The Eternal Front: A Lines of Thunder Novel (Lines of Thunder Universe)

by Walter Blaire

  ~I’m proud of your restraint, Sethlan. You let all that bile roll past you. You’re a credit to—~

  Cephas is collecting on the Observers.

  ~He’s spying?~

  Yes.

  ~For the Haphans?~

  Sethlan rolled his eyes. Who else?

  If Sethlan could penetrate this secret, then certainly Nana had penetrated it already. She might or might not be smarter than him, but she certainly occupied a better overlook on the officers. Besides, Nana had specifically asked Sethlan to broach this topic with Cephas, and she probably knew what would obtain from it.

  Nana had led Sethlan into uncovering Cephas’s secret.

  ~Nana is too good at this stuff.~

  Shut up, Voice. Why had Nana led Sethlan into this? Because if it was true, then what Cephas considered interesting could be crucial.

  So, what was Cephas interested in?

  Voice, you may speak again. What interests Cephas?

  ~You tell me. For what did Cephas initially stand up and move across the room?~

  “That’s good,” Sethlan said aloud.

  Cephas had wanted to know what Sethlan and Diggery thought about the idea of ‘rebellion.’

  Sethlan’s eyes landed on Nana across the room. She was instructing a pack of sculleries, young blood-fed boys who couldn’t take their eyes off her. They stared as she swept her hair from her face. They watched as she balanced on one foot, and rubbed the other against her calf. They were clearly in love.

  ~Yes, she’s watchable.~

  Shut up again, Voice.

  Two new truths, Sethlan thought. First: the Haphans believed someone wanted to break the Haphan leash. Second: Nana was under watch.

  2

  Sethlan

  ORDERS ORDERS ORDERS! Low Captain Sethlan Semelon is REQUESTED and REQUIRED to attend in the INTELLIGENCE NEXUS off the 314th Observers Lounge, RED DOOR, at the early hour, as Haut Colonel Roaldan Trappia is INDISPOSED, to receive the unit LIAISON. Unit LIAISON is VIP and NOT to be SPENT in combat.

  At eight in the morning, Sethlan found the Observers Club already filled with bored, drunk, raucous officers. He ignored their various pleas for information and assistance, and turned directly for the red door at the back of the room. For the first time since receiving his new clearance level, he opened it and stepped through.

  The Haphans had attached a liaison to the 314th. Perforce, that liaison was attached to Sethlan, the acting commanding officer. It could only be a sign of utter distrust, to put a leash holder on a loyal Tachba unit. To leash Sethlan himself. Why increase his security clearance, why rehabilitate him at all, only to shackle him to some political whisperer who would be useless on the front?

  It was very nearly a breach of the Promise, the first accord between the Haphans and the Tachba. The Promise required faith and trust for the two races to function together.

  How long would be decent, before this Haphan overlord gets sadly killed on the front? The thought was subversive and a little liberating.

  ~You don’t mean it.~

  Of course I don’t, Sethlan answered. It would be unthinkable.

  ~Yet you just thought it.~

  Shut up, Voice.

  The hallway was broad and immaculate, with a polished wood floor. Doors lined the hall, all of them closed and painted a different color.

  After twelve doors, the hall turned slightly and widened. The new hall was more like a room, but still lined with closed doors. A narrow table filled the center of the floor, and a Haphan telephone device hung on the wall behind it.

  ~Why are you nervous?~

  Old habits. There are many doors behind me, and more in front. No telling who is on the other side, or how we might need to die.

  ~Is that your Pretty Polly talking?~

  When families lived in this building, in olden times, these halls were called arteries. They were used by sculls and helpies to move quickly. Closed doors discourage exploration. I’m sure some of them are even fake, just to make this hall seem worse than it already is. A Tachba in faithful service shouldn’t be required to enter hallways like this and made to fucking wait.

  ~I don’t know. All those doors looked real to me. Probably holding back swarms of angry goblins.~

  You’re funny, Voice.

  Sethlan paused at the junction of the two halls, where he could see both directions, and waited.

