by Dan Wells
He left. . . .
“It’s going south now,” said Heron, helping her to her feet. “Out over the beach.”
“There’s nobody there at night,” said Kira. “They stop the boats at nightfall because they can’t see to navigate—the whole Last Fleet is sunk out there; it’s too treacherous.”
“Maybe he saw the army coming,” said Heron.
“Or he saw the fires across the bay,” said Ritter, watching the sky. “He’s past the beach and still going.”
“He’ll slaughter the survivors who’ve crossed already,” said Kira.
Haru trudged toward them through the snow, flanked by a trio of guards. His face was grim. “The rotor was a distraction,” he said tiredly. “A group of infiltrators sneaked into the eastern edge of the camp on foot and killed seven people. Maybe more—the reports are still coming in.”
“Damn it!” screamed Kira. Armin, you bastard. . . .
Haru closed his eyes, rubbing them in exhaustion. “We’ve roused the camp and put everyone on alert, but there’s not much we can do: Our food’s almost gone, we have ten more cases of hypothermia, and now the Partial army’s barely three miles away. A Blood Man stealing seven people here and there is almost a minor problem, relatively.”
“I also have a hangnail,” said Marcus, holding up his finger. “Just so we can keep the scale of major to minor in perspective.”
Kira nodded, breathing deep, trying to think. “Someone has to talk to the Partial army. To whoever’s leading it.”
“Anyone who tries will be shot on sight,” said Heron.
“Or imprisoned at the very least,” said Haru. “Convincing them they want peace instead of revenge will be virtually impossible.”
“Virtually,” said Kira, “but not completely. Tomorrow morning I’ll go over there, under a flag of truce, and give myself up. It’s the only way.”
“You’ll die,” said Heron.
“Samm didn’t think so,” said Kira.
“Samm is a fool,” said Heron. “The best we can hope for is . . .” She stopped suddenly, looking around at their group: Ritter, Haru, Marcus, Phan. “Where’s Samm?”
Kira scanned the snowy shadows wildly, looking for his face, trying to feel him on the link. He was nowhere. “You don’t think he . . .”
“Damn you,” said Heron. Rage scorched the link, and she turned toward Kira with a terrifying snarl. “You did this!”
“He’s gone to talk to the Partials?” asked Marcus.
“I never told him to do that,” said Kira, “I would never ask him to do that—I was going to go myself—”
“Of course you were going to go yourself!” Heron roared. “That’s all you ever do: You throw yourself right in the path of the nearest, deadliest problem you can find, and he knew you were going to do it, so now he’s gone to do it himself.”
“He’s trying to save us,” said Kira.
“He’s trying to save you,” said Heron. “And he’s going to get himself killed in the process.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
“Three hundred and seventeen prisoners, General.” Shon’s aide saluted, and Shon acknowledged him wearily.
“And the trucks?” asked Shon. “We’ll need to resupply before the next assault.”
“They should be here tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” said Shon. He blew out a long, slow breath. “Five thousand of our soldiers may be dead by tomorrow, and certainly by the day after.”
“The rest of us will avenge their deaths,” said the aide.
Shon only grunted. He accepted the aide’s written report and sent him away, closing the door behind him. The final outpost of the human army had been entrenched in an old army reserve compound called Fort Tilden, at the base of the Marine Parkway Bridge, and Shon had taken the main building for his army’s temporary headquarters. The building was dilapidated and broken, like every other building on this forsaken island—the fence sagging, the windows broken, the few doors still on their hinges swollen from moisture and sticking in the frames—but it was clean, and it was dry, and, most of all, it was familiar. He had been born in a warehouse, dumped out of a vat by masked technicians, one of thousands in his batch, but he had been raised on a military base, so much like this one that he could close his eyes and almost hear the sounds of home: Jeeps in the street outside, shouts in the yard as a troop ran drills, the distant call of cadence as a sergeant marched his unit home to barracks. There was a baseball field outside, covered in snow and weeds and discernible only by the crumbling wooden bleachers that surrounded it. There was a part of him, a bigger part than he wanted to admit, that wanted nothing more than to go out there in the darkness and sit down in the middle of that field until he froze.
