Orphan Brigade (28 page)

Eyes losing their focus, the head sagging back against the smashed dirt. The lips moving, Ladaglia seeming to smile. Mortas leaned forward, straining to hear the words over the explosions.

“I lied, El-­tee. I was kinda hoping we'd win the war right here.”

I
n a dark room on Earth, the most powerful human in the universe sat on a chair that was mockingly referred to as his throne. An entire world shone before him, marked with the different units of his army that were even then locked in a vicious fight for survival. So many of them red, so many of them flickering, so many of them gone forever.

One unit symbol, a rectangle with the markings of infantry on a piece of high ground guarding three mountain passes, had been red when it finally appeared under the dust cloud. Large enemy forces were converging on it, infantry chopping through from the north, armor charging from east and south. No doubt such an attack was accompanied by a ferocious amount of artillery fire.

The lone infantry symbol began to flicker, and the man let out an anguished moan. He finally released the arms of the chair, leaning forward so that he was in danger of falling out and plunging down through the darkness. His hand reached out, trembling, passing through a light display meant to indicate nearby stars, fingers straining to reach the blinking rectangle.

Abruptly, the symbol representing the First Independent Brigade of the Human Defense Force vanished. One moment it was blinking, and the next it was gone. The man's hand dropped to his lap, and when he spoke his voice was choked with tears.

“Jan. Jan. Don't leave me, Jan.”

B
ack down the slope, tottering on exhausted legs, inhaling the noisome vapor, headed back because no one farther up the hill was alive. Hearing the voices on the radio, now that the desperate fighting had abated and the rockets had stopped falling. For the moment.

“—­musta been a dozen rounds landed right on the command party. Colonel Alden's dead, Ops is dead, XO is wounded—­”

“Knock that off right now.” Mortas knew he should recognize the voice, but with the battalion's three most senior men gone, he couldn't imagine who would be taking charge. “A Company, B Company, get your wounded to the supply line. Armadillos are on the way with Captain Dassa.”

Zacker. It was the wiry battalion sergeant major he'd met on his first day. Taking charge because the rest of the battalion command element was gone. Mortas tripped over a smashed tree trunk, falling to the rock surface and simply lying there, too weak to move.

“Company commanders, give me your status. Re-­form your lines, but be prepared to fall back over Lane One and establish new positions to the west of C Company.”

A Company's executive officer came up, telling a horrifying story in a halting voice. Company commander wounded, first sergeant killed, three platoons that had been at half strength before the battle now reduced to a handful of men still able to fight.

As if to confirm this assessment, Mortas's eyes finally focused on the bodies scattered nearby. Sim and human, broken, bloody, dismembered, lifeless. Hearing Daederus somewhere out there, calling in long-­range fire on the retreating tanks, but the voice was dull, as if his radio was dying. Pushing himself up onto all fours, Mortas coughed loudly and then called Berland.

“This is Mortas. I think the ASSL and I are all that's left of my position. What's our status?”

Mecklinger came up in response. Dry, croaking voice. “Sorry, sir. Berland's had it. Most of the guys with him got nailed in the barrage; the survivors brought him to my position. My squad's down to five guys, and I can't raise Testo or Dak.”

Mortas tried to imagine the platoon layout before the assault. Dak's squad had been to his northeast, and Testo's had been to his southwest. If they were all gone, that meant his observation point would have to cover that entire area. He stumbled forward, but stopped when a familiar voice spoke to him.

“I ain't dead yet.” Berland's words came across the radio, weak and slow. “Lieutenant, you should get everybody headed for the supply line. It'll take every man to move the wounded anyway. Can't hold this spot.”

“You got it. That's what we'll do.” Mortas didn't know how to ask the next question. “How are you?”

“On my way out, El-­tee.” Coughing, then a loud hawking and spitting sound. “Hey, Lieutenant?”

“Yeah.”

“You get out of here, how about doing me a favor? Get what's left of the platoon a nice job guarding your dad.”

“Only if you come with us.”

“Now that ain't fair. Fuckin' officers, always asking the impossible.”

Mortas reached the spot where he'd left Daederus, but didn't see him. He dropped to a knee and peered around the biggest rock available, not believing his eyes.

The rocket fire had blown the cloud back thousands of yards. What had been an open expanse of flat ground right next to the sinkhole was now a junkyard. Tanks and personnel carriers covered the narrow lane between the high ground and the mud field, in every variation of destruction. Turrets thrown to the side, long guns twisted backward, some hulls looking crushed straight into the ground. Smoke billowing, fire licking, more crumpled bodies.

Far in the distance he saw a mob of men walking, disorganized, reeling away from the carnage as if drunk. He stood to get a better look, exposing himself and not caring, and that was when he saw Daederus. Seated with his back against the stone, lifeless eyes on the masterpiece of malice he'd constructed, blood covering his trousers, empty dragonfly tubes all around him, and his stilled lips twisted in a smile of pure enjoyment.

An engine revved not far away, and Mortas looked around in confusion. One of the tanks, its treads damaged on one side, turning slowly in place as if nailed to the spot. Whoever was trying to drive it away finally gave up when the straining engine reached a heated pitch, but then the turret began to revolve in his direction. Mortas shook his head weakly, remembering a different tank on a different planet, his own hands directing the main gun so that it could fire one round. He lowered himself to the dirt, sitting next to Daederus, imagining a lone figure inside the armored mastodon loading the gun.

A sharp blast barked from his left, out on the flat, and the tank burst into flame. A human machine gun began rattling, and was then joined by a ­couple of Scorpions. Filthy figures surged around the tank, using the other wrecks for cover, then they were coming his way, falling back in twos.

Mortas stood with effort because it seemed to be the right thing to do. The figures hustled past him, hands grabbing his armor and pulling him back under cover. Dak's voice on the radio.

