Carver’s eyes were open wide, and staring, as if in surprise.
He figured she must have to have been at least a little shocked to find that big-ass splinter of cypress spitting from her chest.
The staring contest, such as it was, might have continued indefinitely, had not the sensation of someone pulling Gideon’s sword from its sheath likewise pulled his gaze away from the very young (and very dead) radio operator.
“Treason?” He heard himself echo the only word that had sufficiently penetrated the fog.
Then, by dint of sheer stubbornness, he got himself to his feet.
“Treason,” he said again, focusing on the also very young (but very not dead) Air Corps provost pointing a fully charged crysto-plas rifle at him. “What, and please, feel free to be specific, are you talking about? And where’s Captain Ravine, no…” He shook his head, which surprisingly ached (Tree. Exploding. Right). “Not Ravine,” he corrected himself. “Gorge—Chasm—Pitte,” he said at last with a dark sort of triumph before starting to move forward. “Where is Captain Pitte, because I want a word with the murdering son of a—”
“Colonel Quinn, you will stand down,” the prov snapped, stepping back and bringing the rifle to his shoulder, which might have been more imposing if the kid’s Adam’s apple hadn’t been bobbing with nerves.
As it was, the only thing keeping Gideon from ripping the weapon aside was the fact it was already live, and the prov’s finger was tense on the trigger.
“Fine,” Gideon said, rocking back on his heels. “I’m standing down. See?” He held his hands out at his sides. “This is me, standing down.”
The trigger finger relaxed, ever so slightly, and Gideon took that as an okay to look around, hoping against hope that he’d already seen the worst, with Carver.
He hadn’t.
The apiary was a mass of blackened stumps.
The soft Nasa air was thick with smoke, and sharp with the odor of blood, and the ozone-heavy stench unique to crystal plasma weaponry.
The thrum of bees, disturbed from their rest, and the distinctive creak of an airship’s tie ropes underscored the otherwise unnatural silence.
Amid the flickering hand torches, he could make out a score of airmen, moving through the smoke-filled night.
The only sign of his own company was Carver, dead at his feet, and a pair of boots, standing suspiciously empty, about a dozen meters away.
“Where is Pitte?” Gideon asked, looking from those empty boots to the provost. “Why did he give the order to murder my company?”
“Actually, I gave the order.” A voice emerged from the dark. “Although I fail to see how firing on soldiers embroiled in an act of treason could be considered murder.”
Gideon turned to his left to see none other than General Jessup Rand, he who had sent him to Nasa in the first place, stepping from the shadows.
“Treason,” Gideon repeated the word, again, but it made no more sense now than it had the first two times.
“What else could explain your presence here?” Rand continued, coming to a halt beside the provost, who became, if possible, more tense at the General’s proximity. “You and your company in Nasa, en route to Coalition territory?”
“That,” Gideon said, “is a complete load of draco sh-ow!” He swore and ducked as the provost, in a moment of panic, loosed a burst of plasma fire, singeing Gideon’s shoulder, and taking out one of the last trees standing.
Gideon straightened and glared at the kid who, to give him credit, looked apologetic. Gideon turned his attention back to Rand. “You have absolutely zero—”
“Proof?” This time it was Rand who interrupted, raising a hand which Gideon now saw held a standard field pack—Gideon’s field pack—from which he pulled a scarred document cylinder from the map pocket.
By now there were more people emerging from the shadows—airmen, more AC provosts and, he was relieved to see, Corpsmen Freeman and Patel, singed but alive.
While the gathering crowd watched, Rand slid a roll of onionskin papers from the cylinder. He gestured, and one of the Airmen came forward with a torch as the general unrolled one of the pages.
“I’m no engineer,” Rand said, holding the paper before column of light, “but this looks a great deal like the specs for one of our plasma cannon. And this?” He pulled out a second sheet, “This is a map…” He looked up, “…marking the location of several key UC weapons’ depots. Ah, and here are plans for troop movements, mission specs… I’d imagine this is worth quite a lot to the Coalition brass.”