How can I fight when more are still dying? Fight or not, win or lose, five thousand of my soldiers will die tomorrow, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I don’t even have orders to follow. Just my own objective. The only thing left.
Revenge.
He sat down heavily in his chair, staring at the reports in his hand, wondering what to do next. He was shaken from his reverie almost immediately by the sound of pounding feet in the hallway, and the bitter link data of surprise and anger. He opened his door before the messenger even had time to knock on it.
“What’s happened?”
The messenger saluted. “A prisoner, sir. A refugee from the camp.” The guard’s link was laced with hatred. “He’s a Partial, sir.”
Shon looked over the man’s shoulder to see the two guards behind him, walking slowly toward him with a bound, solemn soldier between them. He was dressed in worn, filthy clothes—practically rags—but his bearing was proud, and his link carried no hint of fear. He stopped in front of Shon and bowed his head, unable to salute with his arms cuffed behind him.
“My name is Samm,” said the prisoner. “I need to talk to you.” The man’s resolution was so strong across the link Shon felt himself waking up.
Shon looked at the messenger. “You’ve frisked him?”
“No weapons,” said the soldier. “All he had were the clothes on his back, and this.” He held up a bottle of bourbon.
Shon looked at Samm. “Is that why you’re here? You’re drunk?”
“It’s still sealed,” said Samm. “Call it a peace offering.”
“Are you joking?”
“It’s a sign of goodwill.”
“You’re not really going to talk to him,” said the messenger.
“No, I’m not,” said Shon, staring at the prisoner. “After everything that’s happened, I don’t think I have anything to say to a traitor that a bullet couldn’t say a whole hell of a lot more efficiently. But.” He took a slow breath, sizing him up. Samm’s link data carried the basics of his entire dossier—his rank, his unit, his history, his place in Partial society. He was an infantryman, like Shon; just like Shon, he’d fought in Zuoquan City in the final days of the Isolation War. He’d helped to take Atlanta, and he’d served under Dr. Morgan. This was a man who’d been through hell, who’d done his duty; this was a man who knew exactly what it meant to abandon your army, fight for the other side, and then turn yourself in. Shon shook his head. “No, but I have to admit I’m curious as to what could be important enough to make him throw away his life like this. So even if I don’t talk, I do admit that I am willing to listen.”
The messenger linked his surprise and couldn’t help but link a tiny bit of disapproval, but Shon ignored him and stepped aside, inviting the prisoner into his office. The guards tried to follow, but Shon held up his hand. “Stay out here and put guards outside. They have at least one assassin in their group as well, and I don’t want her climbing through that window halfway through this conversation with a dagger in her teeth.” He plucked the bourbon from the messenger’s hand and closed the door.
Samm stood in the center of the room, shivering slightly in his wet, snowy clothes. Shon held up the bottle. “You realize this is a fairly hollow gesture.”
; “I was only trying to be polite.”
“I suppose I can’t fault you for that,” said Shon, and walked to his desk chair. He didn’t offer one to Samm. The old wood creaked when he sat, but it held him well enough. “Is it still good?”
“I don’t know,” said Samm. “I don’t drink. It’s unopened, though, so it’s probably fine.”
Shon examined the bottle, then unscrewed the top. The smell was exactly what he remembered, and he took a small swig straight from the bottle. “I used to drink this all the time back at Benning. Something about the South spoke to me in a way the rest of the country didn’t.” He took another drink. “Did you know that when you brought the bottle?”
“No, sir,” said Samm. “I only had time to raid one empty house before coming out here, and that’s what they happened to have.”
Shon took another small drink, savoring the burn in the back of his throat. “You know what goes well with bourbon? Fried chicken.”
