“How did you get back? I took Drivvy.”
“Thache lent me the general’s driver. The Haphans will be on high alert for a few days since we stirred up the front. No leave given. Did you talk to that Southie in the hole?”
Sethlan flipped through his notes. “Progur Pilladon.”
“Progur Pilladon!” Diggery took a deep drink from his stein. “To see his face made me feel quite handsome. Nice fellow. He taught me a phrase of Old Tachbavim. Schalx-a slax-a.”
“Arm-drink. That’s a cold soup that you sip through a radius bone straw. A delicacy. The younger the Tachba the better.”
“I figured it was something like that. He said it wasn’t much found on the front.” Diggery raised a stein to the nearly empty club and declaimed, “A drink to the health of the Haphans, for civilizing us so we don’t have to eat arm soup.”
“Hear, hear,” cried Cephas from his corner, starting up from what had looked like a full coma. “And the same with foot curry!”
“There is no such thing,” Sethlan said, before Diggery had to ask. He’d meant to spare Diggery some shame, but realized his mistake almost immediately. Diggery, even after a day at the front, would never be too tired to argue.
At first, he feigned confusion. He asked, in a loud voice for the room, “Did Cephas simply invent foot curry so he could interrupt our conversation?”
“Don’t be insulting, Diggery,” Cephas replied. “I would never invent. I was experimenting, and your captain has no sense of fun.”
Diggery leapt back to his feet. “What did you say about the captain, Cephas?”
Cephas only shook his head. “Let your captain manage himself, scrag. Don’t draw real Tachba men into your voyage of learning. The problem is you, not your captain.”
“What problem, me?” Diggery demanded.
“Your problems? Where should I start?” Cephas finished his pint and wiped his mouth. “From what I’ve seen this far, you’re a dangerous oddity. You’re a useless orphan, a wanna-be Haphanite. When I told you about foot curry, you didn’t know if it was another delicacy or a despicable lie. Funny, because that’s essentially what we don’t know about you, Diggery.”
Diggery’s eyes went cold. Between his blackened face, his bloodshot eyes, and his up-blown hair, he looked like an angry ancestor collecting itself for vengeance. Diggery stepped around his chair toward Cephas’s table. Sethlan rubbed his eyes. Where in damnation did Diggery get his energy? And why couldn’t he apply it some other way?
~Shouldn’t Cephas shut up too?~
Why don’t you shut up yourself, Voice, Sethlan suggested. Captain Cephas is bent and broken. What’s Diggery’s excuse? Let’s all shut up together and sit quietly.
~Not very Tachba of you…~ the Voice murmured.
Nana breezed in front of Diggery before the boy could take another step.
“Captain Cephas is correct that Diggery wants knowledge,” she said. “Captain Cephas knows Diggery must be twice the rest of us to be considered half.”
To Diggery, that sounded too much like an intervention, maybe even sympathy. It only fed his ire. “Service, Nana!”
“I am at your service, Diggery,” she said sweetly.
“Don’t start doing your peacemaking thing, Nana.” Diggery’s eyes were still locked on Cephas. “I think I may have an appointment.”
“An appointment or a duel?” Cephas asked. “Why mince words like an effeminate Haphan?”
Nana plopped a fresh pint in Diggery’s hand. Not that he needed another, but sometimes food or drink could shift a person’s attention.
She held the pint as he grasped it. “Diggery, it goes like this: men have service, animals have emotions.”
Diggery turned fully to her. Whatever his upbringing and youth, he still towered over the slight woman. She stared up with unflinching attention.
For a teetering moment, Diggery’s anger warred against his self-control. Then he gave Nana a leer. “If men have service, what do handsome men have?”
She reached up with a delicate hand and tried to smooth his hair. “Patient dashtas.”
“Yes.” Diggery raised his voice for the room again. “Some of us may toy with emotion, but others have service.”
“Some other time, then,” said Cephas. “I can wait years for an appointment.”
