“Is that what reunification is all about for you? You don’t think people want the freedom to live without the government knowing their every move and their every thought?”
He laughed. “Try running for office promising freedom when the people are hungry and the roof over their heads is leaking, if they have a roof at all. You’ve only seen a small piece of Oranjestad. The heavy rain this week that inconveniences you is a misery for thousands, and probably killed more than a few in the last two days. If the Provisional Government doesn’t take stronger action, the factions will. There will be war, house to house, street by street, and millions will die.”
“You think you can stop it.”
“I think I have to try. I know I need your help.”
Our food arrived, along with a beer for the Colonel and a glass full of leaves for me. The food smelled wonderful. I picked up my glass and examined it. “Sir?”
“Verse munt thee. Fresh mint tea. Try it. It’s better for you than this.” He tapped his glass. “Or so I’ve heard.” He glanced at my stomach.
I took a sip of tea and added a few drops of honey. “Six weeks as of yesterday. She’s only made me throw up a few times so far. She’s about this big.” I held my fingers a centimeter apart. “I’m worried that I’m not a very good mother, though. I keep putting her life in danger. I don’t have the right to do that.”
“Having an adventurous mother can be risky.” The Colonel finished his beer while we ate, and an older man stopped by to refill his glass. “Thank you, Carl.”
“A pleasure seeing you in here again, Pieter. It’s been years.” He turned to stare at me, forehead showing deep wrinkles as he inspected me. “This can’t be your daughter. She must be related to you, though. A niece visiting you, maybe? I see your wife’s family in those eyes.”
“No relation. Lieutenant Mala Dusa Holloman, Carl Hoffner, owner of this establishment.”
“Sir.” He took my hand, transferring some of the dusting of white flour from his fingers to mine. “Thank you for the pannenkoeken. They’re really excellent.”
“You’re very kind.” He seemed to notice my uniform for the first time, the lieutenant’s bar on my collar next to the winged lion of Venice. “It’s nice seeing off-worlders again. It gives hope to my heart.”
I smiled, and he left us to take care of other customers. “He doesn’t know about what happened to your family, does he.”
“No. This was Felicity’s favorite place for dinner. We came here often in those days. It was quick and cheap, and she loved it. Look around you at the people wearing their fine clothes to come here, enjoying a special night out that they probably can’t afford. And Flick…I haven’t been back here since.” He was quiet while we finished eating and then he pushed back from the table.
“Let’s walk. It’s a pleasant night and the humidity in the air will do us good after all that time at the Hoog Schelde Yards.”
My eyes were drawn to the string of asteroids above us once we were out on the sidewalk. “Is that the shipyard there?” I pointed.
“Five kilometers long by three wide. It’s a marvel.”
“I can almost see the trusses between the ways.”
“Good eyes, but admiring the view is not why we’re out here. Have you considered the question I asked you? I need someone to take the lead on central planning, the same as what you and Lieutenant Killdeer have been doing, but for me. I’ll be blunt. I need someone with deep links to the Union that we can use to get us what we need. We’ll start with the mining sector. It’s always been the key to the wealth of Kastanje, and I want your help selecting which companies will get government contracts to rebuild and which will be shut down.”
I laughed. “I’m not an economist or a politician. My dad’s a geologist. You’d be better off talking to him. Don’t you think you should let the owners of the businesses decide whom they want to work with and whom they want to sell to? That’s not the government’s job.”
“The Academy stuffs it into your head and you believe it. Earth hasn’t even pretended to follow those principles for a generation. Your naïveté is endearing, but it’s your potential to get RuComm and Union support for us that I need. That, and your mother’s friends. I can only hope it will be enough.”
I chewed on my lip, my heart rate starting to climb. There were a few other people out on the street, enjoying the evening. A couple outside a bar across the street were lost in each other’s arms and lips, the woman with her back to me was wearing a short red dress. Maybe they had been dancing. Approaching from a hundred meters away, a man out walking his dog was letting him sniff at each interesting spot on the sidewalk. A couple passed us, lost in conversation, their faces covered. I lowered my voice. “Where is my husband? Are you the ones holding him?” I felt for Sam as I asked the question, but he was blocking me again, solid this time. I could tell he was alive and conscious, nothing else.
“I wish I knew where he was. I’d drop him right in your lap if I thought it would help. We believe that he’s in the Verbeek mineral belt, two hundred kilometers from here and about twenty-five hundred meters higher. The Utrecht Covenant is holding him somewhere in the mountains. You’d like the Utrecht. They think the way you do, that it’s better to be free and starving than to have a government strong enough to take care of its citizens. You’d have to overlook their more violent tendencies though, like kidnapping your husband and killing an unarmed Handhaving officer. Help me, and I’ll do everything I can to get him back for you.”
I paused before replying, starting to understand that my continued existence was still very much in question. Sam was safe, that much I could feel. I wanted him back, but that might be more dangerous than leaving him where he was.
“Thank you for the offer, but I can’t help you, other than by doing what my Captain orders me to do. I have to fulfill my duty to RuComm and the Union. Your neonatal and obstetrics AIs at the hospital are fixed and I should return to my ship. Tonight. Sam had almost finished the repairs before he was taken. I just had a few things to do, and Corporal Kim finished the work while we were at dinner.” I glanced at my watch. “There’s a newborn whose life is being saved while we’re standing here talking.”
