by John Bowers
“My friend is here,” he said.
Sallje looked around. “Where?”
“She’s outside. She wants to meet you.”
“Well, I’m really busy just now. Ask her to come on in.”
Erik gripped her arm hard enough to get her attention.
“She really wants to talk to you,” he said, “outside.”
Sallje’s eyes widened as she saw his intensity. “Okay,” she whispered.
Erik drew her out the front door and they walked quickly down the sidewalk to the parking lot south of the pub. Only about a dozen cars were visible—most soldiers arrived on foot or with someone else. They reached the parking lot and stopped, not more than thirty yards from the building. Sallje wasn’t wearing a coat, and shivered visibly in the cold.
“Goddess, it’s freezing out here! Where is she?”
But Erik took her arm again and pulled her toward him, gazing down into her eyes.
“Sallje, do you trust me?”
“Huh? Wh-what? Sure, I trust you. Hell, I’d marry you if you asked me.”
He took a deep breath, about to take a critical step that could undo him completely.
“What’s the bartender’s name?”
“Leif.”
Erik handed her his pocket phone. “Call him. Tell him to come outside. Tell him it’s an emergency.”
She stopped shivering and stared at him, her breath frosting the air.
“Erik, what’s going on? You’re scaring me!”
“In about one minute,” he said, “that building is going to explode. Everyone inside is going to die.” He pushed the phone at her again. “Get him out here!”
Sallje released a startled cry and began to hyperventilate.
“Oh, my goddess! It’s you! You’re the terrorist!”
She jerked loose from his grip and took two steps back, her face a mask of fear.
“If you tell that to a single person, I’m a dead man.”
She began shivering again, panting hard.
“How can you do that? All those girls! All those Vegan girls inside!”
“I don’t want to hurt them, but they came here of their own free will. Nobody forced them.”
“You’re wrong! I know most of them! Carli and Anjanette and Onjette and Virjii—they’re all here against their will! Those soldiers have claimed them as slaves, or won them in a lottery. When the men go home to Sirius, those girls go with them. You can’t just blow them up too!”
Erik felt his blood run cold. This was more complicated than he’d realized. He began to tremble.
Sallje was literally dancing. “Oh fuck! Oh fuck! Can you stop it? How much time is left? We have to do something!”
He grabbed her by the shoulders and wrapped his arms around her.
“Sh!” he said. “It’s okay; they’re not on a timer. I was going to set them off remotely. They’re perfectly safe.”
“Are you sure? You said—”
“I know what I said. I wanted you to get Leif outside and I wanted you to hurry. There’s no timer. We can go back inside now.”
“You’re sure it’s safe?”
“Yes. You said you trust me. Trust me now.”
She calmed visibly then, but was still agitated. Erik led her back toward the building, but stopped as they neared the door.
“Remember what I said. If you say a word to anyone, I’m a dead man.”
She stared at him with haunted eyes, as if she was looking at a stranger.
“It really was you? Those bombs downtown?”
He nodded. “But they lied about the civilian dead. No Vegans were killed.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I planned it that way.”
“But you were going to kill these girls—”
“I thought they were traitors. Sallje, it’s damn near impossible to get a Confederate without civilians around. That’s why I picked this place—I can kill a hundred men, maybe more, but—”
“You were going to kill the girls!” She seemed obsessed by that single fact.
“Listen, I got you out of there, didn’t I? I was trying to get Leif out of there. And I timed it before Bridget got here, didn’t I? Do you see a pattern there? I don’t want to hurt any civilians, and I won’t, unless there’s no other way.”
She blinked rapidly as his words sank in. She nodded slowly, relief flooding her features.
“And if there’s no other way, then…”
“Thank Sophia you were here. You saved me from making a terrible mistake. I need to plan things more carefully in the future.” He considered for a moment. “Do those slave girls live with the soldiers?”
“Of course. Most of them.”
“In the barracks?”
“I’m not sure about that. I think the men with slaves have apartments. Some of them rent houses, three or four men together. With the girls. Why?”
“Just curious. It might be important later.”
Shaking more from relief than from cold, Sallje wrapped her arms around him and closed her eyes. A moment later she looked up into his face.
“I won’t tell anyone about you,” she said simply. “But you owe me.”
He nodded, and she kissed him, holding on for dear life. The door of the pub burst open, and Leif the bartender stood there.
“Sallje! Goddess-scorn it, we’re completely backed up in here! If you want to fuck him, do it on your own time!”
He went back inside. Sallje took a step back from Erik, they looked at each other, and both burst out laughing.
Chapter 23
Saturday, 29 March 0200 (PCC) – Lake Francesca, Vega 3
The trip to Lake Francesca took about four hours. Erik rode with Erika Sebring in a Royal Holo News hovercar; they had to stop at several checkpoints on the way, but Erika breezed through them with ease. She had her RHN press credentials, but even more helpful was the SE exemption she carried. The soldiers at the checkpoints waved her on the minute she displayed it, without even questioning her destination or who her passengers were. Erik was impressed.
