but she managed to get in a few hard blows before Hoffman jumped down and pinned her arms. Maybe she didn’t speak enough Tyran to understand Pad was trying to help her.
“Whoa, whoa, steady, steady …” Pad avoided a kick, but Hoffman caught it in the shin. She was completely nuts. She stank of smoke and sweat. “Lady, calm down. It’s okay. We’re not going to hurt you. We’re COG. We’ll get you to a hospital in Ephyra, get you some help. Look, you want some water? I bet you need water.” He reached for the bottle on his belt. “Come on, it’s okay now.”
“You help me? You help me now?” She spat in Pad’s face. Somehow that was always more shocking than a fist. She struggled to find the words in Tyran. “You let us die! You killed everyone! I come here to find Ephyra, find safe place, but we have no time, and you bomb us!”
What the hell could any man say to that? Pad just stared back at her. She’d exhausted herself, and Hoffman now needed to hold her upright rather than restrain her. Her rage was focused squarely on Pad. Maybe she only had enough energy left to hate one Tyran bastard at a time.
What am I going to do, tell her it’s all about asset denial? How it’s a sensible strategy? Bullshit.
“I’m sorry,” Pad said. “I’m really sorry.” His face was bleeding; she must have caught him with her nails and clawed him. “But you’re safe now.”
“My family is gone. Why should I care about safe?”
Hoffman let go of her and tried to turn her around to face him. He could hear a Raven approaching. “Ma’am, please, let us help you. I’m sorry, but we had to stop the grubs somehow.”
“Grubs don’t kill my family,” she said. “You kill them. You left us stranded. I stay with people I trust.”
She backed away and ducked into the opening again. Pad crouched down and tried to coax her out, but she was gone. Hoffman heard her scuttling along the echoing concrete tunnel like an animal. If they went after her without some plan or support, there was no telling what they’d find. They’d have to come back later and do a proper sweep of the area, and maybe send in civilian aid workers.
“Shit,” Pad said. “There must be more of them down there. What if they’re everywhere?”
Hoffman radioed in to CIC. A Raven circled overhead. “Control, this is Hoffman. There are survivors. I repeat—we’ve found survivors. They’ve been stranded outside the boundary. So far, one female, age and nationality undetermined, but she’s refused aid or evacuation. I expect there’ll be more, so advise patrols accordingly. Hoffman out.”
Pad was still staring into the tunnel like a cat watching a mousehole.
“Come on, Pad,” Hoffman said. Why did I ever think that poor bitch would see us as the good guys now? “Nothing we can do here.”
Pad bent down and placed his water bottle just inside the tunnel. He waited as if he was expecting the woman to come out, then shook his head and took a ration bar from his belt pouch. He laid it next to the bottle and walked away. Hoffman wasn’t sure if it was practical compassion or some kind of peace offering.
I’m going to have to make a lot of those now.
“Control,” Hoffman said, “scrub the KR unit. We’re done here.”
They set off back to the Packhorse. It was always the small detail, the broken fragments of tragedy on the ground, that either made you wonder why you were fighting or reminded you why you had to. And most of the time, it boiled down to the most basic level: staying alive, and watching your buddies’ backs. The big ideological stuff was strictly bullshit for politicians and career officers who’d forgotten what they signed up for.
Not me. I remember. I’m still a Gear, colonel or not.
Padrick Salton was probably going back to base more distressed than he’d left it. And there was nothing Hoffman could do for him, any more than he could help the stranded woman who’d spat in his face.
“Damn, Private, what kind of world are we living in now?” Hoffman asked.
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Collateral damage. Collateral fucking damage.”
Padrick just shook his head.
Hoffman had been the enemy before, but never on his own turf.
CHAPTER 16
The COG isn’t a superpower any longer, and we’re not a national government. We’re just city hall with an army, a navy, and the power of life and death. Prescott’s a mayor with weapons of mass destruction. That simplifies things a great deal, but it also means small issues have big consequences.
(CAPTAIN QUENTIN MICHAELSON, DISCUSSING POLITICAL REALITY IN A SHRINKING WORLD WITH COLONEL VICTOR HOFFMAN.)
TEMPORARY DETENTION AREA, MAIN ADMINISTRATION BLOCK, VECTES NAVAL BASE, NINE WEEKS AFTER THE EVACUATION OF JACINTO, 14 A.E.
“Victor, he can’t expect leniency for rape. A trial would send out a very clear message.”
Bernie could hear Prescott’s polished, expensively educated voice in the corridor. She’d never heard a wrangle between Hoffman and the Chairman firsthand before. It was like overhearing the grown-ups fighting, both terrifying and fascinating, and somehow all her fault.
“Make your mind up, Chairman.” Hoffman’s voice strained at its seams. “Either we have a tribunal for Stranded criminals, your precious one law for all, or we do what martial law entitles us to do. You can’t run both systems at once.”
“Our women need reassurance that we’ll protect them in an uncertain world.” Prescott sounded more distant, as if he was walking away, a man with something more important to do. “I’m not politically squeamish, but I want to avoid descending into governance by vague terror. Much better that everyone knows why people suddenly disappear.”