Nana shifted her hands to Diggery’s chest. “Look in my eyes, Diggery. Look at me. Do you know that Tejj is gone?”
Diggery looked empty and young. “I found him. He’s marked in the notes. We can put him on the map.”
“Nothing of anger or sorrow will bring Tejj back,” Nana said. “Tejj would have wanted you to improve us all, not fight evil old drunks from the back of the room.”
Diggery nodded and deflated back into his chair.
Hours later, Sethlan swirled the fluid in his glass and said, “Bourbon.”
He was not requesting more from a passing scull. His mind had asked him what it was called.
“Bourbon-bourbon-bourbon,” Colonel Trappia echoed. The old man glanced at Nana and snorted. The dashta was curled on a chair between them, cheek on her knees, to all visible evidence asleep. Nana rarely returned to her own quarters, wherever they were. More typically, she snatched sleep an hour at a time by curling against officers who were too drunk to complain.
“Big bastards from the sky, la,” Trappia murmured. “You need better information. I don’t see the Southies shooting from the swamp unless they’re floating shells in. Or water-cooling the guns. I hate to sound innovative, but have we considered that?”
“We have, sir, and it isn’t feasible.” Sethlan hesitated. “I have a request.”
“Which is what?”
“The big shells…they only land at night.”
“Only? Why are the Tachba only shelling at night?”
Trappia’s question was clearly leading. Sethlan had no doubt the colonel, the commanding officer of the 314th Observers, already suspected an answer. “Well, sir, it’s probably to keep the shell’s origins a secret.”
They sat in silence for a moment. Then Trappia said, “South keeping secrets from us, huh? How unconventional of them.”
“At night, it’s difficult to use accurate artillery spotter tools. No point even in risking them at the front.”
“Night or day, it’s never easy when you’re in the middle of a barrage.”
“I’d like to put more order in the field. A chaos filter. Something to clean it all up.”
“No doubt we all would like to put more order in the field.” Trappia waited, his eyes on Sethlan. The colonel was experienced enough to know that new ideas had to be birthed with patience and then received without comment, as if they were old ideas. Pretty Polly disdained progressive thinking.
Trappia had close-cropped gray hair and the grey eyes that marked him as an easterner. He spoke like an old trencher and it was not affectation because he got everything right, but Sethlan had never seen him in battlefield press. At the moment, the colonel wore his Class-B grays, but they were anomalously crossed with a Haphan sash-and-stars. He spent most of his time among the Haphan overlords, taking requests for intel and briefing their strategists.
“Sir, I need one of the new cameras, but with film that can shoot at night. Do we have something like that?” Sethlan asked.
“Clearly, you already know we do, captain. We have a dingus, a contrivance. It’s called the ‘Little Box.’ It has legs and we stand it up behind the trenches, leave the shutter open. Slow exposure on the film, it’s the newest thing, I’m sad to say.”
“For spotting snipers.”
Trappia nodded. “We use it to map sniper positions. You get a blur on the exposure around Southie’s trench where they pop their heads up to plink at us. We’ve discovered several of their blinds that way.”
“My idea is that we can keep it pointed at the sky, above the explosions of the big shells. If we precisely measure where we set the camera, we can capture the arc of the incoming shells. We’ll
do some math and get a better estimate of the source.”
Trappia frowned, as if the idea was slightly too original even for him. “If you want the Little Box, I’ll cut her free from the counter-sniper squad.”
“I also need Diggery approved to learn the mathematics. At the moment they’re beyond his clearance level. But if we’re playing in barrages, he may be important someday.”
“You might personally meet Tom Bonefire or Stompfootie, you mean. Sure, he is approved, by my order. He can buy the books when he sobers up and stops telling stories about Tejj.” Trappia stood and stretched. “What am I saying? Diggery will steal the books.”
“Yes, sir.”
The colonel rarely smiled, but he could squint. “What do you think of Cephas? I heard he tore Diggery a new hole.”
“I hate the whole process of being bitter and lashing out,” Sethlan said, and winced. He hid from his superior’s disconcerted glance by taking a sip of bourbon.