He had never met Erika, though he knew his sister had worked with her for more than a year. During the trip Erika recounted the last assignment they had been given, the day after the Sirian attack. In the company of a Federation citizen named Oliver Lincoln, they had been sent to the Southern Plain to get the straight story on the invasion, because rumors were running wild and no one really knew what was happening. They had gotten the story, but on the way back they ran into a platoon of Confederate soldiers.
The rest had been a nightmare.
Erik thanked her for telling him and sat in silence during the rest of the trip. The camera man dozed in the back seat—Erika had brought him along, she said, because she hoped some day to do a documentary on her experience, and it was only fitting that Jacquje Norgaard’s final resting place be included.
Lake Francesca was a little over halfway to Princess Carlena County, where Jacquje was buried, but this was Erik’s destination. Erika let him out in front of the post office on the main street. She promised to pick him up the next day at the same time. With a nod and a wave, he hefted his backpack and watched her drive on. The Norgaard family car was right behind, and pulled to a stop. Hans stuck his head out the window.
“You sure about this? I can arrange for you to visit your Guard buddy some other time.”
Erik shook his head. “This is how I want to do it. Say a prayer for Jacquje for me.”
Hans studied him a moment. “Who is this old buddy, anyway?”
“A guy I met in the Guard. You don’t know him.”
“What’s his name?”
“Andersen.”
“How come you brought your backpack?”
Erik’s anger flashed briefly. “Hans, don’t fucking interrogate me, okay? I’ll see you back here tomorrow.”
He turned and walked away.
He stopped at a café and had a light lunch, not because he was terribly hungry, but in case H
ans decided to come back and ask more questions. It irritated the hell out of him that Hans had quizzed him—what was he trying to prove? Had he been assigned the terrorist case already?
He would have to step carefully from now on. If Hans decided to check old Guard rosters for a soldier named Andersen, it could get tricky—Erik had pulled the name out of the air. In truth he had no Guard buddies in Lake Francesca that he was aware of, and too many questions might reveal that fact.
He waited an hour before leaving the café. The air was cold but the sky was clear. Lake Francesca lay under two feet of snow, but none of it was recent. Remembering the two sentries he’d encountered the last time he was here, he avoided the road as he made his way south out of town. Instead, he followed a cobbled street that ended a hundred yards short of the woods, then continued walking until he disappeared among the trees. He found a trail where animals had beaten the snow into a path and followed it, hoping no one would have reason to wonder what human had come this way. He walked through tall pines and Vegan oaks, heavily laden with snow, and breathed the fresh scent of evergreens. He saw a lot of battle damage high in the trees, splintered limbs from rocket and artillery bursts, and twice walked across bare spots where blackened tree stumps peered above the snow, the result of Sirian plasma bombs.
But he saw no people. Aside from occasional bird calls, he heard no sound. Even the wind was still. He walked for more than an hour, picking his way through the woods, and finally arrived at the first line of trenches. From here the hill began to slope, and he could see the lower trenches tracing the contour of the ridge. He stood a long time and listened, scanning the ravine before him. No voices. No music. No indication that anyone was alive within a mile of him.
Finally he picked his way down the slope, tracing the same trail he had taken the last time, until he reached the lower trench, where he’d spent the night in a bunker. It took him twenty minutes to locate the exact bunker he was looking for. When he found it he stood under the splinter shield and listened, but all was silent. He knocked on the bunker door, but no one answered.
“Hello!” He didn’t call too loudly, but hopefully loud enough that anyone inside would hear. There was no answer. He seized the door and shoved at it, and to his surprise it opened rather easily. For some reason his heart began to pound—for some reason he sensed danger. But he wasn’t sure why.
He stepped inside the bunker and called again. The bunker was dark. It took his eyes a moment to adjust, then by the light from the open doorway he saw that the camp stove was still there. The lantern was right where he’d last seen it. A pair of tangled blankets lay heaped on one of the bunks, and a stack of foodstuffs sat neatly in a corner. The place still smelled of mingled smoke and incense, but…
The corporal was gone.
Erik walked outside and looked around. He surveyed the trench line in both directions, then stared down the slope to the bottom of the ravine, where the Sirians had launched their attacks against this position. He studied a hillside opposite the ravine, nearly a mile away. He looked and he listened, he even sniffed the air, but he detected nothing out of order. The girl wasn’t here, but she could have moved to a safer bunker, or she could have gone out for a walk. She might have done anything—her absence was not proof that she had come to harm. But Erik had an uneasy feeling about it.
Satisfied that he was alone for the moment, he went into the back room of the bunker, where the head was located. The stack of crates was still there, thirteen boxes. He pried the cover off the top one and saw the plasma mines. Except for the six he had taken, they were all there. His blood raced as he gazed at them, and what they represented. If the crates below were full, he was looking at more than six hundred devastating bombs, each of which could potentially kill dozens, even hundreds, of Confederate troops.
Of course there was no way he could get them all home. Even if he didn’t have to dodge Hans and the checkpoints, he couldn’t carry all those crates back to town and load them onto a vehicle; to do so would require several trips, and he would certainly be seen. He could only take a few, but if he used them judiciously, that would be enough. His new overcoat had lots of hidden pockets, some of them quite deep, for carrying odds and ends. His Confederate bayonet was already hidden deep inside one of them, and now he began packing them with plasma mines. Careful to place them so they wouldn’t create visible bulges, and packing them so they wouldn’t click against each other, he managed to secrete twenty-six of them in his coat.