“Hey, we got the lieutenant. Looks like everybody else here is gone. We're headed to the supply line.”

“A
yliss, can I have a word?”

She looked up from the latest data display on the latest screen, grateful for Python's interruption. It was afternoon of the second day on Echo, and Ayliss wasn't sure she was going to be able to feign interest much longer. She promised the researcher she'd be right back, and followed the large man through the buzz of activity on the site's main floor.

They went up the stairs and emerged on the launch platform, where the sun was shining and the birds were singing in the nearby trees.

“Python, is there any chance we could just get out of here now? I'm sure you and your girlfriends are enjoying the visit, but I'm not sure how much longer I can keep this up.”

“Actually, that's what I wanted to talk about.” He took her elbow and steered her off to the side, close to the railing where the blast doors would keep them from view. In the sunlight she noticed that he'd cut his beard close and that his hair was freshly washed.

“Cleaned up for the trip home?”

“In a way.” A smile crept onto his lips, and she found it unsettling. Python reached behind him, under his untucked work shirt. His hand came back into view holding a small black box that she recognized as an emergency transmitter. A chill passed through her.

“You had that the whole time.”

“Of course. I needed to be able to send progress reports. And things are progressing
so
nicely.”

Ayliss became aware that her heartbeat had quickened and that her muscles were tensing. Suddenly she felt quite exposed, standing out there on the platform. Being at the site at all.

“I can't say I'm much for riddles.”

“Neither am I. Or, really, I didn't used to be. Not when they drafted me and made me a lieutenant, but after the experience on that island with the Sims, I learned fast.”

“You never said you were an officer.”

“Oh, I still am. Captain Python, at your ser­vice.”

“What kind of game are you playing?”

“The same one you're playing, only I'm much better at it. I told you the truth about that island, about how we got stuck there with the Sims and ended up with our own little truce. Command sure didn't like that when they found us, so they killed the Sims and locked us up. You can imagine what they wanted to do to me, having been the lone officer there.”

“You rat-­fuck bastard.”

“That's accurate. I was headed for the chopping block, so I just told the bosses that I tried my best to keep the war going, and the troops disobeyed me. So they went to the block, and I stayed in jail.

“You see, they would have killed me too—­Command is like that—­but I had this one story that the interrogators liked a lot. Every morning when we were done using the island's water source, I hung back and watched the Sims coming up. I was far enough away that they weren't terribly worried about catching whatever we humans carry that kills them, and one of them decided to try and communicate with me. Hell, there wasn't anything else to do on that lousy little patch of sand.

“He'd stick around after they were done, and try to talk to me from a distance. He'd bring something we both recognized, like a rock or a stick, and he'd hold it up and tell me its name in bird-­speak. Cawing and trilling away, smiling the whole time, looked like an escapee from a lunatic asylum.

“But I did it right back, mostly because I was bored, and started telling him our names for the same items. He couldn't make any of the sounds I made, but after a while he could alter the chirping enough that you could understand the word he was trying to say. I never got very far with the bird talk, but it did hurt just a little when Command came in and killed that guy along with his buddies.”

“Where are you going with this?”

“Oh, I'm getting to the point. You see, one of the interrogators was part of this informal group inside the Force. A bunch of guys and gals who didn't particularly enjoy the Purge. ­People with long memories, dead relatives, and a taste for revenge. They saw something in me, the way I saved my skin, and so they took me out of that lockup and said they wanted to set up a covert site—­this site—­and bring some captured Sims there.
Much
too close to the settled worlds, staffed by ­people who were convinced they were there at the request of your father.”

He stopped, the smile broadening as the truth sunk in. Olech wasn't behind this installation at all. In fact, he didn't know anything about it. Renegades within the Force had set it up, and they'd needed some way to connect it to the Chairman of the Emergency Senate.

His daughter.

“That's right. I brought you here because we needed somebody better than the Doc to prove this was all your daddy's idea. And you were so hot to ruin him that you never considered this might be a trap. Not that hard a trap to construct, either, in an outfit like the Force. They kill ­people for stepping out of line, and they ship anyone who asks too many questions straight to the war zone. You'd be surprised how many different patrol routes go right by this place, how many planetary supervisors know something's up, but not one of them ever asked what was going on here.

“Which makes the next step really easy. Right now there's a Force raid party headed here, mostly made up of ­people sympathetic to our little project, but just enough of them completely in the dark. They're going to hit this place and arrest everyone here. And then Doc and the others are going to start yapping about how they were doing this for your dad. Of course, no one's going to waste any time talking to him or any of the others, if you're still here.”

The adrenaline was coursing straight through Ayliss, her entire body seeming to throb with it. Mouth dry, feet cold, her mind racing to find the way out. Knowing that Lee was out there somewhere, looking for her, but how far away? Python's last words finally made it through the tangle of thought.

“
If
I'm still here?”

“That's right. You don't actually have to be captured. We've got an entire station's worth of ­people who will swear you were here, and lots of tape from the last two days of you getting briefed on how things are going. You really are a great actress, by the way. That tape is going to prove you were very interested in what was happening here and that you were going to take it all back to Daddy.”

“So why wouldn't I be captured too?”

“Because your new best friend Python has this radio. I can call the orb down here, and you and I can head up to my ship. I'm going to be leaving anyway; my work's done, and nobody wants me in front of a microphone. You know, it's going to be so funny, hearing the testimony from Doc and the girls and the rest, swearing there was this mysterious guy who they only knew as Python. Anyway, I'll run you back to Broda. You're going to need some friends once your father and his entire apparatus are in jail, and they'll give you asylum if I ask them. You see, I'm about to take a big step up in the universe. They're going to start by making me a major, and after that it's the fast track for old Python.”