  Before long, one of the doors opened. A Tachba officer in an artillery uniform leaned through and dropped a folder on the table. He disappeared, but another door opened and a Planner retrieved the folder.

  The Planner was also Tachba, but he was unarmed and he moved with a deep limp. His face was lined and worried, the face of an unnatural life spent slaving away at reading and writing.

  With Sethlan staring, the Planner had to acknowledge him. “Your servant.”

  “Yours.”

  While Sethlan waited, the table filled and emptied several times over. Conversations that took place in his presence were brief and elliptical. He knew trench talk, but now he heard what could only be artillery talk, materiel talk, sapping talk. There were probably dozens of dialects he’d never conceived the need of, but which communicated specialized realms of knowledge with arcane terms like “doomsday,” “direc-ref,” “psychor,” and “intsec.” This was the building’s cortex, or one of them, at least. How many unit HQs and officer’s clubs in the building had their own door leading to this artery hallway?

  Another door opened and a Haphan lieutenant emerged. He was empty-handed and, based on the unadorned expanse of his chest, newly minted. Young, with a trench-cut and a faintly familiar face.

  “You must be Captain Semelon. I’m sorry that I must introduce myself.”

  This was a question in the Haphan style. Indirect and, in this case, superfluous. Sethlan let himself be annoyed. He answered the Haphan with a shallow bow.

  The man continued. “I am Lieutenant Tawarna. I am liaised to your operations and investigations on the Ville Emsa front. I will be bridging with Southern Haphan Intelligence.”

  Sethlan stared in bemusement. General Tawarna, Lieutenant Tawarna. Of course the boy looked familiar. A friendly and solicitous general, and now a young scrag eyeing him beseechingly for an answer. Maybe there was no insult from the Impies; maybe it was a family matter. He had passed a test from the Happie general and could now become a nanny.

  He realized he had to respond. “I am very…here to make your acquaintance.”

  To his surprise, the young Haphan stepped around the table and caught Sethlan’s hand, shaking it in both of his own. “And yours, to be sure! I have heard the kindest words about you: I met a young captain, Panthan Elyseuran, on the Trench Express. He knew all about you, and says I can rely on your helpie, Tejj but not the other one.”

  “Tejj is dead,” Sethlan told him, stone faced.

  The lieutenant paused. “Sold his life dear, I imagine.”

  “No. He was tricked into an ambush during a little game General Tawarna was playing,” Sethlan replied.

  ~Shit,~ the Voice exclaimed. ~Where did that come from?~

  I don’t know. We don’t downtalk the Haphans, but we also don’t lie. At least, we’re not supposed to know how.

  The lieutenant merely waited, eyebrow cocked.

  Sethlan tried again. “So Panthan Elyseuran made captain? Good for him.”

  “He’s leading a shock troop under Colonel Goldros.” The lieutenant paused again as another cold frown rolled across Sethlan’s face. “I’m sure he’ll do quite well there. He seems to be very high function, and he finished officer school.”

  “Did he say what happened to his old unit?” Sethlan asked.

  The lieutenant shook his head. “But he was recovering from a bad wound, nearly mortal. Does it matter?”

  “Not to me.”

  The young man waited for more, and then appeared to give up. He leaned sideways and peered over Sethlan’s shoulder down the hall. “I am exhausted! The train was full of S
essies returning from leave. Three soldiers dead, by the end of it. One of them bled out in the cistern. He was in a breath-holding contest, and there was a dispute about his time. I’ve been rushing around Ville Emsa, getting settled, and I haven’t had a drop of water in twelve hours.”

  Sethlan nodded.

  “I apologize, sir, I’m not being clear. We Haphans think it’s vulgar to make a direct request, and I don’t want to offend, but here it goes: will you take me to your club, so we can sit down have a drink?”

  A Haphan in the club. He could not be serious.

  Again, the lieutenant gave him a quizzical look. “Am I too exotic? Are Haphans not welcome? Is it a burden? Am I being refused?”

  He was serious. Sethlan stepped aside and gestured down the hall.

