by Kent, Steven
I met Fahey’s eyes and grinned. And then he was gone, and I was alone in the room with the disinterred voice of Warshaw.
“You let that backstabbing, son of a bitch walk out alive!” Warshaw said.
“I wanted my beer,” I said. “We had a bet.”
The room went silent. After a moment, Warshaw told me, “Don’t believe a word he said, Harris.”
“The stuff about Hampton?” I asked.
“About me,” Warshaw roared. “It’s all bullshit.”
“I’m not an expert in these areas; but as I understand it, there’s generally a big, strong protector for every lipstick-wearing queen; and you do take your weightlifting—”
“Harris, I never—” he interrupted.
And I interrupted him back. “Warshaw, you were still a master chief petty officer when he was promoted. You might have recommended him for the promotion, but you couldn’t have approved it.”
“Yeah . . . yeah, you’re right.” Warshaw sounded relieved. He could see me, but I could not see him. There was a camera in the ceiling, but no monitor for showing images. Being in this room was like being on the reflective side of a one-way mirror. And that was too bad. I would have liked to have seen the sweat rolling down Warshaw’s bald pate.
“There’s only one man who could have approved Fahey’s promotion,” I said.
“It wasn’t Thorne,” Warshaw said. “He had a woman on Terraneau.”
“And when was the last time he got to see her?” I asked.
“That horny old bastard.” Now there was admiration in Warshaw’s voice.
There were still pieces missing from the puzzle. Fahey knew more than he was letting on. I did not mention this to Warshaw, however. Instead, I looked into the camera, and said, “Just remember, you owe me a case of Earth-brewed.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
I had one more debriefing to conduct; but it could wait, so I called it a day.
The two-hour plane ride from Outer Bliss to Norristown would give me time to think about the future. I piloted my own Johnston R-27, a little twelve-seater commuter capable of both space travel and atmospheric travel. I did not know how to fly anything as big as a transport, but I had no trouble with this little bird. I’d once owned a little Johnston Starliner myself.
Before taking off, I scanned the Zebulon plateau. The runway stretched along the outside of the relocation camp. Three rows of electrified razor-wire fence separated the right side of the runway from the prison. A line of portable barracks sat off to the left of the runway.
Outer Bliss was a naval facility with MPs for guards. I would have preferred to post Marines, but Warshaw said his men needed the shore leave.
I took off into an early sunset with clouds the size of mountain ranges, painted orange and peach by the last dregs of sunlight. As I took off, I searched the sky for hints of silver—not the literary device used to denote a brighter future but the first traces of the Avatari ion curtain. Nothing. Below me, Terraneau looked like an artist’s rendition of the ideal planet. In the ebbing light, the cobalt sea had turned to steel. A few, small islands shone against the horizon. Beyond that, the clouds parted, revealing black-satin skies filled with twinkling stars. Somewhere up there, a broadcast station orbited the planet. It orbited so low that on clear nights, people could spot it without a telescope when it passed before the moon.
By the time I reached Norristown, the sun had set and lights sparkled all across the landscape. With the Corps of Engineers’ help, Doctorow and his people had repaired the power lines. Most of the city still lay in ruins, but streetlights now shone along the avenues. Lights blazed in the three skyscrapers/dormitories.
Before I could call it a night, I would have dinner with Ellery Doctorow, a formality I could not afford to ignore. The peace between Doctorow and the fleet remained tenuous. After seeing Fahey and the guards, I was more convinced than ever that my men needed a place where they could go for entirely immoral rest and recreation. We had found other cities, but only Norristown had the facilities and the population to accommodate us.
But Doctorow did not trust the military, and maybe he had it right. We did hide things from him. We didn’t tell him we had built a relocation camp, and we did not tell him we had filled it up with prisoners. He found out about it on his own. Until he did, we had him convinced that the reconstruction of Norristown was the only thing we had going on Terraneau.