Good old Prescott. Squeamish? Press that Hammer of Dawn button and stand back …
But Bernie saw his point. She was on the verge of going out there and saying that it was fine, okay, whatever they wanted; she’d go through with a trial. She wasn’t ashamed. And didn’t everyone—normal, average everyone—think that rapists and perverts in general deserved a hole in the head? She’d get a medal, just as Baird had told her.
But how’s the average citizen going to feel about Gears when they hear how I did it?
The fact that she’d been a civilian when she killed the other two rapists was irrelevant. She was a Gear again now. And nothing could take the regiment out of her blood.
Hoffman sounded as if he was walking after Prescott. “I won’t have one of my Gears forced to tell the world exactly what those animals did to her. And we don’t want civilians to hear how she dealt with it. Do we? Undermines respect. They wouldn’t understand.”
Vic’s ashamed of me. Oh God. He’s actually ashamed of me.
Prescott went quiet. Bernie thought he’d walked off.
“Good point,” he said at last. “Deal with it, Victor.”
“Chairman, give me a clear instruction for once, goddamn it.”
“Do whatever you feel will do least damage to morale. I’ll back you completely.”
I bet you will…
Bernie found it sobering that even a man with an army at his disposal couldn’t piss people off too much in this microcosm of a world. Everything existed on a knife-edge. Hoffman stormed back into
the office and stood with fists clenched, shaking his head slowly.
“I’m sorry, Vic,” she said.
“Don’t you dare apologize.” He grabbed her shoulders, harder than he probably meant to. “Damn it, woman, why didn’t you tell me right away? I’d … I’d have handled you better.”
“Vic, I’m okay. I don’t bake a cake to celebrate the anniversary, but it doesn’t stop me living, either. Every good time I have is a big fuck-you to that bastard in there.”
“I’m not having all that paraded at a trial.”
“I’m in two minds about it.”
“You don’t seriously want to give that filth his day in court.”
“Chairman’s right—he has to be seen to be punished. I don’t care who knows what happened. But what I did—what will that do to the reputation of every other Gear? We’re the good guys, remember? Mr. Average Civvie out there won’t see me as a civilian victim.”
“So no trial. Good.” Hoffman nodded, looking at the door on the other side of the office. Jonn Massy was locked in an adjoining room, waiting. How long he had to live and how he died would be decided in the next few minutes. That was sobering, too.
“Are you ashamed of me, Vic?” she asked. “Because it’s okay if you are.”
“No, no. Never.”
“Not even slightly worried about what’s in me?”
“It’s in all of us, Bernie.”
“I didn’t believe I could do it. And once I started, it was all too easy.”
Hoffman snorted. “You think Massy and his kind agonize like this? They just rob, kill, and rape. Then they get up the next morning and do it all over again.”
“Is that the decency line, then? They do it and don’t lose sleep, but we do it and wrestle with our conscience? Or we only feel guilty when it’s another human and not a grub? Because I still carved those bastards, either way, and they felt pain as much as any grub. And I don’t feel bad about causing pain—I feel bad about finding it was easier than I thought.”
“We should have had this talk months ago.” Hoffman locked the door. The room was sparsely furnished, not yet filled with the paper and general mess of a long-used office. “All I care about now is what happens to you, and what happens to all my other Gears. Prescott can take care of the rest of civilization.”
“You know something? I fled back to the army. That’s civilization to me. I didn’t want to become like the vermin I saw. That scared me a lot more than combat ever did. I don’t think it’s even morality talking. Just dread.”
Hoffman stared her straight in the eye for what felt like forever, but with no judgment, just a sad kind of regret. He’d had to do some serious shit in his time, too. She knew that. But he’d acted in the moment, not gone back to settle scores in cold blood. And she still didn’t know if that made the difference or not.
“Come on, let’s get this over with.” He checked his pistol again and gripped the door handle. “What do you want to do? Just say the word.”
Bernie never doubted Massy was the right man. She didn’t doubt that a death sentence for all his gang’s crimes—not just for her, for all the innocent Stranded killed and terrorized—was the right one. There were just parts of her that were more troubled by other things these days. She felt her anger was getting threadbare. She wasn’t even sure now if it was anger.
What the hell do I want?
“Let me talk to him,” she said.
Jonn Massy was handcuffed. Part of her said to take the cuffs off rather than kick the shit out of a bound man, which suddenly struck her as bizarre: she was a lean woman—not frail, never, not yet—pushing sixty, and he was half her age, built like a brick shit-house. The regiment embedded a sense of manly, square-jawed fair play even in its women.
What a joke.
Hoffman stood to one side, looking ready to put himself between her and Massy. For a moment, Bernie thought of Marcus, that sad disapproval or whatever it was on his face when she showed signs of going feral, and realized just how much his opinion bothered her.
I know he’s right. Once I kick off the revenge killings, it becomes the way we do things. And then we fall apart as a society.
But Massy needed to pay for everything he’d ever done. That was what held society together: facing the consequences of your actions.
Even now, he had that same arrogant leer on his face. She could smell him, too. It wasn’t body odor. It was just him, and it had been a long time before she’d been able to get that smell out of her nostrils.