  3

  Gawarty

  Gawarty followed the expressionless Sesseran captain down the short hall, studying his squared shoulders and the shambling gait that hinted at some wound in the leg. After his initial surprise at Captain Semelon—not very old, not very broken-looking, with a penetrating glance full of judgment—he met the diffidence of the Sesseran with another extreme.

  Now, though he was slightly ashamed of his friendliness, he would not take it back. The Sesseran was clearly confused, and if he wouldn’t be friendly, Gawarty would accept his discomfort. One lesson was clear. He would have to practice his air of Haphan superiority, if the rest of the Tachba were as unimpressable as the captain.

  The captain paused before opening the red door. “You’ll be drawn. You mustn’t answer.”

  “I’ll be drawn, how?”

  “Drawn to fight. Say the word, and I will cut them down. If you don’t say the word you will be killed. The front has scraped away any polish they once had. They’re little more than Tachba by this point.”

  “Captain Elyseuran is a line soldier, and I found him charming. I have little fear.”

  “I expect Captain Elyseuran had ulterior motives.”

  “What ulterior motives?” Gawarty asked, a little sharply.

  The captain didn’t seem to notice. “Practicing his manners. Pretending to be more than he is. In a slightly different mood, he could just as easily kill you.”

  Gawarty stared back, nonplussed. “I don’t know about being drawn, but I shall answer when spoken to.”

  Oddly, that answer seemed to cheer the impassive captain. “Why of course you shall! Here’s us, then.”

  The captain opened the door and revealed the pit of hell.

  On the other side of the polished hallway was a room of screaming chaos and rushing shapes, all lit by wavering firelight and under-fed gas lamps on the walls. Gawarty saw a scrum of bodies and uniforms in the back of the room, close to a burning fireplace, and the captain disappeared from his side. Gawarty stood alone at the entrance.

  For the most part, the Sesserans seemed to be separating two fighters. Gawarty opted to be unalarmed for the moment and ambled into the space to look around. An old map on the wall, painted untold years ago, showed a very different war. Along the far wall was a long bar, fronted by now-empty stools. The bar had a singularly magnificent tap in the middle, a solid bronze statue of a crouching old woman. Beneath her low-hanging teats, still dripping with foam, was a half-drawn glass of beer. Narrow slit windows, positioned out of reach near the ceiling and gummed with age, let in just enough of the morning light to make the gas lamps and the fire seem weak. The rest of the space was filled with round tables and a variable number of chairs, all askew.

  Gawarty kept turning until he saw the woman watching him.

  She was young and pale, with disheveled white-blonde hair. Her threadbare little serving dress was torn at the shoulders and ripped high on the thighs. Gawarty blushed and turned away, but then wondered if she was in distress and turned back.

  “Can I...” Gawarty started, but couldn’t hear himself over the noise. “Do you require assistance?”

  She seemed not to hear him. Her eyes were locked on the throbbing pack of men by the fire. She was utterly beautiful. She was also, Gawarty eventually realized, concerned by the violence.

  He had a clear duty. Gawarty turned toward the men, bared his teeth, and whistled. It was just the Tawarna family whistle, with which Mother called them in for dinner, but it worked so well on the training fields that Gawarty wanted to use it as a war whistle.

  His whistle earned him his first direct lesson about the Tachba. Before he finished, a full third of the pack broke away and charged him. They beat at their heads as if to drive away a swarm of buzz birds. With their torn collars, wet faces, and deranged hair, they were terrifying.

  Gawarty squared his shoulders and tried to project Imperial confidence.

  “You will stand!” he blared.

  They ignored his Imperial confidence and bulled through the tables in his direction.

  Fuck, what was the stop-training word? Stop? Down? Off?

  “Stop!” Captain Semelon shouted. “You will stop!”

  The captain moved faster than Gawarty could have guessed and bodily pulled two of his fellow officers off their feet. Still more slowed when they saw Gawarty’s pristine uniform, in the Haphan gray.

  The rest bulled into him and knocked him off his feet. Everything turned black.

  Gawarty spit hot and sour liquid out of his mouth and opened his eyes. The Tacchies were now pulling each other off of him, and he was on the ground, looking up.