The real reason I had come was to see Ava, of course. We had not spoken for weeks. I worried that she might have moved on. Hearing that she had taken up with some local would not kill me, but I would feel it. Sometimes my jealousy got the better of me, and I fantasized about hiding her in my quarters again. My insecurities got the better of me, and I thought it would be a relief when she finally moved on.
As I came into the airstrip for a landing, I saw a car waiting just outside the gate—a white sedan, a civilian vehicle, Doctorow’s car. He left his headlights on, shining twin shafts of light through the fence.
I touched down, rolled the R-27 in toward the tower, and parked it. I climbed out and pulled my rucksack from the back.
As I walked toward the gate, I heard a voice I recognized. “Harris, over here.” Ellery Doctorow stepped into the beams, his silhouette nearly swallowed in the glare. He waved a hand to catch my attention. “Harris!”
I slung my rucksack to my left hand and waved with my right just as the loud crack rang through the air.
At first, I had no idea what happened. I was waving, walking toward the gate, then I was on the ground. The force of whatever hit me had picked me up and thrown me on my ass. I felt the bruising on my back first, and then my chest began to burn, and I realized the front of my blouse was wet.
Doctorow came running through the gate. In the glare of the headlights, I saw Ava’s outline, too. She came running after him. I recognized her hair . . . her beautiful hair. I touched my chest and saw that my hand was covered with blood. I felt dizzy and winded, but not weak.
It didn’t make sense. I could not have been shot.
PART IV
AND THEN THERE WAS WAR
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Doctorow yelled, “Harris, don’t move!” as he ran over and knelt by my side.
“Wayson!” Ava screamed. She was already crying.
“I’m not hurt,” I said, propping myself up on my elbows. In an act of bald stupidity, I had not brought a gun, not even a pistol to defend myself. I had not a prayer of defending myself if the sniper decided to finish the job.
“You have to stay down, Harris,” Doctorow said as he pushed on my shoulders.
“I’m not hurt,” I complained.
“Captain, you are covered with blood,” Doctorow said, now forcing me back down.
Ava fell on her knees and reached for me, but I pushed her hand away. I did not want to get the blood on her.
“Wayson . . . Oh damn! Oh damn! Wayson,” Ava said. She looked at me and cried.
“I’m not hurt,” I repeated. I tried to sit up again, but Doctorow pushed me back down. I had an urge to slug him.
Then my former partner, Ray Freeman, strode in through the gate, as silent and as mysterious as a shadow. He carried a sniper rifle with a smart scope in his left hand.
Ava turned and saw Freeman’s gigantic outline against the headlights. She screamed even louder than she had when she saw me get shot.
“Admiral Brocius says you broke the rules. He wanted me to give you his regards,” Freeman said in a low, slow voice that reminded me of cannon fire echoing in a valley.
Seeing Freeman, Doctorow forgot all about me. He turned and stared, finally allowing me to sit up. I made it to a sitting position, and said, “You shot me, you specking son of a bitch.”
“I assassinated you,” said Freeman, his voice little more than a whisper. He turned and started to walk away.
I sprang to my feet and followed.
“Wayson, what . . . are you . . . what?” Ava did not know what to say.
“What in God’s name is going on?” Doctorow asked.
I ignored them and chased after Freeman. “You’re delivering messages for Brocius now?”
Just as I caught up to him, Freeman turned to look at me. The light from the headlights caught half his face, and I saw nothing but ice in his expression. “They’re coming for you.” He said this so quietly that neither Doctorow nor Ava could hear him.
“How much time do I have?” I asked.
Freeman did not answer. He might or might not have known, but he would not say which. The man stood seven feet tall and weighed in at over three hundred pounds. He had no fear.
“So that’s it?” I called after him. “Brocius sent you all the way to Terraneau just to hit me with a specking simmy?”
Freeman stopped again. He looked back at me, and said, “Next time, it will be a bullet.” And then he walked around a hangar. I heard a car start and saw taillights pull away.
“Friendly fellow. Who exactly was he?” Doctorow asked, as I climbed into the backseat of the car with Ava. As the acting administrator of Norristown, he had a nice car, with lots of leather and chrome, but he did not merit a chauffeur. He did have a radio, however, which he used to report my “assassination.”
