by David Weber
Freymark found a position on the edge of the parking area, kneeling behind a bare-leaved tree in a concrete planter box, and chambered a round. At least two or three helicopters continued to circle, but another one came in slowly, sliding down the darkness behind the blinding glare of its landing lights, and his heart hammered. He had no way of knowing what the Puppies intended, but every man and woman around that parking lot knew the Shongair policy. They knew what would happen to every human soul in Aurora if they opened fire. Yet their families—everything in the world they had left to love—were in the camp behind them, and if the rumors were true, if the Shongairi were seeking human test subjects for bioweapon research and they’d come to collect them, then every human soul in Aurora might as well die cleanly right here, right now, in the sizzling inferno of yet another kinetic strike, instead.
It would be the final, and the greatest, gift he could give his wife and children, and he knew it.
The single helicopter—it was even larger than he’d thought—was impossible to make out through the dazzling light pouring from it, and spicules of sleet glittered against the brilliance as the icy downblast from the rotors pounded over him. He felt himself hunching together in his thin, sodden jacket as it touched down at last and the thunder of its rotors eased. They didn’t stop turning completely, but they rotated much more slowly now, and he settled behind his rifle, waiting. He’d never seen a Shongair himself, but he’d seen plenty of them on video and heard them speaking through their mechanical translators before the Internet died, and now he waited for the inevitable loudspeaker to issue its demands.
But it didn’t. And then he froze as the first silhouetted shape appeared against the flood of light.
It wasn’t a Shongair. It was a human!
It stood there, by itself, motionless for a good thirty seconds, and then Lewis Freymark watched in disbelief as three more figures joined it. Then the landing lights switched off, although the running lights remained lit, and for the first time he could actually see them.
Three men and a woman stood there, waiting with obvious patience, and Freymark swallowed hard as he recognized the U.S. Army’s camouflage-pattern uniform. But the Army was dead. Everyone knew that! And how could human-operated aircraft survive in Shongair-controlled airspace?! It was impossible. It couldn’t happen.
But then he realized he was on his own feet, moving forward, the rifle heavy in his hand, muzzle pointed at the ground, and the compact, dark-haired man—the one who’d disembarked first—looked up at him. Green eyes glittered with an odd intensity as they reflected the running lights, and he held out his hand.
Freymark took it.
“Torino,” the man said. “Daniel Torino, Major, U.S. Air Force.”
The words made perfect sense. They just couldn’t mean what it sounded like they meant.
“Lewis Freymark,” he heard himself say. “What—? I mean, how—?”
The question stammered into fragmented silence, and Torino smiled crookedly. He looked—they all looked—impossibly clean, impossibly neat and professional.
“That’s going to take some explaining,” he said. “Short version, the Puppies got their asses kicked.”
“What?!”
Freymark felt his eyes bulging in disbelief, and Torino shook his head with an odd compassion.
“I said it’s going to take explaining, and it is. Important thing right now? I’ve got five Chinooks loaded with around sixty tons of supplies and a complete medical team. I need someplace to unload and set up.”
His hand tightened on Freymark’s as desperation, disbelief, and despair turned into sudden, searing hope in the eyes of a father.
“Think you could help me out with that?”
. II .
WIDAWA,
POLAND
Starszy Chorąży Szymański looked up from his paperwork with an incipient snarl as someone knocked once on his office door, then opened it.
It was late, they were running low on ballpoint pens (among altogether too many other things), the wind outside the unfortunately ramshackle “headquarters block” was cold, his fingers were clumsy because of the chill, and the old-fashioned kerosene lamp on his desk was remarkably frugal with its illumination.
None of which was designed to put him in what anyone would have called a happy mood.
“What?” he growled.
“Sorry, Panie Chorąży,” Starszy Sierżant Jacob Makinowski replied. “I know you don’t want anyone disturbing you, but I think you’d better talk to this guy.”
“And what ‘guy’ would that be?” Szymański’s tone wasn’t a lot more pleasant.
“Says he’s Ukrainian.” Makinowski shrugged. “His Polish is pretty damned good, if he is. Big guy, blond hair, blue eyes. But he also says he’s a captain in the Ukrainian Army, only he’s not wearing Ukrainian uniform.”
“And this is a surprise because—?” Szymański asked sarcastically, twitching his head at Makinowski’s own lack of sartorial splendor.
The starszy chorąży had a point, Makinowski conceded, looking down at his own sturdy but worn civilian boots, the two layers of knitted sweater under his summer-weight army tunic with its homemade epaulets. One of the two five-pointed stars of a starszy sierżant was homemade (and undeniably more lopsided than the other), since the shoulder boards had belonged to a plutonowy—a corporal—before the invasion, and the supply chain had been pretty thoroughly disrupted when ninety percent of the Polish military went up in the fireballs of the Shongairi’s initial bombardment.
More than ninety percent, really. That was how a civilian had become a staff sergeant and inherited the epaulets of a corporal named Krystian Szymański when the corporal in question became a sergeant major. The Sergeant Major, actually.
“Sorry,” Makinowski said again. “What I meant is, he’s in uniform, but it’s not Ukrainian. Not Russian, either. I think it’s American.”