“You’re a hero.” He voice was cold and flat when he said it, as if being a hero was forcing him to do something he didn’t want to do.
“No, I’m not. Sam started it, Corporal Kim finished it, and she prepped it for its first use.”
We started walking again, the two guards trailing a few meters back. “Maybe you should return to Hoog Schelde tonight. Corporal Kim. She’s the Marine medic with the dark hair? Very young and attractive?”
I saw it on his face when I glanced up at him. He was going to spare me. Kim Hyun-Ok would be his hero for the media, until he had her slaughtered. The image of her lying dead in an alley somewhere filled me and I panicked. “You can’t do that, sir.”
“Do what?”
“You can’t make her famous and do those photos and interviews with her to make her into a big media sensation. You can’t use her to show how successfully reunification is going because of you and the KDF, and you can’t murder her. You can’t use her death to justify a military coup and then build a statue of her. You can’t do any of those things.” His eyes became Winona-sized while I babbled. “Colonel, I will stop you.”
“Well, shit.” He looked down at his uniform, running his hands along the lapels until he found the bug I’d put on him. He examined the small dot, and then grabbed the comm pin off my ear. I didn’t try to stop him. He cracked the pin between his fingers and let it drop onto the sidewalk where he stomped on it, grinding the bits into the concrete.
“Costrano died because he underestimated you, and now here I am, repeating the same mistake. No more. Give me your display pad.”
I took a step back from him, getting ready to run.
“You don�
��t want to do that,” he warned me. “You’re probably faster than us, but you don’t know the city and you can’t outrun a bullet.”
His guards had closed the distance and were now standing next to him, hands resting on their sidearms. The one closest to me pulled his weapon clear of the holster and moved the safety to the armed position before re-holstering it. I gave the Colonel my pad.
“Let’s see who else you’ve told.” He grabbed my hand and forced it onto the display to unlock it. He smiled as he scrolled down through the messages. “I like Captain Rostron. A good officer and a caring commander. She’s been a positive influence on you. If you’re smart and can control your wilder instincts, you might even be able to obey her final order and live through this.”
His eyes moved from the messages back to me. I looked in his eyes, praying that fear wouldn’t make me start shaking. I stood up straight with my shoulders back and tried to look brave and confident. He shuddered.
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant. This is not how this was supposed to happen. But I can see it so clearly, what I need to do to stop the carnage and make Kastanje what it once was. I don’t know why you and your Captain can’t see it too.” He rolled up my display pad, slid it into his pocket and then pulled out his own pad and typed on it. He sighed when he was done, unhappy but determined.
“I did see it,” I told him. “The creatures Costrano surrounded himself with, the ones that look like dogs, but aren’t, they showed it to me. It’s a trap. RuComm will never allow Kastanje to remain in the Union if you do what they’re telling you to do. You will have traded one horror for another, one of your own making.”
“You’ve seen them? How they can change? Sometimes like dogs, other times with big ears and looking like the herten that live in the mountains, like a deer. They don’t like the rain.” His voice had gone wispy.
The guards shifted uneasily, but I pressed on. “Yes, they call themselves Puca. I know them very well and they will destroy you if you let them.” I put my hand against his cheek and he allowed it. “Step back from it, sir. I will help you with reunification, I’ll do everything I can to help you restore Kastanje. Come back to the shipyard. We killed all the ones that were there. It will take time, but your mind will clear and–”
I was suddenly kneeling on the sidewalk with my hands pressing on the back of my head trying to keep my skull from exploding. The ringing in my ears was blocking almost everything else out.
“Sorry, Colonel. I think she was trying to hypnotize you or put a spell on you or something. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Get her up, soldier, before someone wonders what the hell we’re doing to her.”
He pulled me to my feet and my skull exploded into bright lights and pain.
“Can you open your eyes?”
I nodded weakly and managed to pry my eyelids apart.
“Good. I want you to see this. As your Captain mentioned, interplanetary comms from the shipyard, including from the Esprit Orageux, are down. Blocked by my order. I wanted to see how well Rostron could function without a link back to her Aerospace Force command structure. Now we’ll never know.”
He grabbed my chin and tipped my face to look at the sky. “Did you wonder why it took so long before we let you dock and why we tied you down all the way at the end of the yard? Look.”
There was an expanding cloud of sparkles in the dark. My brain wanted there to be a sound, like fireworks, but of course it was silent. “The shipyard. Destroyed?”
“Just Esprit Orageux and part of pier fourteen. And Captain Rostron and Lieutenant Killdeer.”
My knees failed. I wanted to collapse and curl into a ball on the sidewalk, but there where powerful arms holding me upright. “Winn. You killed Winona?” It came out more as a sob than a question.
“You killed her by sending her that message. Let’s get you off the street and we’ll talk about what comes next.”
I blinked the tears away and cleared my mind. My Winona. Gone. There was a Puca hum inside me, coming from somewhere close by, full of dark joy. “I know what comes next, sir.” I looked over my shoulder at the man holding my arms. I wanted to remember his face. “What are your names?”