Including the three at home, Erik now had a total of twenty-nine plasma mines.
He returned to the main room and stretched out on a bunk. He sighed in relief as the tension drained out of him…he hadn’t even been aware it was there. It was only midafternoon, but he closed his eyes and dozed off. He planned to spend the night in the bunker, in the hopes the corporal would return.
When he woke it was dark outside, and the wind was rising. He lit the lantern and closed the bunker door. He took a couple of sandwiches out of his backpack and ate them, drank from a flask of water, and went back to sleep. The next time he woke it was morning.
There was still no sign of the girl.
Checking his watch, he stepped out into the trench again. The girl’s belongings were still in the bunker, and he doubted she would have left the area without taking them. His brief search the day before had been fruitless, but now he took the time to extend the search. He followed the trench for two hundred yards, looking for any clue that might explain her absence. With a rising sense of alarm he explored three empty bunkers, one of them badly damaged by shell fire, but came up empty. He scanned the hillside again, and the ridge line opposite, but saw nothing suspicious.
Then he remembered what she had said about food supplies, something about a kitchen bunker. He continued on down the trench, checking two more empty bunkers, until he came to a structure different from the others—this one had no firing ports, no shrapnel shield; it was more like a cave dug into the hillside, as if it might be used for extra storage. Erik stepped inside and played his torch around, saw the stoves along one wall, and a long counter for serving food. He stepped around these and made his way into a back room.
Dozens of food crates were still stacked against a wall, many of them still sealed. The floor was littered with empty cartons and other debris, everything frozen and covered with frost. He moved deeper into the room…
…and stopped. His heart thundered in his chest.
She lay face down, nude below the waist, her body stiff as a block of ice.
Her long, thick red hair was scattered around her head, obscuring her face; someone had removed the green ribbon, which lay a few feet away. Her laser pistol was nearby, useless unless she’d found a new power pack; two cases of vegetable soup sat on the floor beside her. She had come for supplies and someone ambushed her, their intent unmistakable.
Erik knelt slowly, fighting the mist that stung his eyes. He didn’t touch her, only stared at the frozen bloodstains on her thighs…
…and the two bullet holes in the center of her back.
He didn’t even know her name.
Sunday, 30 March 0200 (PCC) – Princess Carlena County, Vega 3
The cemetery was small, isolated, and peaceful. This far south, the weather was mild and warm. Tall trees guarded the burial plots, a gentle breeze caressing the grounds. Erika Sebring and the Norgaards stood in a respectful ring around the grave, staring at the triangular marker that bore the words:
JACQUJE NORGAARD
March 31, 0175 – July 14, 0195
Forever at Peace
Erika couldn’t stop the tears that flowed down her cheeks, and didn’t try. Birgitt sobbed openly, and even Karl’s eyes were glistening. He wiped them with a weathered hand. Hans stared soberly at his sister’s grave, a conflict of emotions on his face. The cameraman stood a few yards away and recorded the gathering for future use.
Erika felt compelled to speak a few words.
“Jacquje and I worked toge
ther,” she said. “She was a good friend, a good person. She was young, beautiful, bright, and so full of life. She was dedicated, a hard worker, and faithful to Sophia. She was quiet, loyal, generous, and she loved her family. She was much too young to die when she did, but the choice was not hers. She was murdered by criminals, men no better than bandits. But for the solace of Sophia I would be lying beside her today, because I was there with her when she was killed.” Erika stifled a sob, regained her emotions, and finished. “Jacquje, if you can hear me, I am so sorry this happened. You are so much better than they are. You will not be forgotten. You are always in our hearts.”
Birgitt and Hans laid flowers on the grave, then made the Sign of the Cult.
Erika turned and stared across the fields that stretched in every direction. This was farmland, a place of growth and renewal, peaceful country. She couldn’t imagine a more fitting location for eternal rest. The small temple at the edge of the cemetery stood as a sentinel, guarding the faithful who rested here. She made her own Sign, wiped her eyes, and walked away, leaving the family to grieve over their daughter.
Lake Francesca, Vega 3
Erik trudged back into Lake Francesca late in the morning, arriving at the café half frozen. He ordered an early lunch and ate slowly, thinking things over and planning his next move. He felt vaguely guilty for not visiting his sister’s grave with the others, but this might be his only chance to retrieve the plasma mines, and taking revenge on the Sirians seemed a more fitting tribute to his late sister than merely visiting her grave. Goddess willing, he would have the opportunity to do that at some future time.
He was waiting in front of the post office when the two hovercars arrived from Princess Carlena County. Hans was riding with Erika and held the door while Erik climbed into the front seat.
“How was your Guard buddy?” he asked innocently.
“Didn’t find him. Neighbors said he moved about a year ago.”
“Where did he go?”
“Not sure. They said he has relatives on the east coast.”
Hans glanced at the backpack. “Pick up any souvenirs?”