“Hrm. Yes. Well. You let the dashta handle the process. She’ll get him out of his funk. Cephas is too experienced to waste.” Trappia’s eyes drifted to Nana. “What a heart-stealer. Precious, curled up like that. If she wasn’t sleeping, I’d ask her to share a drink. Bourbon?”
“Thank you, sir, I couldn’t.”
“This idea of yours, using the camera on slow exposure to capture shell trajectories. Everybody’s been talking cameras since the Happies took their picture for the IDs. Yours is the first useful idea I’ve heard. I mean no offense; it’s so useful it’s hardly an innovation. It’s already old hat. It’s trusted.”
The colonel’s tone was light, his eyes not even focused on Sethlan.
“Yes, sir.”
“I think you may be an Observer now, in the real sense. Good night.”
Trappia turned away and limped to the back of the club. There he passed through a heavy wooden door, framed in red. Only officers with top clearance could use the red door. Inside was an undistinguished hallway, and nobody knew where it led.
Vaguely disturbed, Sethlan glanced around the table for something to drink, chew, or smoke.
Trappia was correct. Sethlan had known about Little Box, the sniper camera. Sitting alone and quiet at his table, he heard snatches of information from other tables.
The problem was that Sethlan wasn’t supposed to know about the camera. It surpassed his security clearance, and Colonel Trappia should not have discussed it with him. But the colonel did not err when it came to protocol, so apparently Sethlan’s clearances would be changing soon. Perhaps they were changed already, and he simply hadn’t received the writs. More of Colonel Goldros’s influence? Or maybe it was General Tawarna now. Trappia himself didn’t seem like someone to hurry a promotion.
Sethlan’s eyes shifted restlessly to Nana, as if she could provide him answers. It also disturbed him, sometimes, that he couldn’t look away from her for very long. His gaze drifted from her clasped hands to her face.
Nana was awake. She watched him with eyes that glowed in the light from the fire. Then her gaze flickered to the red door at the back of the club. Then her gaze flickered back to him.
Before Sethlan could ask something suitably indirect, she rested her head on his knee and fell asleep again. Perhaps for real this time.
The light pressure of her forehead locked him to his chair. He would refuse to move even if he caught fire. Perhaps this was by design. Nana could be too clever, too manipulative, too ulterior. He shouldn’t enjoy her simply for how she looked.
But he looked anyway.
She had faint marks on her face. A filigree of scars went from her temple to her neck, as if lace had been embedded beneath her skin and then torn out. Now, what could possibly…? He would not have noticed it, except she was so close to him, lit by the fire, and he couldn’t tear his eyes off her.
Perhaps someday, when they had rapport or he had something approaching basic nerve, Sethlan would ask her about herself.
13
Eponymous
Eponymous concentrated on Lucky Strike and asked if it could hear.
“Of course I can hear,” the ship answered. Normally, its voice was bland and baseline. This time, Eponymous heard a glimmer around the words.
“You’re using an echo effect…because you’re in space?”
“I like to have my games,” the ship replied flatly. The echo disappeared. “Why did you call me?”
“I have been here one day, ship, and they almost killed me. Violently. Several times over. I was not comfortable.”
“CivGov Inspector, I contracted you for a specific task. A dangerous task.”
“I was tasked to investigate the war, and look for suspicious activity,” she said. The ship already knew this, but it was wise to generate a record.
“Yes. This war is why I decanted you into that officer’s twisted brain in the first place.”
“Today I saw an incomprehensible amount of men and materiel wasted. It simply defies reason. The front is a thousand miles long. The North operates with antique technology, except for some Haphan devices I’ve noticed. The South apparently operates without basic math!”
“And yet?“ the ship prompted.
“And yet, by all indication, they’ve been at war for years, if not centuries.”