“Van Diemen,” the one who was holding me answered.
“Hetzer.” He was shorter, with cruel blue eyes that seemed to be eager for what he thought was coming next.
“You can release me now. I won’t run.”
Van Diemen waited for Colonel Gerbrandij to nod and then he let me go.
I spun as quickly as I could and pulled van Diemen’s sidearm from its holster. I pressed the trigger while I was doing it. I prayed that he hadn’t keyed the grip to his hand alone, and that the shock of me shooting him would keep him from going for a backup weapon long enough for me to kill him. The round in the chamber was a solid slug and it tore a hole in his lower leg, the sound loud and unreal on the quiet street. He stumbled back, screaming in pain and anger. “God damned little bitch!”
My second shot hit his face from a meter away. He had loaded a plasma round at the top of the magazine and it ripped apart most of his head, sending steaming splatter against the windows of the shop behind him.
I dropped and rolled. Too slow, too slow. I had wasted a precious tenth of a second being horrified at what I’d done. I expected to be looking into the muzzle of Hetzer’s weapon when I finished taking my position, assuming he didn’t shoot me while I was trying to turn. That’s what usually happened to me in the combat simulator at the Academy. I always died because I was too damn slow.
Hetzer was already down. Colin had ripped his throat open and his blood was running down the gutter where the dog had dragged him. Blood covered the fur on Colin’s face and front legs, and he was standing next to the body, ears alert and tail wagging. Kal was three meters away, a civilian coat covering his uniform. The short-barreled rifle attached to his single point sling was pointing at Colonel Gerbrandij.
The Colonel had his hands on top of his head. “Great work, Lieutenant. You’ve condemned us to a hundred years of civil war. Are you going to ask the names of each of the thousands that will die in the next year because of you? Or the millions that will be dead before it all ends? The Puca gave you the vision, and damn if you aren’t making it all come true for them.”
“I’m fighting against that vision. You killed my Captain and my ship and my Winona.” I had the gun ten centimeters from his head. My hand was shaking, but at that range, it wouldn’t matter.
“Mala Dusa, stop.” Kal had one hand stretched out toward me, pleading. He and Colin were up on the sidewalk approaching me slowly.
“I’m going to shoot him, Kal. I have to. He killed Winona and…Oh. I’m sorry. You want to kill him. That’s OK. I’ll watch while you do it.”
There was a soft voice in my ear. “Mala Dusa? Put the gun down, please.”
I swayed, but didn’t fall. I answered, watching the pistol’s front sight tracking back and forth across Colonel Gerbrandij’s face. “Mom, he killed Winona.”
“That hasn’t been confirmed.”
“And my Captain and my ship. My first ship.”
“You can shoot him later, but not now. I still need him alive.” She took the gun from my fingers.
I turned and put my arms around her, foreheads pressed together. “Winona, Mom. My Winona.”
She held me while I cried.
After a while, I rested my cheek against her, getting her shirt wet with my tears. I opened my eyes and Colonel Gerbrandij was standing there staring at us with his hands still on his head, irritated.
“Mom, I need to kill him right now. I can’t stand seeing him alive if Winona is dead. Kal? I thought you were going to kill him for me.” He raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “Where’s my gun? Mom, I need my gun back so I can shoot him.”
“How’s your arm feeling?”
“My arm?
Fine. Never better.” I wiggled my fingers in front of her face. “I want my gun.”
“Your arm is not fine. I’ve been following your progress from what Esprit Orageux is logging. The fact that it’s not hurting should be telling you something.”
I looked from Mom to the Colonel and back again. “I want to kill him. I have to kill him. Please don’t stop me.”
“Mala Dusa, let it go. I told you I need him alive.”
I sighed, not wanting to let it go, but knowing she was right. Pain flashed from my wrist, feeling like teeth tearing flesh all over again.
I stepped away from her, crying out, cradling my left arm against me while fresh tears rolled down my face.
Mom nodded. “That’s much better. Now you’re back where Merrimac wants you.”
“You know, I have seen this before.” The Colonel’s voice sounded slightly bored. His arms were down off his head, and Colin was focused on him, ears up. “Arni– Major Zweig– was bitten by one of Costrano’s Puca friends. The doctors were never able to get it to heal quite right, and the Puca used the pain to control him. We finally had to cut it off. If your hand causes you to sin…”
I turned from him, holding my arm a little tighter to my chest. “I need another smudging, that’s all, and then the special medication Storm made for me…”
Mom had her head tipped back watching the first pieces of the Esprit Orageux entering the atmosphere, bright streaks coming down as they burned up. “Major Zweig says the shipyard has six tugs working to corral the larger pieces of her. They’ll capture anything big enough to survive reentry. No smudging, no treatments, not for a while.”
“You’re talking to him?”
“I got one update before communications dropped.” She touched her comm pin. “Major Zweig gave us enough warning to have Kal in position to watch over you and for me to be here.”
Colonel Gerbrandij’s eyes narrowed. “Did he now? He and I are going to have a conversation. I’ve always thought him incapable of treason or betrayal.”
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