He shook his head over the sheaf of papers, as if in shock, then rolled them back into the cylinder, which he tucked under his arm. “It’s a lucky thing I intercepted one of your correspondences in time for the Kodiak to intercept you.” Now he looked at Gideon, “Odile.”
At which point Gideon felt sure the ground was giving way beneath him, as it had Fehr so many minutes (Hours? Days?) past.
Rand was gesturing to the provost, who approached Gideon while unhooking a pair of restraints. “Colonel Gideon Quinn, you are hereby placed in custody—”
But Gideon was already moving.
In the end, it took three provs and the application of several shock sticks to get Gideon off the general, and not before Gideon left Rand with several broken ribs, a bruised spleen, and a shattered kneecap that would continue to ache every time the weather was damp.
Later, much later, Gideon was stewing in the Kodiak’s brig, waiting for the ‘ship to lift off, and wondering where the rest of his company had been stowed, when Rand came down to see him.
Gideon waited until the general dismissed the duty officer before rising from his bunk. He looked at Rand, and his new accessory. “Nice cane.”
Rand didn’t rise to the bait. “Colonel,” he said, glancing down the passage to make certain they were alone. Seemingly satisfied, he turned back to Gideon. “You are going to plead guilty on all charges,” he said simply.
Gideon stared. “I really don’t see that happening,” he said after a moment.
“First, I will pretend there was a ‘sir’ at the end of that statement and second, I rather think you will,” Rand told him. “Particularly given the overwhelming evidence against you.”
“The manufactured evidence,” Gideon countered.
“And you would prove this, how?” Rand asked. “All your witnesses are either dead, or likewise accused. The Atlas, which you say transported you to Nasa on my orders, has yet to answer any of our hails.”
Gideon’s jaw, already clenched to the point of pain, twitched. “Dead or paid off?”
“That is a question,” Rand said, and then changed the subject. “Then of course, there is all this.” He held up the cane, gestured to the livid bruise that was the right side of his face. “You’d be amazed how much weight aggravated assault and attempted murder can add to a case of treason. So much weight,” he added, “I am within my mandate to order a battlefield execution. Not for you, sadly. Your rank guarantees you the right to trial, but I can, and will, have every surviving member of the 12th company shot at dawn.
“A terrible fate for those six soldiers,” Rand continued, leaning on his cane, as if weary. But there was nothing weary in his eyes as they locked on Gideon’s. “Especially if they were only following their colonel’s—their traitorous colonel’s—orders. And in case the lives of your enlisteds aren’t sufficient motivation,” he continued, “I’m given to understand you’ve a certain fondness for one Lt. Indani Solis, currently assigned to the Phalanx.”
“Wait,” Gideon said.
“The Phalanx, which I’ve only just ordered to the eastern front. So easy for a jump to go wrong in the middle of a firefight. Lines fail, weapons misfire… accidents happen.” He paused, studying Gideon. “I see I have your attention.”
“Yes. You… have my attention.”
“And you understand just how many lives are at stake, here.”
“Are they alive? Is Dani—Are they all still alive?”<
br />
“You doubt me?”
“What do you think?” Gideon’s hands slammed against the bars and it was the most minute satisfaction to see Rand’s flinch. “Are they alive?”
“For now.” Rand’s response came out more as a hiss than as words. “But unless you take responsibility for the crimes of which you have been accused, what remains of your company will be witnessing their last suns rise in the next two hours, and it won’t be another full day before Lt. Solis makes her final jump.”
In the end there had been no choice, not for Gideon.
Even if a single scrap of evidence to support his innocence existed, he couldn’t let Rand execute the rest of his team.
And Dani…
So no, there had been no choice.
Even so, after it was done, after he’d sworn out his confession before witnesses, and signed his name to the document, and returned to the brig to await delivery to the court martial, where he would receive his sentence, Rand returned to visit, once more.