“This trench war is a hundred years old, Inspector. On a given day, the North expends roughly three thousand men, the South about twelve thousand. That is men killed, not wounded. There are many more wounded, but these numbers can’t be trusted. Southerners don’t tally amputations, for example. Lost limbs are not considered particularly debilitating. The northerners are more civilized. They rate their wounded, and a Z-9 is an important distinction: Two or more limbs amputated, eight or more feet of intestine lost, an ‘unrecoverable insult to the gastro-intestinal tract,’ or a jaw-bone gone. If a soldier gets one of those, the lucky bastard can go home.”
“Fifteen thousand dead per day?”
“On certain holidays, the number reaches ten or twenty times that. It comes to five and a half million men a year, on average. Twisted men who are born, raised, educated, trained, and equipped. They ride to the front and get mulched.”
“Obscene.”
“You are lucky to be on the Northern side, Inspector. A southern Tachba is four times more likely to die than a northern Tachba. Die violently, I mean. In terms of disease, madness, and suicide, the South loses ten soldiers to every Northern one.”
“So you will appreciate my interest, ship. I must know how this atrocity came about. I’m surprised you didn’t provide me a more detailed history.”
“Are you now a historian?” the ship inquired. “Won’t a fledgling interest in local history distract you from gathering data and experience for your report?”
“No.” Eponymous was answered by silence. She added, “The historical context may well keep me alive.”
“But who cares if you are kept alive? If your host is killed, we’ll make a fresh copy of you and put you into another soldier. We can select from a wide range of lunatics.”
“Let me go on the record and request someone with a desk job next time. And female.”
“Ah, well, Inspector. On Grigory IV, a hundred year trench war is much less impossible than finding a woman with freedom of movement.” Eponymous heard the smirk in the ship’s voice. “You may have noticed the general dearth of females. Tachba women are the factories that build the armies. They’re too valuable to leave scattered around. They are locked away in the cities, or sequestered in family compounds in the countryside. It would probably depress you to learn how they get on.”
“I’m touched that you consider my feelings, ship.” Eponymous said. “Since my mood matters so much, let me say I’d prefer to avoid being killed at all. It’s not the dying I care about, it’s the experience of dying.”
“Things happen in war.”
“Ship, you went through great trouble and expense to contract me for CivGov. Why do I feel like you’re obstructing me? Why did
you embed me in the servant class? You should have put me in a goddamn Haphan general.”
“Haphan generals don’t see the real war, Inspector. You’re not here to stay alive, explore your femininity, or talk grand strategies. You’re here to paint a picture of life on the ground. You’re here to perceive cultural…inconsistencies. Consider this: your pet captain, Sethlan, is at the front and in the city both.”
Eponymous saw the truth in that, but didn’t want to give the ship credit. “I suppose it’s true that you could have fucked up even worse than you did.”
“The officers of the Observers die often and easily, Inspector, but they also get promoted like you wouldn’t believe. Sethlan has just started his climb. Now that the Haphan brass has decided he’s not going to smoke himself, they are issuing him a security clearance. He will get to see the good stuff.”
“We’re not primitives, ship,” Eponymous said. “There are other ways to see the ‘good stuff.’ If there is historical context to be seen, I need to see it.”
“Is that an official request?”
Eponymous paused, thinking furiously.
Lucky Strike had led her to this question. If Eponymous wanted more information, she would have to request it officially, in her capacity as an Inspector, with the weight and authority of CivGov behind it.
This seemed to imply that Lucky Strike didn’t already possess the information she wanted. This, in turn, probably indicated the information was regulated by one of the statutes that protected lesser civilizations. If Eponymous permitted it, the ship would be allowed a variance so it could collect the information she wanted to see, information it had probably just steered her into requesting.
She tried to buy time to think. “If I were requesting detailed cultural information about this world, ship, would it be possible for you to deliver?”
“I have infiltrated nano-scale probes into the Haphan imperial residence in the northernmost city. It’s the landed space-ark they call Falling Mountain. That’s where the Haphan local empress lives.”
The Eternal Front: A Lines of Thunder Novel (Lines of Thunder Universe) Page 12
