Someone was barking out orders. Myles forced his head up.
The sergeant major marched the eight-strong firing squad out of the door and halted them behind the line painted on the grass seven meters away from the post. The unlucky squaddies had been chosen by the old short-straw draw. He'd spoken with each of them beforehand, telling them that Grabowski would want someone who could shoot straight and clean, and they were not to let him down no matter their feelings, assuring them that this duty would never go on their record.
When they'd left the briefing, sullen and subdued, he'd quietly thanked Allah that he wouldn't actually be pulling a trigger himself. Then Lawrence Newton slipped in and had a quiet word. The sergeant major had listened to his old comrade's request and nodded agreement. Anything else, he didn't want to know about.
Edmond Orlov and Corporal Amersy led the condemned man out into the orchard. Hal showed no emotion as they stopped him by the post. Edmond tied his wrists together behind the post and whispered something to his friend. A smile played over Hal's lips. Amersy offered him a blindfold, which he accepted.
The two men from Platoon 435NK9 saluted their comrade and marched away.
The sergeant major looked to Ebrey Zhang, who gave a slight nod.
"Squad, raise your weapons."
The sound of palms slapping precisely against weapons carried across the orchard.
"Take aim."
"Hey, Zhang," Hal called out "You are one miserable fuckup of a commander, man."
"Fire."
Myles Hazeldine threw up. The sound of eight rifles firing at once had stunned him. It suspended time in silence. Then he casually turned his head and saw Grabowski's body shudder as it was thrown back against the post. Blood burst out of his chest with frightening speed. And the big young man was falling, slumping forward onto his knees, with only his bound hands holding his ruined torso up. Sound returned to Myles's universe, a roaring in his ears. A human being had been slaughtered in front of him. Because of him, the deal he'd cut. He knelt forward and vomited helplessly onto the orchard's dew-moistened grass.
Traditionally they were called the burial detail, though on Thallspring there would never be any grave dug for a member of Zantiu-Braun. Company policy governing death away from Earth was for a cremation and scattering of the ashes.
Hal Grabowski's own platoon had demanded the right to perform that last duty, and Captain Bryant certainly wasn't going to try to say no—he really didn't need any open rebellion among his own men right now. So while the firing squad was marched quickly away they walked out of the hotel with a stretcher and a bodybag. They untied Hal's hands as Ebrey Zhang was supporting the retching mayor and laid their dead friend out on the blood-soaked grass. He was lifted gently into the bodybag, which was zipped up, then transferred onto the stretcher.
They carried him away as the mayor and the senior officers went back into the hotel. The cleanup detail emerged after that, to take down the post and remove the sandbags.
There was the blood to be washed away, too. By midmorning, there would be no trace left of the execution.
The burial detail carried the stretcher through the rear corridors of the hotel and out into the small courtyard used by delivery trucks. A van was waiting there to take the body to the crematorium. Its doors were opened quickly, and the stretcher pushed inside. Had anyone managed to see the interior, they would have been surprised to see how much medical equipment was inside. It could almost have been mistaken for an ambulance.
"Go!" Lawrence yelled at Lewis.
The van sped out of the courtyard.
Dennis was already ripping the bodybag open. "Oh hell," the medic grunted when he saw the mess of gore that was Hal's chest. "How many bullets?"
"Only three," Lawrence said. He caught sight of the body. "Sweet mother of Fate! Can you do it?"
Dennis was already activating Hal's Skin suit, which lay crumpled in the corner of the van. He brought the extension tubes out and began plugging them into the kid's valves. "Cut the shirt off."
Blood began to squirt out of the jagged wounds, pouring onto the floor of the van. Lawrence took a scalpel and sliced the shirt fabric, pulling the saturated cloth aside, leaving room for Dennis to work. When he brought his hands away, they were dripping blood.
For the first time he began to have doubts—something he hadn't acknowledged before. He refused to let doubt be part of the equation as he focused himself on accomplishing just one thing: not letting the bastards murder Hal. He wanted a victory over KillBoy as subtle and devious as KillBoy's relentless assault against the platoons on the streets of Memu Bay. But now he could actually see the terrible damage that the bullets had caused....
Dennis was trying to clamp off the torn arteries in the chest cavity. "His heart's so much raw meat. We'll have to drain and reinflate the lungs."
"The brain?" Lawrence demanded. "What about the brain?"
"I don't know." Dennis gave him an anguished look. "It was seven minutes." His optronic membranes were scrolling medical data almost too quickly for him to follow; Hal's Skin was using up its drug capsules at a dangerous rate as it tried to minimize cellular trauma.
"But we superoxygenated his blood," Lawrence said. "You said that would last him."
"It should, it should." Dennis finished clamping one artery and went for the next. "Odel, anything?"
Odel was attaching a sensor to Hal's scalp. He looked at a palmtop display. "Not yet. Still flatlined."
"Come on," Dennis screamed at the kid. His face was streaked with Hal's blood, which he'd smeared there with the back of his hand.
"Lewis, how long till we get there?" Lawrence shouted.
"Three minutes, Sarge."
"Is he alive?"
"I don't know," Dennis barked.
"Three minutes, Dennis, that's all. The crash team's waiting."
"Crash team?" Dennis's voice was veering toward hysteria. "Crash team? One struck-off doctor and a couple of field medics, and you expect them to perform a fucking heart transplant?"
"It's a biomech heart, Dennis, you just plug it in and switch it on."
Dennis laughed. "Oh, Jesus fucking Christ"
"Dennis! What about Hal?"
"I'm trying, god damn you." There were tears in the corners of his eyes. "I'm trying."
"Hey," Odel cried. "Hey, I've got brainwaves showing here."
Hal's mouth dropped open. His tongue flopped about weakly as he gurgled through the scarlet blood that was foaming out of his throat.
"Hal!" Lawrence shouted. "Hal, you hear me? You hear me, Hal? You hang on for us, kid. We've got you. We won't let you go."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Santa Chico. The original paradise planet.
From orbit its colors were intense—Earth-like, but brighter, more alive. There were no pastels here, no gentle shadings. Vegetation was vivid emerald; fast-growing, all-conquering. That made the few real deserts intolerably bleak: hot as hell and dry as Mars. Barriers between the extremes of rich life and barren desolation were short, making the contrasts ever more striking. The oceans that covered over half of its surface were livid sapphire. Snow-white clouds were magnified by the deep atmosphere as they hurtled through the high, turbulent jetstreams.
The air with its 30 percent oxygen content was poisonous to unmodified humans. But for native life, the abundant gas was raw nuclear power to its biochemical processes. Evolution here had grown thorns on everything.
For some it was a magnificent challenge. A chance to live differently, abandoning the strictures that governed society on Earth.