Again the general stopped at Gideon’s cell, again dismissed the duty provost, and again turned to Gideon who was, again, stretched out on his bunk.
He didn’t bother to get up, this time. “Anything else I can get you?” Gideon asked the ceiling. “A pint of blood? My left hand?”
Rand said nothing.
He continued saying nothing for so long Gideon was eventually moved to sit up and look at the man, and what he saw had the spit drying in his mouth, because what he saw wasn’t triumph, it wasn’t the gloating he’d have expected.
What he saw was a self-loathing so hungry it seemed to have hollowed the general out, leaving him nothing but husk.
“What?” he asked, rising now, though he didn’t step closer to the bars. There was something in Jessup Rand’s eyes that prevented any such forward motion. “What?” he said again.
Rand seemed to shiver, as if coming awake. “Do you have the least idea,” he said, his voice as hollow as his expression, “the least idea what I’ve done because of you?”
Gideon, with six dead soldiers, had a pretty good idea, but there was that in Rand’s voice that prevented him saying so. Instead he asked a question of his own. “What did I do,” he asked, quietly, “that those six soldiers had to die?”
At which point Rand’s eyes hardened, and his body straightened, and the loathing of self gave way to a livid, living hatred of the man imprisoned before him.
Gideon had the length of his own, caught, breath, to absorb the impact of the general’s hostility, before Rand turned and began to walk away.
“What did I do?” Gideon asked, moving, finally, to the bars.
Rand, his steps uneven on the grated deck, continued on.
“Damn you, Rand! Tell me why they’re dead!”
At which point the general did stop. “You should never have touched her,” he said, not quite looking back.
Then he continued on through the brig’s hatch, leaving Gideon alone, still grasping the bars of his cell for many minutes before uttering the soft denial.
“I didn’t.”
21
“Hallo!”
The greeting, as brittle as it was chipper, had Gideon groaning as it shredded through the fog of his concussed dream.
“Still feeling poorly, are we?”
Gideon cracked an eye open to see Rory, crouched at his right side. “Poorly is how a guy feels when he’s hung over,” he said. “What I’m feeling is an order of magnitude past that.”
“Good!” Rory said, giving Gideon a vigorous slap on the shoulder before setting a cold pack, somewhat less vigorously, against the back of his head until Gideon’s right hand rose to hold it in place. “That means you’ll think twice before trying a cocked up move like that again.”
Gideon wasn’t so sure of that, but at the moment he had other concerns, first among them not being able to recall precisely what those concerns were.
Then another man crouched down on the wet tarmac to Gideon’s left, and he remembered one of them.
“I saw you die,” he told Eitan Fehr.
The man who’d been his second-in-command so many years ago, shook his head—which sported much longer hair than it had back in the day.
“You saw me fall,” Fehr corrected “A bad fall, but into the river below, so not quite fatal.”
Gideon’s gaze held a moment, then tracked down, pausing at the point on Fehr’s left arm where his hand used to be. He looked up, again.
“That came after,” Fehr answered the unvoiced question. “After the river carried me into Illyria.”
Which would have been bad, Gideon thought—very bad, as Illyria, being an Adidan protectorate, held with the practice of slavery.
The locals preferred the term indentured servitude but few, if any, ever managed to become outdentured, and prisoners of war, as Fehr would have been, weren’t even offered the chance.
“I’m sorry,” Gideon said.
Fehr looked down at the hand that wasn’t there. “You could not have known. I understand,” he continued, “others were not so fortunate. Walsingham, young Carver…”
“Them, I saw buried.” Gideon pushed himself to a seated position, so he could look his former lieutenant in the eye. The world wobbled some, and Fehr set a steadying hand on his shoulder. Once certain he wasn’t about to pitch over, Gideon continued the thought, “With you among the living, we lost five, all told.”
Fehr nodded, once up, once down. “I know.”
“Yeah?” For some reason that just made it worse for Gideon. “And how exactly do you know? Was it Pitte who told you?”