Freeman had hit me with “simunition,” a kind of round specifically designed for faking assassinations. Instead of a slug, his cartridge housed a capsule designed to burst on contact and shower me with blood.
Unfortunately, Freeman always used a high-velocity rifle. Simunition or live round, any projectile coming at that speed would knock a strong man flat on his back. The round hit me hard enough to rip my blouse, and I was not anxious to see what else it had done.
I unbuttoned the remains of my shirt and found that the fake blood had soaked through my undershirt. I pulled that off as well and used it to wipe the blood off my chest. Not all of the blood was fake. A welt the size of an egg had formed just above my left nipple. The skin at the top of that welt had broken open, forming a crater on my chest
Freeman’s aim was as good as ever. If he had used a real bullet, it would have passed right through my heart.
Ava gasped and reached slowly to touch my chest. She cared. I felt encouraged.
She looked like an angel as she watched me, even more beautiful than the first time I had seen her. She wore a yellow dress with a low-cut neck and stringy, little straps that hung over her shoulders. Her dress was bright and happy and clean. It reminded me of daisies. I wanted to grab her, hold her, and press her body against mine, but I had to keep my mind on business.
“His name is Ray Freeman,” I said.
“You know him?”
“We used to be partners,” I said.
Peering through the rearview mirror, Doctorow saw me bunch the remains of my blouse into a ball, and said, “Partners eh? I’m betting you did not run a dry-cleaning service.”
“You’re hurt,” Ava whispered. She touched her fingertips to the wound as gently as a butterfly lands on a leaf. Tears ran down her cheeks.
“No, not a dry-cleaning service,” I agreed. “We did pretty much the same thing he’s doing now.”
“Shooting people with blood bullets?” Doctorow asked. “Sounds like a fairly specialized niche. Did you get much business?” Clearly, he did not think highly of mercenaries.
Realizing that I was sitting on a powder keg, I did not answer.
By that time, we had driven across the long stretch of destruction that separated the airstrip from the suburbs. The glow of streetlights replaced the starry sky. We drove past a school and a fire station. Light shone from the windows of both buildings. The familiar low glow from the streetlights helped me relax. It represented electricity, civilization, humanity.
We drove into a neighborhood with stores and schools and trees.
“That friend of yours . . . was he a black man, or was I just seeing things?” Doctorow asked.
Race had been abolished by fiat when the Unified Authority moved into space. As they spread humanity across their 180-planet republic, the founding fathers mixed people from every race on every planet. Heritage was discouraged and ethnicity all but banned as Earth’s continents and countries became a distant memory. Freeman, a living anomaly who grew up in a religious colony founded by African-American Baptists, had to live with a new kind of prejudice from people who thought he should be extinct.
Ava ran her fingers along my chest so softly that she did not disturb the deep purple welt that had formed around the wound. She caressed my chest. She stared into my eyes. My body responded to her touch, and we kissed. For a moment, I thought we might make love right there in the backseat of Doctorow’s car.
“There are three of us in this car, you know,” Doctorow said.
Ava blushed.
I laughed, and said, “Feel free to pull over and go for a walk.”
Ava hit me in the arm. Her punch did not hurt, but I turned to protect myself. The movement stung, but not much.
“Were you and Freeman friends?” Ava asked.
“Friends?” I asked. “I’m not sure Ray Freeman has ever considered anybody a friend. He doesn’t have friends, only people he trusts and people he does not trust.”
“Which are you?” Doctorow asked.
I unzipped my ruck and pulled out a clean blouse. I’d only brought one change of uniform for the trip. Assuming nobody else shot me, and that Ava and I did not wrinkle the fabric later, I would be fine.
“He trusts me.”
“That’s how he treats the people he trusts?” Doctorow asked.
“I’m still breathing,” I said.