“Are we going to talk about bourbon all night, sir?”
“You came to me,” said Shon. “Do you have something else you want to talk about?”
“I want you to stop this attack,” said Samm.
Shon’s surprise trickled out across the link. “As a thank-you for the drink?”
“I want you to put down your guns and free all your prisoners. And then you and I are going to go talk to the human refugees.”
“About what?”
“About a peace settlement,” said Samm.
Shon shook his head. “This is getting less and less plausible the more you talk. The humans killed our people. You killed our people, at least by association and probably, if I’m reading you right, by actually pulling triggers and killing them. That’s not the kind of people I make peace with.”
“I regret every bullet I’ve had to fire in this war.”
“That doesn’t make my soldiers any less dead.”
“Neither will killing the humans,” said Samm. He didn’t move, but his link data swelled with urgency. “Eighty percent of our people were killed in that nuclear blast, and that was a tragedy we can never make up for. But if you don’t make peace, you’re signing the death warrant of the last twenty percent. The humans aren’t your enemy here, General, expiration is, and killing those humans won’t change that. Attack and everybody dies, on both sides, whether it’s tomorrow or six months down the line. Make peace, and we can save the precious few we have left.”
“You’re saying the humans have a cure for expiration?”
“The humans are the cure for expiration,” said Samm. “Come with me to talk to them and I can prove it to you—I can show it to you, live and in person. Are you familiar with the Third Division?”
Shon nodded. “The Third Division took Denver; it was one of the biggest battles in the revolution.” He felt a sudden weight on his shoulders and took another drink, staring at the window. “They expired two years ago.”
“Most of them.”
“You’re saying some survived?”
Samm pointed toward the human camp. “Three of them, right over there. And six more still in Denver.”
Shon looked back at the bourbon, swirling it again, then capped it tightly and set it down on the desk. “Don’t you dare joke about this.”
Samm voice was firm as granite. “I am completely serious.” His link data practically vibrated with sincerity.
“How did they survive expiration?” asked Shon.
“Human interaction.”
“Are they prisoners?”
“They’re allies,” said Samm. “They’re friends. Some of them are even . . .”
Shon felt the prisoner’s emotion on the link and looked back sharply. “You’re in love with a human.”
“Close enough,” said Samm.
“So is that why you want to save them?” asked Shon, and he felt the bitterness creep back into his link. “’Cause you found a piece of tail?”
“What can I do to convince you I’m sincere?” asked Samm. “I’m not a talker, I’m not a leader, I’m just a guy. Just a soldier from the trenches, trying to do the best he can, but this is not the kind of problem a soldier can solve. I can’t cure expiration by shooting it, and I can’t bring peace between the species just by following orders and marching in formation. If I were a diplomat or a politician or a . . . hell, if I were anything but what I am, maybe I could tell you what this means, how important this is, how much I believe in it. But all I can give you is my word as a soldier that this is the right thing to do. Put down your weapons and make peace.”
Shon stared at him, feeling as if the ground were slipping away beneath his feet, disappearing into an inky black depth desperate to suck him down and drown him. He wasn’t made for this either—he was an infantryman, not an officer; he wasn’t ready for this kind of decision. Certainly not for the impossible task of supporting it after he made it. “Do you realize what will happen if I go out there and tell the army we’re making peace with the humans? The same people who attacked us with a bioweapon? Who destroyed White Plains? You said it yourself: We’re soldiers. We were bred for war; we were designed to fight and to kill. You talk about peace as if it were natural, as if all we had to do was stop fighting and our problems would be solved, but fighting is why we exist. War is our nature, and that makes peace the most . . . unnatural act we could perform. We even fought ourselves when we couldn’t find anyone else. Sometimes I think no matter what I do we’ll be fighting till the last Partial draws breath.”
“I understand that,” said Samm. “I’ve felt the same thing. But I have to believe there’s more to us than that.”