Szymański laid down his ballpoint and shoved back in his chair, both eyebrows rising.
“Let me get this straight. This wieśniak says he’s Ukrainian, but he’s in Jankeskim mundurze—an American uniform? And he just turned up in the middle of the night? And you think he’s important enough to interrupt me at a chore you know I love so much?”
“Panie Chorąży,” Makinowski said frankly, “I think you need to talk to him, and then you’re probably going to get into a shitpot of trouble when you wake up the Pułkownik. And he’s probably going to have to wake up the Generał Brygady.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Szymański said slowly.
“Damn straight I am.”
“Then I guess you’d better show him in.”
* * *
PUŁKOWNIK MAREK PEPLIŃSKI, who’d been a starszy chorąży until five or six months ago, blinked bleary eyes and took another sip of the ersatz tea. The cup didn’t match the saucer, but at least they were both intact. Not that the liquid the cup contained was anything to celebrate. Except that it was at least warm.
They did have some tea and coffee left, but very little, and what they had was dwindling rapidly. Generał Brygady Lutosławski had decreed that the remaining supplies would be conserved and doled out as rewards for service above and beyond the call of duty. Pepliński supported the decision. In fact, he thought it was a very good idea. But he did miss the caffeine.
He missed a lot of things, actually. He especially missed the ability to know what was happening beyond their brutally truncated horizon here in Widawa. It probably wouldn’t matter much in the end, but it would be nice to know why they hadn’t heard a single word from the Shongair invaders over their remaining radios in almost two weeks. He’d never thought he would miss those broadcasts or the combination of threats and promises that came with them. (Some of the oldest citizens of Widawa had compared them—unfavorably—to the worst of the old Stalinist “news broadcasts” from their “fraternal Soviet comrades.” Personally, Pepliński had always been grateful he was too young to remember those.)
<
br /> But he’d discovered he did miss the Shongairi’s version. The silence was unnerving, like some vast, quivering void. He had enough other problems and uncertainties. He damned well didn’t need the fucking Puppies deciding to go silent on him on top of everything else!
He held the cup under his nose, inhaling the steam’s warmth, then set it back on the saucer. His office was cold, but at least it was free of drafts. That was quite a lot, with winter already upon them. Whether it would be enough in the end was yet to be seen.
And aren’t you a cheerful fellow when they wake you up at two in the morning? he asked himself. Gotten too used to being an officer, have you?
The thought restored at least a little badly needed humor and he set the cup carefully on its saucer and inhaled deeply.
“All right, Krystian. I suppose I’m as awake as I’m getting.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Szymański came briefly to attention, then turned sharply and marched out of the office, and Pepliński smiled tiredly as he watched the sergeant major go.
Szymański had been one of Pepliński’s motor pool corporals before the attack. The two of them had been off-base, returning from a NATO training exercise. If Pepliński hadn’t been delayed by a last-minute piece of paperwork idiocy and caught a ride back in Szymański’s Jelcz truck, neither of them would have been alive today. Despite which—or, possibly because of which—Szymański was always careful to maintain proper military formality between them. Which was undoubtedly wise of him. Private habits could spill over into public behavior, and the one thing none of Lutosławski’s officers and noncoms could afford was to let the illusion that the Polish military still existed slip.
Not that it was likely to hold up a lot longer, no matter what they did.
Ludwik Lutosławski had been a porucznik—a first lieutenant—in the Polish Army when the Shongairi attacked. His current rank wasn’t quite completely self-awarded; theoretically, he’d been promoted by Fryderyk Sikorcz, the sole surviving member of the zarząd województwa, the executive board of Województwa Łódzkiego. That made him the closest thing to a governor available, and he’d named Lutosławski military governor of gmina Widawa, commanding all regular and reserve military personnel in it. There hadn’t been a lot of those.
The gmina—an administrative district of perhaps seven thousand, before the invasion—was centered on the village of Widawa, fifty-odd kilometers southwest of what had once been the regional capital of Łódź. None of Łódź’s 700,000 people had survived the initial bombardment, and casualties in the immediately surrounding urban areas had been close to total, as well. For that matter, the town of Łask, the seat of gmina Widawa, had been destroyed at the same time, probably because of the Air Force base located there, which had killed over a quarter of the gmina’s total population. The bombardment’s survivors—not just from Łódź but from every major city and most of the larger towns—had fled to the farming country which had escaped attack, and the predictable result had been chaos as what remained of local government collapsed and starving refugees fought to keep themselves and their children fed.
Initially, many of the farmers had shared generously, but that had changed as the locusts flowed over them and they’d realized how completely and totally their country had been devastated. As they’d realized they would need that food to keep their own families alive in the face of such an utter collapse of transportation and all the other infrastructure people had taken so much for granted. As that understanding swept through them, they’d begun refusing to feed refugees. They’d started hiding food to protect it from looters, and they’d organized to defend what they had by force.
Until Ludwik Lutosławski … changed their minds.