A fine sheen of blood continued to ooze out of the wound on my chest. I wiped it away. I knew that I needed to call this in. Franks needed to know that an enemy ship had run the blockade, and Warshaw needed to know that we’d been served fair warning. Freeman had said they were coming, but he did not say when. Maybe Brocius was bluffing, trying to get me to play by his rules. He would not come until he had a big enough force to settle the odds in his favor, I was almost sure of that.
“Maybe we should go to the hospital,” Doctorow suggested.
“Why? Are you hurt?” I asked. I was a Marine, so I had to be stoic.
Doctorow laughed. Ava did not.
“Your friend scares me,” she said.
“Me, too,” I said, tearing a long strip from my undershirt to tie around my chest. “Can you tie this off for me?” I said, giving Ava one end, then pressing her hand against my chest. I leaned forward, looped the cloth around my back. Ava took both ends of the bandage and fixed them into a bow.
“What I don’t get is why he’s here in the first place. The government paid Freeman a lot of money to help liberate New Copenhagen. He doesn’t need the money.” I was also curious about how he got to the Scutum-Crux Arm and landed on Terraneau without being seen.
Now that I had finished with the wound, I looked out the window. I did not recognize the area. “Where are we?” I asked.
“We’re almost there,” Doctorow said. “My wife made dinner for us.”
“Your wife? How did your wife end up on Terraneau?” I asked. He had transferred here just before the invasion, meaning he had either brought his wife to a war zone or married a local.
Doctorow laughed. “Not exactly. I have a widow on Earth. Sarah is my wife on Terraneau. We met after the alien attack.”
“You mean you have two wives?” Ava asked.
“Well, it’s always possible that Tina has died or remarried,” Doctorow said. “It’s been several years since I’ve seen her, but she was alive and married to me last time I checked.
“Technically, I suppose that makes me a polygamist,” Doctorow said.
“Isn’t polygamy a sin?” I asked.
“Only if God is watching and cares,” Doctorow said.
I slipped on my spare blouse and fastened the buttons. Turning to Ava, I smiled and said, “See, good as new.”
Ava brought up a finger, pointed at me, the
n poked it hard into my chest. When I winced, she asked, “How can you stand living like this?”
“He wasn’t trying to kill me,” I said. “If Freeman wanted to kill me . . .”
Doctorow finished the thought, “You’d already be dead. I had that feeling, as well. How do you know he won’t come back to finish the job next time?” He thought for a moment, then added, “What did he mean when he said ‘you broke the rules’?”
Doctorow did not know about my plans. Ava had some idea, but she did not know about our stealing three self-broadcasting battleships. This was not the time to tell them.
“It’s a long story,” I said. It was the best I could come up with. I was never any good at politics, words did not come naturally.
As he turned his car into the driveway of a two-story home, Doctorow said, “Ava, I’m afraid your boyfriend is keeping secrets from us.”
Her boyfriend? I thought to myself. The evening was looking up.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Opening his front door, Doctorow said, “Whatever you do, Harris, don’t tell Sarah about what happened at the airstrip. She’s a bit on the delicate side, you wouldn’t want to worry her.” He winked as he said this, and Ava giggled, then Doctorow swung the door open, and bellowed, “We’re home, dear.”
A voice called out from deep in the house, “No need to shout, El. I heard you coming up the driveway.” “El” must have been short for Ellery.
“Sorry we’re late, dear. Somebody assassinated Captain Harris as he came off his plane,” Doctorow called.
“Should I remove his place from the table?” the woman called back. She came out of the kitchen, smiled at me, and said, “General Harris, you’re looking well for a man who was just assassinated.”
Sarah Doctorow was considerably wider along the bottom than she was across the top, giving her body a pyramid shape. Her bottom was so wide it looked like she’d stuffed bed pillows inside her pants. She was less heavy around the stomach, and her girth continued to taper as it reached her notably flat chest and sunken shoulders. She had a lovely round face with laugh lines around the eyes and a little girl’s smile. Her face was a patchwork of colors, with spruce-colored eyes, ruby red lips that looked freshly painted, and cerulean makeup above her eyes. She wore her long, red hair in a simple ponytail.