Who’s running the water?”
“Haze, sir,” says Franc, slicing dried fruit onto a wooden board. I can’t help but notice she’s using the blade she used to stab the old woman and the guard outside the Trade Hall.
We’re in the kitchen, and pipes are hammering in the corner. The last time anyone but Haze went into Lord Filipacchi’s bathroom, it was so damp that tiles had begun to fall from the walls.
“I’ll talk to him.”
She shakes her head.
“Something you want to tell me?”
Franc shakes her head at that, too. “Please, sir,” she says. “Leave it.” Something about the way she says this is almost desperate. She’s put the knife down and is facing me full-on, completely defenseless. Sometimes it’s how people behave without realizing it that matters.
“He’s not what he seems, is he?”
That gets her attention. “In what way, sir?” Franc asks.
I think about it. “He’s a girl after all.”
Franc laughs. “Oh,” she says. “He’s definitely male.” And then her face goes red and it’s obvious she’s wondering how to approach something. I’m her boss, her commanding officer, but something is worrying her at a much deeper level.
“Tell me.”
“Please,” she says. “Let it go, sir.”
That’s not the way the army works.
But she’s already moved on. “He trusts you,” she says. “And there’s something else, sir.” Franc hesitates. “Your gun told Haze he required a role model. You’re it.”
“Franc…”
“It did, sir. I’m serious.”
So am I. “He’s a soldier,” I tell her. “An auxiliary. He obeys my orders. That’s all there is to it. And tell him to stay away from my gun.”
By the end of the week a routine is established. Maria buys food and Franc cooks it; Neen spends his nights on the town, or he does for the first three nights then stops when he realizes Maria is no longer coming to my bed.
She’s sweet, more than willing.
But I’m restless and know myself well enough to know when I need to sleep alone. There’s a taste like static in my mouth and an ache behind my eyes that I only ever get in the last few days before a battle.
As for Haze, he takes baths, plays with his machines, and comes out only when he feels like it. And then one morning, toward the end of the week, there’s no heat in the house and no hot water and I find Haze in the kitchen, swaddled in towels, being comforted by Franc.
“Coffee,” I demand.
Franc makes it, which involves lighting a fire in a bucket, using broken bits of kitchen chair, a handful of wooden cooking utensils, and sparks from a tinder stick, which she carries on her belt.
“Bring it to my study.”
She nods, but it’s Haze who arrives at my door with coffee and news. Insurgents have killed our electricity. Instead of doing the obvious and hitting the power core, they chose to blow up the pumping station next door. Without water the power station has had to shut down. “Thought you might want this, sir.”
He hands me a power pack.
“For my gun?”
Haze nods, looking guilty.
“I’ve told you…”
Now he’s scared as well. “We only chat, sir. That’s all.”
“About what?”
“Azimuth and angle, how to trig building heights. Really basic stuff. It’s just, sometimes I need to talk tech.”
He’s serious.
Tossing him the SIG diabolo, I say, “Clean it, check the power, and fill any clips that need filling, but remember who owns it. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good, because otherwise I’ll put you up against a wall myself.”
The night after the attack on the pumping station, a suicide squad targets Colonel Nuevo’s HQ, and the most beautiful house on Ilseville Square becomes rubble. The colonel is dining at a restaurant nearby; Major Silva and Benj Flypast are asleep in rooms on the third and fourth floors, respectively.
I wake to find sappers still sorting through the rubble, and smoke from the explosion still drifting across the square. And a knock on my door tells me it’s going to be one of those mornings.
“Sir…”
It’s Maria, which means she’s had to roll out of Neen’s fur-covered bed, dress herself half decently, and climb two flights of stairs to my turret. She’s out of breath, but that’s not necessarily from climbing the stairs.
“I know.”
We’re seeing a pattern here. A pattern familiar from any occupied city. Maria’s moved from sharing my bed to sharing Neen’s. In the scheme of things it’s probably a wise move. And who knows, maybe she actually likes him.
Shuffling on my uniform, I head downstairs and answer the front door myself. Passing messages back and forth simply wastes time. A boy, even younger than the last one, stands on my doorstep. His chest looks too thin for its waterfall of silver braid.
“Sir, the colonel, sir, he wants-”
“To see me.”
The new second lieutenant nods.
“We’ll be there.”
“No, sir. He just wants to see you. ”
I take my team anyway.
“Sven…”
The colonel is standing by a window; two serious-looking men sit at a table behind him. They look anxious, tired, and rather afraid. Engineers, I think, still failing to give us back our power. The house to which I’ve been led is large, just not as large as the one that lies in ruins three streets away.
