Overkill (16 page)

Zhondro sat propped up in his hospital bed in the detention wing of the infirmary of Human Union Mutual Defense Base Marinus. We were a thousand miles and two months removed from the carnage we had left in the Tassin desert.

My own bed faced his, so both of us could look in one direction out a barred window at the transports that came and went across the base’s tarmac. For variety, we could look in the other direction at the locked door with an armed guard outside it round the clock. We shared an infirmary room on our jailers’ theory that it was best to put all the rotten eggs in one basket, then watch that basket.

Actually, Zhondro’s rank made it a nice basket to be in. The physicians that were putting us back together were Trueborn, as was the medical technology. The food was better than in any Legion mess, and our jailers amused us with endless holos of a Trueborn game called football that they assumed GIs liked.

Zhondro grimaced as he held one corner of his tattered prayer scarf in his teeth, while he folded the other corner over it with his uninjured, remaining, left arm. The organic prosthetic that was growing to be his new right arm still stuck out in front of him in its cast, at a right angle to his torso, so that he appeared to be perpetually signaling first down and ten.

I pulled the burn mask back from my lips and said, “Why don’t you throw that rag away?”

He finished folding, laid the scarf in his lap, then sniffed at me. “This
rag
saved our lives.”

“Yesterday you said it was the shaman’s spell that saved our lives.”

“It was that, also. God manifests himself in multiple ways to the virtuous.”

I credited our survival less to virtue than to Second Platoon’s abysmal gunnery. They had near-missed a five hundred yard shot at Zhondro’s tank, an incompetence worse than shanking a two-yard field goal. I sighed. “So how long does a Tassini keep the same prayer scarf?”

“Forever. It must cover him on his funeral pyre before he may ascend to Paradise.”

“Oh.”

The guard unlocked the door, let in an uncharacteristically squatty Trueborn in a well-cut business one-piece, then pulled the door shut and left the three of us alone.

The Trueborn had lips that protruded like a duck’s bill, and gray hair. I recognized him. When the Brigade downshipped through this base at the beginning of our tour, he explained to us from a podium on the runway that the Union tolerated the Legion’s assistance to the Seceded Territories, rather than welcomed it.

What he hadn’t told us, because we already knew, was that Earth was playing both ends against the middle on Bren. Bren’s mines supplied the Union’s starship fuel. Earth couldn’t allow a disruptive civil war between Bassin of Marin, who had freed his nation’s slaves, and his Seceded Territories, whose nobles were exterminating slaves who, if liberated, might become rivals. So Earth engineered a limited war by proxy. Tassini nomads, allied with their escaped-slave kin and armed under the table by Bassin, were the good guys. That left us to be the genocidal slavers’ hired guns.

I sighed. Politics makes rotten bedfellows. Politicians don’t care, because it’s GI blood that stains the sheets.

I cocked my head at our visitor. “Ambassador Muscovy?”

He nodded to us. “Colonel Zhondro, Lieutenant Parker. You both look well.”

Even after two months of reconstruction, we looked like crap on a stick. Diplomats! What a cream tour to tell obvious lies, go to work in real clothes instead of battle dress uniform, and get overpaid for it.

The ambassador cleared his throat. “At any rate, your doctors tell me you’re both well enough for a substantive discussion of your situation. I—”

Zhondro raised his palm. “What do you know of my family?”

Muscovy cocked his head, but Zhondro’s question hardly surprised me. Zhondro asked it of the guards, every day. They didn’t answer it, every day. I think both Zhondro and I assumed that meant his family was dead.

Muscovy sighed, then sat on the edge of our therapy table with his legs dangling. “Officially, Colonel, you’re a terrorist in our temporary custody for urgent medical treatment. You’re awaiting repatriation to the Seceded Territories for execution. I’d be hung if I brought a terrorist’s wife and children in here to visit him. So would they.”

Zhondro’s eyes glistened, and he blinked. “They’re alive?”

“No one told you?” Muscovy shook his head as he stared at the locked door. “Idiots. Jesus H. Christ.”

Zhondro’s mouth hung open while he shook his head. “I didn’t know.” Then he frowned, “What’s to become of them?”

Muscovy stared at his hands. “We extracted them from the war zone on the same premise that we extracted you. They’re detained noncombatants awaiting repatriation.”