“Most of it, yes.”
“And you’re okay with it?” Gideon asked, uncomprehending.
At this point Fehr looked at Rory, who cleared his throat. “I’ll just get back to yon engine pod, shall I?” The young man sprang to his feet. “Be sure t’keep that cold pack in place.”
Gideon slapped the pack back in place, then remembered something. “Wait!”
Rory paused, looked back.
“What about Jinna?” he asked. “And where’s Mia?” He was going to ask about Elvis too, but a chirrup and a flutter of wings told him the draco was parked atop the gondola.
“Jinna is aboard the Errant, as it seems she’ll be traveling with us for a spell,” Rory said, his pleasure in that fact obvious. “Mia’s keeping her company for the nonce, and Jagati’s off t’fetch supplies and dig up some intelligence on your man, Del.”
“He’s not my man,” Gideon said shortly. “Or my problem.”
Rory stared, but to Gideon’s relief did not point out that by bringing Jinna to the Errant, Gideon had waded hip deep in a problem not his own.
“So, how is Pitte doing, anyway?” Gideon asked, more because it seemed politic not to antagonize these people any further than because he cared about Pitte’s well being.
“He’ll survive,” Rory said, visibly tamping down the flicker of anger before turning to Fehr. “Jagati’ll be back soon, I’d think, and we’re aloft soon after.”
Fehr nodded, though he never took his eyes off of Gideon. “You have questions,” he said.
Gideon met the calm, nearly black eyes. “A few.”
“Understand,” Fehr began, “I do not speak of Illyria.”
“All right.” Given there were a few moments in the Barrens Gideon would be happy to never bring to light, he could accept that. “How are you on the whole, working for the man who murdered half your company, and shot you off a cliff?”
“John did not fire those cannons.”
“Fired, ordered fired.” Gideon waved that off, “It’s all the same thing.”
“Except John was not the one giving those orders,” Fehr insisted. “The orders came from General Rand. Captain Pitte refused to comply, so Rand had him removed from command—forcibly. Once the Kodiak returned to Epsilon, Pitte was court martialed and dishonorably discharged.”
Which might, Gideon thought, explain the look on Pitte’s face, and the we
ird-ass apology.
My fault, but not… not mine.
Except wasn’t that too easy? Too convenient? Would General Rand, with all his careful planning, have ever risked flying with a captain who would balk when the time came to eliminate Gideon?
“This is what he told you?” he asked, unable to reconcile what he was being told with over six years of focused hatred.
“No,” a woman’s voice broke in. “That’s what I told him.”
Gideon looked up to see the inimitable Jagati had returned, hoisting a burlap sack held by a strap over her shoulder, and a crate against her hip.
He’d thought her intimidating before, during that brief glimpse as he was blacking out. But in the cold light of slightly concussed, she was even more formidable, even with her gun holstered.
“Which would mean something if I knew you,” he said evenly, “but I don’t.”
“Point,” she replied, tersely. “Like I don’t know you. Which is why, until Fehr spoke for you, I was ready to dump your unconscious ass in the river. Lucky for you, I listened.”
Had that coming, Gideon thought, suddenly weary as the last dribbles of fury evaporated under Jagati’s glare. “I’m listening, now,” he said.
It was not quite an apology.
She was not quite impressed.
“Should have thought of that before you tried to throttle my captain to death,” she told him, adjusting the strap on the burlap sack, and swinging around to stomp up the gangplank.
Halfway up she stopped, swore, and looked down at Gideon. “Long and short, Pitte never got to explaining the whole Rand thing to Fehr. He just apologized for not taking Rand out when he had the chance. He’s never forgiven himself for that.”
The way she looked at him, Gideon got the impression she’d never forgiven Rand.
Join the club, he thought.
Lifelong member, her gaze seemed to reply, before she broke the contact and looked at Fehr. “I got some dirt on the granddaddy,” she said, “Killian Del.”
“It is bad?”
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