“They built us for war,” Shon repeated.
“They built us to love.”
Shon sat in silence, staring at his desk. He traced the cracks in the wood, dry and brittle under his fingertip. He stopped, tapped the desk, and spoke quietly. “I want to believe you.”
“Then believe me.”
“It’s hard to believe when they keep shooting at us.”
“So be the bigger man and stop first.”
Shon thought about the army waiting outside, the rage that still fueled them from the loss of their home. From the bioweapon. From the years of hatred and slavery and war that dated back decades. Every memory he had of humans was drenched in hate and death and oppression.
He shook his head. That’s a coward’s excuse, he thought. We didn’t rebel so they’d treat us better, we rebelled so we could live our own lives. So we could make our choices.
If this is the best choice, then it doesn’t matter what the humans do.
“What will they do if we offer a truce?” asked Shon. “Will they accept it?”
“I can’t speak for them any more than you can speak for your soldiers,” said Samm. “Less, actually. I’m still an outsider in their camp.”
Shon raised his eyebrow. “Then why should I trust you?”
“You shouldn’t,” said Samm. “You should trust Kira Walker.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
Kira hadn’t slept, and she couldn’t imagine anyone else had, either, the entire refugee camp terrified about Armin, about the Partial army, about—
About Samm. No one had seen or heard from him since last night. She couldn’t bear to think of what might have happened.
“Of course I’m coming with you,” said Marcus, bundling up in as many jackets and blankets as he could find—though Kira noticed he had given the warmest ones to her, and pulled them on gratefully. The first light was peeking through the curtain of another nascent snowstorm, and they were preparing for the long walk to the Partial army. An old man from the boat lines had built them snowshoes to ease the journey, and Kira stooped to lace them tightly to her feet. If Samm already proposed peace, and the Partials already ignored him, they’re not going to listen to me. She finished the knot on the first shoe and slowly started lacing up the next. But I have to try. Even if I die, I have to—
“Man on the road!” said Phan, breathless in
the doorway of the command center. Kira looked up sharply, her heart in her throat, but it was Heron who spoke first.
“Can you see who it is?” she asked.
“Middle-aged,” said Phan, “maybe midforties. Dark-skinned. Probably a human prisoner. He’s too old to be a Partial, but none of the East Meadow guards recognize him.”
“Not Samm,” said Marcus.
“He’s not from the group I came here with,” said Kira. “Maybe one of the guerrillas the Partials captured?”
“He’s probably delivering a message,” said Calix.
Haru nodded. “Let’s go.” He sent runners throughout the camp, warning everyone to be on their guard, and led the group to Rockaway Point Boulevard: a long, straight stretch of road from one town to the other. Human guards watched the road from makeshift bunkers, bundled against the snow in mismatched layers and armed with a loose collection of hunting rifles; the best weapons the refugees had left. Kira watched the distant man approach, and after a moment she recognized him.
“That’s Duna Mkele,” said Kira. “The Senate’s old head of security.”
“I thought it might be him,” said Haru. “I guess his resistance force was finally captured.”
“If he’s a resistance leader, this is a prisoner release,” said Heron. She looked at Kira. “Interesting.”
The guards shouted at Mkele to stop a hundred feet from the bunker, and Phan ran out to check him for explosives or other tricks. “He’s clean,” shouted Phan, and threw a blanket around the man’s shoulders, leading him in. Mkele shook Haru’s hand and nodded solemnly at Kira.
“They want to meet,” he said simply. “Their leaders and ours, at the intersection halfway up the road.” He looked at Kira again. “They specifically requested you.”
“That’s getting to be a theme with them,” said Marcus. “Any threats? Are they going to kill a prisoner every day until she shows up to talk?”
“Not that they mentioned,” said Mkele. “Honestly, I don’t know what to tell you: Our treatment has been brutal, and the Partials have been hell-bent on revenge for Delarosa’s little trick, but . . . here I am.”