“Repatriation.” Zhondro frowned. “Meaning they will be sent back, and shot later rather than sooner.”

“Officially? Yes.”

Zhondro squeezed the holo remote in his good hand so hard that it snapped.

Muscovy raised his palm. “
Unofficially
, your family appears to have escaped from our custody through no fault of ours.”

Zhondro leaned forward, eyes flashing. “What?”

“Relax. We can’t repatriate your wife if we don’t know where she is, can we? I got your wife an interview for a vacancy in community relations here on the post. But I had to use an identity card with a new name.”

Zhondro frowned again.

Muscovy made a patting motion with downturned palms. “It’s a citizen position, not an indenture. Remember, Bassin’s in charge here. The Emancipation is law. She got an offer. She accepted. She can quit tomorrow and chase butterflies if she wants to. But the job pays well enough that she’s house shopping. Her supervisor told me the only thing he doesn’t like about her is that she’ll get promoted past him in six months and he’ll have to find a replacement.”

Zhondro leaned back against his pillow.

Muscovy flipped a chip on top of the hologen. “There’s an hour of your kids on this chip. I took it myself. They’re enrolled under her new name in the same school that King Bassin’s nephew and my daughter attend. Your son’s performance in the play’s terrific, by the way.” He paused. “There’s ten minutes at the end of the chip that your wife recorded on her own, just for you. I haven’t watched that part. Not my business.” He paused. “I’d appreciate it if you’d both keep all this to yourselves. They might not hang me if they found out, but I’d finish my career shoveling snow in Antarctica.”

Zhondro turned his face away, and his eyes glistened again. “Thank you.”

Maybe Muscovy wasn’t overpaid, after all. I cleared the lump in my throat.

Muscovy heard me, then turned to me. “Don’t worry, Lieutenant. I haven’t forgotten you. It’s a package deal.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Deal?”

He nodded at both of us. “The Legion’s employers consider Colonel Zhondro a terrorist who should be summarily hung. Therefore, so does the Legion, common sense notwithstanding. Lieutenant, the Legion’s less conflicted about you. You disobeyed a direct order. They’re quick to take credit for the licking that you gave Colonel Zhondro’s numerically superior force. But they blame your unit’s casualties on you. And your disobedience occurred in the face of the enemy. So you’re not even entitled to a court martial. Your commanders in the field have administrative jurisdiction to summarily hang you, too.”

My heart sank. The guards had informally told both Zhondro and me all that over the last couple of months. But now it was official.

Muscovy said, “However, last month a prominent citizen on Earth asked a favor of my bosses that they dropped in my lap. He needs to quietly hire a couple guys short-term who know their way around old crawler tanks.”

I snorted. “That’s what you do all day? Hire shady mechanics for rich Trueborns?”

Muscovy shrugged. “You’d be surprised how much of diplomacy is doing big money small favors, Lieutenant. Suffice to say that my employer and yours are willing to let me piss off the Seceded Territories if it helps this gentleman out.”

I narrowed my eyes. “There must be a thousand veterans right here in Marinus that know crawlers. Why us?”

“None of those thousand are embarrassing political footballs. If I can do the favor and at the same time get you two out of sight and out of mind here for a while, everybody wins. Besides, King Bassin thinks you’re a hero, Parker. And he thinks that the Colonel, here, is George Washington.”

First there had been this Christ that aggravated both Cutler and Muscovy. Then football and Antarctica. Now this George person. We were presumed to recognize all of them. Trueborns really did think Earth was the cultural center of the universe.

Muscovy continued, “Actually, I think you’re heroes, too. But the Human Union doesn’t care what I think. It does care what King Bassin thinks.”

I asked, “What would we get for helping you do this favor?”

Muscovy smiled. “For starters, Lieutenant, you’ll be awarded the Star of Marin, with Leaves no less, by order of his Majesty Bassin the First. Technically, he still rules the Seceded Territories that you serve. Your brevet rank will be made permanent. You’ll be given a medically accelerated honorable discharge, and your ongoing benefits will be those of a commissioned officer.”

Muscovy turned to Zhondro. “Colonel, the purpose of getting you off Bren for a while is to remove an irritant. In the couple of months that this job will take, the heat will die down. The King will invite you to return here to Marinus, to your family. He’ll appoint you governor in exile of the Seceded Territories. Again, he’s still their King, technically. You and your family will live free, while you continue to work to free your people.” Muscovy slapped his palms on his thighs. “And what do you two have to do to earn these generous outcomes? Spend a couple months restoring some tycoon’s vintage tank, then chauffeur him around in it.”