  The gorgeous, threadbare girl stood over him, somehow immune to the violent struggle. All the thrown fists and wayward kicks went magically around her. “You’ve a bloody nose and probably a new nickname,” she told him.

  “What happened?”

  “You gave a pretty good whistle and told everybody to attack the stranger.” She grinned briefly, and wiped it away. “Didn’t you know we Sessies use hand signs and whistle for fighting?”

  “They hit me?” Gawarty sat up, dazed, trying to think.

  “Comprehensively.”

  He couldn’t gauge her mood, which flickered between serious and amused, but it didn’t matter if he could. It dawned on him what had just happened.

  “Did you fucking snappies actually touch me?” he yelled. “A fucking officer of the Haphan Imperial Expeditionary Land Forces, and the first male heir of the fucking Duke of Falling Fucking Mountain?”

  The soldiers went deathly still.

  Gawarty wiped his mouth and looked at his hand. Covered in blood. “You actually fucking hit me?”

  He looked up at them, and then at the room. The Tachba watched, breathing hard but not moving.

  “Fucking hell,” Gawarty cried. “That didn’t take long at all.”

  And he fell back to the floor with a peal of laughter.

  He couldn’t explain it.

  He ignored their confused looks. He was even indifferent to the surprise that washed across the gorgeous girl’s face, which briefly revealed her as fragile and much too young to be in this ridiculous place. He couldn’t stop laughing.

  He couldn’t stop even when grinning Tachba lifted him to his feet and walked him toward a table in the middle of the club.

  “I think I’m in the right fucking place,” Gawarty told them, spitting blood. “You know how long I’ve wanted to break something? Shit. I wish I still had my hair.”

  “I think we already damaged our first Haphan liaison,” said one of them. He was a smaller Tachba, a few inches taller than Gawarty, and wearing the uniform of an aide. He propped up a chair and guided Gawarty into it.

  “Where’s the pretty girl?” Gawarty asked, turning and nearly falling off. “She needs our help.”

  “She’s the alewife,” the aide said. “Our dashta.”

  “Ah—dashta. Fuck’s that? Damn, you Tacchies hit hard. Is a dashta an imaginary woman or something?”

  “A toast,” shouted the aide, raising a mug off the table. He leaned down and whispered in Gawarty’s ear, “Stop talking about the dashta if you want to keep your head attached and not have your
throat pissed down by a hundred—”

  The rest was lost in a general cheer for the toast.

  The aide straightened quickly. “A toast to the Haphan Lieutenant!” he cried. “To the first Haphan to join the Observers! Many units were considered, the 314th was found wanting!”

  “Hear him! Hear the turd!” cried a plump, older Tachba with captain’s stripes. “A drink all around.”

  Sculls materialized out of the shadows, elbowing the officers into smaller groups like herding dogs and tempting them back to their tables with trays of beer and liquor. Gawarty stared around, dazed. The men were knuckling their liquor down like they were angry with it. They were almost fucking chewing it. He kept scanning the room until his eyes landed on the captain, sitting at the table in front of him.

  The captain said, “You don’t have the imperial presence, yet, if you were wondering. This scrag is my Diggery, a helpie.”

  “Your servant, Gawarty,” the aide said. Seeing Gawarty’s surprise, he added, “There is no ceremony here, lieutenant. The great and the small mingle without boundaries, passing juices.”

  “We’re drinking more?” Gawarty took and held a fresh beer in his hand. “One has to wonder if the spirits contribute to the general…spirits.”

  Diggery turned to the captain. “The Haphan Imperium asks if the alcohol makes us crazy.”

  Gawarty choked back a laugh. He recognized this Diggery now as the instigator of the first fight. He had been pummeling the fat captain when Gawarty entered the room. Gawarty said, “One might think alcohol is what drives a noncom to strike a superior officer, a hanging offense.”

  “He asks the same question again,” Diggery translated. He pulled more mugs off a passing tray and ranged them around the table, several for each of them.

  The captain leaned forward as if to speak, but then simply took a mug and drank.

  Diggery gave Gawarty a broad, feral smile. “One might say that the recent appearance of so many Haphans in Ville Emsa gives an impression of distrust.”