“Good,” he says. “You came alone.”
“They’re waiting out there,” I tell him, nodding toward his office door.
Colonel Nuevo sighs.
The two men at the table might as well not exist for all the attention he’s paying them. Taking two glasses from a silver tray, the colonel pours me something clear and bitter. I get the feeling he’s really pouring one for himself. “I need a new ADC…” He raises his glass. “You’re it.”
“Me?”
“I have my reasons,” he says. A wave of his hands dismisses the two men, who scrape their chairs against the floor in their haste to escape. “Wait outside,” he tells them, to their obvious disappointment.
“Engineers?”
“No.” The colonel shakes his head. “Experts on the Uplifted, completely fucking useless, both of them. I’m going to shoot one of them. I just haven’t decided which. It died, you know.”
“The thing?”
“Simply shut itself down. But we’ve got bigger problems.” He flicks up a screen, touches his finger to a slab, and the city spreads out below me, seen from a great height.
“View from the mother ship?”
“I wish…high-orbit satellite. Still, at least the general left us that.”
So General Indigo Jaxx is gone. Do I dare ask where? Somehow in my thoughts his mother ship is still riding shotgun up there in high orbit, our final defense and weapon of attack.
“Concentrate,” orders the colonel.
Ilseville is smaller than it seems from the ground. Our river is a tributary of a larger river that splits on the plain and loses itself in vast marshes beyond; the waterlogged terrain across which we attacked is simply a small corner of this. Clouds scuttle below us, obscuring the view. I’m not sure what I’m meant to be watching, because the city looks peaceful and the marshes are empty.
“Here,” he says, losing patience.
Black insects skim the surface of a tiny stream. Only the stream is the larger of the rivers and the insects are boats and we’re about a day away from the insects reaching the coin-sized circle that is Ilseville.
“Hex-Sevens,” he says.
I count fifty, and then give up. No sooner do I count than more fill the edge of the screen. It’s like kicking an ants’ nest and then trying to make sense of the reaction. “How many soldiers to a boat?”
“A hundred,” he says. “Maybe more.”
“You want me to go out there and see if I can stop them, sir?”
He stares at me, then smiles. “You’re insane,” he says. “That’s probably why I like you.” He dips his hand into a desk drawer and retrieves a handful of silver braid. “Fix this on,” he tells me. “And consider yourself promoted to staff officer.”
The colonel laughs, and I realize my face probably says it all.
“What do you know about politics?”
“Nothing.”
“Good,” he says. “And bad.”
It seems OctoV likes to cover his bets, so he spread-bets against himself and then covers the long odds with small sums that occasionally pay out and cost little if they’re lost. We’re one of those small sums. This is not the way Colonel Nuevo puts it, but it’s what he means.
This battle, which I thought key to OctoV’s planning, is a diversion for a diversion. And there are other layers that make our situation even more complicated. The late Lieutenant Uffingham was nephew to EmpireMinister Othman, who is currently in disgrace. Major Silva owed his position to General Jaxx, who has the ear of OctoV, making him dangerous as a patron and doubly dangerous as an enemy.
Colonel Nuevo asks if I follow so far.
It seems best to say yes, although I consider asking what an empireminister might be but decide I can work that out for myself. It’s someone important enough to be mentioned in the same breath as General Jaxx.
“We’re a sideshow,” the colonel says.
Looking from the screen to the river beyond his window, I consider asking if the sideshow is about to close early and decide I know the answer to that as well.
“Where’s the real battle, sir?”
The star system he names registers vaguely. All that can be said is that it is a very, very long way away. About halfway across the outer spiral if my memory is right.
“Attrition,” says Colonel Nuevo. “That’s what this comes down to. How many brigades can we tie up? How many of us can they kill…? Who can do it fastest?”
Pouring himself another drink, the colonel raises his glass.
“Make your choice,” he tells me. “Death or glory.”
I can’t work out if he’s joking.
Although his next comment answers that for me. “We’re ringed with ball busters. You know why they’re there?” The obvious answer is to destroy Enlightened ships. Only if the answer is that obvious, why ask the question?
“Mercenaries,” I say, “are sometimes known to abandon battles.”
The colonel laughs mirthlessly.
“So if I was the general, I might circle this planet with sats designed to kill unexpected traffic. Say for the next six weeks.”
“Try six months,” he says. “And it’s all traffic, unexpected or not.”
“Do the mercenaries know that, sir?”
“No,” he says. “But you’re going to tell them.”