Zhondro said, “That’s extraordinary.”

“I told you everybody wins. Except the slavers. I think this is worth all the chips I cashed to arrange this for you. For both of you.”

Zhondro and I looked at one another, but we said nothing. Orion had told me once that if something seemed too good to be true, it probably was.

Muscovy raised his wrist, tapped his ’puter with a finger, and frowned. “Gentlemen, I interrupted your day because I must have a yes from you both. And I must have it now. Or at least before nine thirty-six tonight.”

Just when I was starting to like this Trueborn, he started dictating to us. I wrinkled my nose. “Nine thirty-six? Why?”

Muscovy said, “Because that’s moonrise.”

“Oh.” Then I whispered, “Crap.”

Zhondro cocked his head at me. “Why does that matter?”

I said, “Moonrise is when the Legion hangs prisoners.”

Muscovy shrugged, his eyes dull as tombstones while he looked first into Zhondro’s face, then mine. “I’m sorry. I stalled them as long as I could.”

I glanced at Zhondro. He nodded. I said to Muscovy, “Ambassador, tell your Trueborn tycoon he’s just hired two crackerjack mechanics.”

Thump
.

Inside the Sleeper, I straightened as something struck the outer wall, on the side opposite the hatch. I slid the Barrett off the table in front of me while my heart pounded.

Thirty-five

I held my breath while I listened as footfalls stopped, started, and moved irregularly toward the Sleeper’s hatch. Too small and few for a six legged grezzen, woog, or striper. Unfortunately, also too irregular to be human.

I exhaled. The dumb ostriches could harass me if and when I left the Sleeper, at least until I shot a couple. Meantime, I was safe in here.

I smiled. Unless they had learned to operate a hatch latch.

There was a bump-and-bang racket right outside the hatch. Maybe one that had followed my scent trail was scrabbling outside, trying to force its way in.

Creak
.

My eyes widened. The inner handle of the hatch latch twitched.

I raised the Barrett to my shoulder, and sighted on the hatch center.

Pop
.

The latch retracted fully, and the hatch swung inward, admitting a sliver of light. I closed one eye, but at this range aim was optional.

The door swung wide.

“Christ!” Kit threw her hands up and staggered back and out of my line of fire. “Parker! It’s me!”

Gasping, I pointed the gun vertical, while it quivered in my hands. I had nearly shot the closest thing to a friend I had left in this world.

She peeked one eye around the hatch edge. “You’re alive!”

“You’re alive!”

She pointed at my gun. “Almost!”

I nodded. “Close.”

“Grezzen?”

“Gone. Parker . . . I’ve been with Zhondro all night. He couldn’t be moved, even if I could’ve carried him. Spinal cord. And worse.”

“But you’re here. Is he—?”

She dropped her eyes. “Soon.” She pointed at the prayer scarf on Zhondro’s bunk. “He asked me to bring that. It’s important to him.”

“Then he knows he doesn’t have long.”

She nodded. “He’ll be glad to see you first.”

She led me back through the forest to the place where Zhondro had finally collapsed. He was tough, and had made it so far away that I understood why Kit hadn’t heard me call, earlier.

He lay on his back, eyes closed, but opened them when he heard us. She was right about his condition. If I hadn’t seen so much like it before, I would’ve said he only had a broken leg, which Kit had splinted. But his pallor and drawn features betrayed the extent of his internal injuries.

When he saw me, he smiled. “I knew you must have made it. Kit tells me you tried to beat that animal with a stick.” He coughed blood. “You always had more courage than sense. Jazen, my family—”

I touched his shoulder. “Take it easy. I’ll be sure they know.” If I lived.

He nodded, let his eyes close again.

He opened them when Kit pressed his prayer scarf into his hand. “Thank you. I can go now.” He closed his eyes for the last time.

It took us an hour to gather enough dry wood for Zhondro’s pyre, a waist-high pyramid of sticks and brush, then lift Zhondro’s body onto it. I spread his prayer scarf across his chest, then knelt and lased the kindling at the pyramid’s base. It lit with a chuff, and I stepped back alongside Kit.