No one had denied the farmers owned their own food. It simply hadn’t mattered who owned what. Not in the face of such disruption and starvation. And so “hoarding” had become a capital offense and squads of Lutosławski’s troopers—the majority of whom had been civilians only weeks earlier—had swept over every farmhouse pantry and barn to make that perfectly clear. Perhaps some of them, even the majority of them, had sympathized with the farmers, but that hadn’t mattered anymore, either. What had mattered was feeding as many people as possible while simultaneously building at least some cushion for the looming winter, and the generał brygady’s men had taken their cue from him.
Marek Pepliński didn’t actually like Lutosławski very much. The one-time lieutenant had a streak of brutality he wasn’t shy about showing. Pepliński couldn’t decide whether that brutality had always been there or whether it was a response to the nightmare situation in which Lutosławski had found himself. For that matter, he wasn’t certain how much of it was genuine and how much of it was theater, designed to make sure no one defied him or his authority. It wasn’t the brutality itself that worried the promoted sergeant major. Hanging on to some semblance of order, dealing with the flood of refugees, and somehow keeping people fed—so far, at least—required a certain degree of brutality. No, what worried him was that he wasn’t at all confident Lutosławski still knew how much of it was born of necessity and how much was his … default setting. So far he’d at least given accused hoarders, or thieves, or rapists a drumhead court-martial before he had them shot, but over the last couple of months, he’d seemed less and less firmly anchored. And that frightened Pepliński. Winter would have them by the throat within weeks, and for better or worse, Lutosławski was the core of gmina Widawa and its survival. If he truly was beginning to crumble.…
Someone rapped crisply on the opened door’s frame and then Szymański waved a tall, broad-shouldered, blond-haired man through it. The newcomer certainly looked Slavic, but he was improbably neat, obviously well fed, and impeccably attired in what really did look like the uniform of the United States military. Although, Pepliński realized, its epaulets carried the four Maltese crosses of a Ukrainian army captain rather than the silver bars an American officer should have worn.
“Kapitan Ushakov, Panie Pułkowniku,” the starszy chorąży said crisply.
“Kapitan,” Pepliński said a bit warily, then nodded to Szymański. “That will be all for now, Starszy Chorąży.”
“Yes, Sir.”
The noncom came briefly to attention once more and withdrew, not without a wary sidelong glance of his own as he left his colonel alone with the stranger.
“So, Kapitan,” Pepliński said as the door closed behind him. “I understand you want to see the Generał Brygady?”
“Yes, Sir. I would indeed appreciate a few moments of conversation with Generał Brygady Lutosławski,” the stranger—Ushakov—replied. “I realize it’s rather late, however there are certain … logistic constraints in play.” He smiled slightly. “I fear it will be some time before I could arrange to be here during his normal working hours.”
His Polish was flawless, Pepliński realized. Indeed, he suspected it was better than his own, grammatically. Which didn’t explain why a Ukrainian in American uniform was standing in his dreary, chill little office in the middle of the night.
“Might I inquire as to precisely why you want to see him?” he asked.
“I have a message for him from my own superiors.” Ushakov shrugged. “Given the state of the world communications net, a personal emissary was the only practical way to deliver it.”
“I see.” Pepliński looked the stranger up and down, then cocked his head.
“I’m sure you can understand why I’d have some questions, Kapitan,” he said. “For example, how does a Ukrainian officer find himself in American uniform? And who might those ‘superiors’ of yours be?”
“Reasonable questions,” Ushakov acknowledged with a nod. “Answering them may take a while, however.”
“We’re both already awake, Kapitan,” Pepliński pointed out with a thin smile, and pointed at the wooden chair—it had been salvaged from someone’s dining room—in front of his desk. “Have a seat.”
* * *
“THIS HAD BETTER be
good, Marek,” Ludwik Lutosławski growled as he stalked into the parlor of the farmhouse which had been requisitioned for his HQ. A fresh fire had been lit in the parlor’s open hearth, but it hadn’t even begun taking the chill off the room yet, and his hands were buried deep in the pockets of a thick dressing gown. “You do realize what frigging time it is?”
“Yes, Sir,” Pułkownik Pepliński replied. There was something just a bit odd about his voice, although Lutosławski was too irritated—and groggy from being awakened at three o’clock in the morning—to notice.
“Then what the fuck is this about?” the one-time lieutenant demanded.
“Sir, there’s someone here you need to talk to.”
“At three in the goddamned morning?! I don’t think so!” Lutosławski snapped.
“Sir, I wouldn’t have roused you at this hour if it wasn’t really important,” Pepliński said. “You know that.”
“What I know is that I didn’t get to sleep until after midnight,” Lutosławski snarled. “And that I’m going to be back up in less than three hours for that sweep towards Marzeńska to deal with those goddamned hoarders.”
“Sir, I—”
“Excuse me for interrupting, Generał Brygady,” the third man in the parlor said, “but I’m afraid I’m the one who insisted the Pułkownik disturb you.”
“And who the fuck are you?” Lutosławski demanded, turning his head to glare at the stranger. It was a glare whose anger transmuted—slightly, at least—into something else as he truly saw the other man’s uniform for the first time.
“Kapitan Pieter Ushakov.” The stranger bowed slightly as he introduced himself.