“So why come here?” she asked. “Your buddies must have told you I was back. You didn’t think I’d recognize you?”
Massy still looked confident, if not relaxed. “And I just walked in here. Didn’t I? How many others have you let in that you didn’t recognize, who didn’t leave witnesses? We’re inside your walls, bitch. You’ll all pay for my brother.” He winked slowly. “Maybe I came in to finish you off. Just so the COG knows it’s not untouchable.”
“So why did you crap yourself and make a run for it?”
“Live to fight another day …”
“Okay, I’ll shoot every last damn one of you, then, just to be certain,” Hoffman said. “Because I can do that.”
“But you won’t, you dumb old bastard, because you haven’t. The COG’s gone soft. That’s why the grubs forced you out. We’ll be here long after you’ve gone—we’re fit to survive. You’re not.”
Hoffman drew his sidearm and handed it to Bernie, all matter-of-fact. She had her own pistol, but there was a hell of a lot said silently when he did that.
“You going to gloat, bitch?” Massy asked. “I’m not afraid of you. I taught you that you’re nothing and that we can do whatever we like with you. You’re never going to forget that.”
Bernie had a sudden urge to pull the trigger. It passed as soon as it came; she actually wanted to laugh, and wasn’t sure why. Stress made you do all kinds of weird things at the wrong times, but—this was a sense of revelation.
It’s a contest. He keeps setting the rules for me. Okay, that stops now.
She handed the pistol back to Hoffman. He put it to Massy’s temple without a second’s hesitation.
“I’ll finish the job,” he said. “You want to wait outside or not, Bernie? You don’t have to be involved.”
Massy smirked. “See, no guts—”
Hoffman grabbed Massy’s hair in his free hand and jerked his head back. The old bugger was more frightening when he was ice-cold, and he certainly was now.
Massy still wasn’t pleading for his life, though. Did she want that? Yes, she did. He had to be brought down and then obliterated, so that others could see that men like him could be broken.
He managed to look Hoffman in the eye. “You’ll have nightmares about me after you pull that trigger, old man. I’ll still own you.”
“You’re too young to remember Anvil Gate,” Hoffman said quietly. “You think this is the first time I’ve done a dirty job?”
You don’t tell me everything, Vic. Do you?
Bernie closed her fingers over the pistol’s bulky barrel and pressed Hoffman’s hand down slowly. It was a dangerous thing to do to a man with a chambered round and the safety off. She might have been a millisecond from getting her hand blown apart, or worse. But she had control now. She knew it.
“No, he doesn’t get to jerk anyone’s else’s chain,” she said. “Here’s what I’m going to do. He’s mine. I’ll do what I want with him. I’ll think of something.”
Hoffman just looked at her, questioning, Massy’s hair still gripped tight in his fist.
“Yes, I’m sure,” she said.
But Massy wasn’t.
She saw it for just the moment she needed to, that look in his eyes that said he didn’t know what was happening now, what would happen next, or how bad things might get, because this wasn’t in his rule book at all. That was fear. That was what he did to others. And that was what she wanted to inflict on him. The rest was academic.
&nb
sp; Hoffman let go of Massy and shoved him aside. Massy found his voice after a few seconds. “You think you can threaten me, bitch? You think you can scare me?”
“I already have,” Bernie said. “Let’s see what happens next. You know how unpredictable women are.”
Hoffman opened the door to let her out, then locked the room behind them.
“Whatever you want, Bernie,” he said. “I’ll go along with it. But I really wish you’d let me cap the bastard and put it all behind you.”
“You were willing,” she said. “And that’s enough for me.”
Hoffman had had enough nightmares. She wasn’t going to add one more. If there was any dirty work to be done, she would do her own.
VNB MARRIED QUARTERS, FAMILIARIZATION TOUR, THREE DAYS LATER.
“So remind me, Boomer Lady, how many words ain’t we allowed to say now?”
Cole and Bernie stood at attention in the second rank of the Gears guard, watching the small crowd gather in the square—a tree-lined square, like the ones Jacinto used to have—to hear the Chairman say something meaningful to the visiting civilians from Pelruan. Cole wondered if he would ever get used to any duty that just involved standing around looking good.
“Refugees,” Bernie said. “If you say the R-word, I have to wash your mouth out with carbolic soap. We can call ourselves Jacinto’s remnant. Or survivors. But he really wants us to get used to being citizens of New Jacinto.”
“Man, I hate that coy shit. We’re refugees. We ran, baby. We found refuge. So what?”
“He thinks it makes the worthy citizens of Pelruan see us as charity cases rather than the masters who’ve come back to see how well they’ve looked after the place for us.”
“If I ever talk ’bout runnin’ for office, Bernie,” Cole said, “shoot me. Because I can’t be doin’ with all that semantics shit.”
“Come on, look earnest and wholesome, Cole Train.” Bernie shifted her weight slightly. She had all kinds of aches and pains these days, but she didn’t seem to be planning on taking things any easier. “The civvies are watching. Our beloved Chairman is about to address us.”