Men of Stone (The Faded Earth Book 3)

by Joshua Guess

Beck watched it all happen from a distance. For the first time since losing her family, she was a spectator. Little more than a citizen in how much sway she held over events.

  At first the break had been all she could have asked for. The pressure of having to be on call at all times, to intimidate troublemakers when logic failed, and to spirit away those who would not tone down their behavior—all gone at once. There were no nighttime raids upon violent splinter groups of Trads and Dians, no more hunting down Cabal members who escaped the early sweeps, no more endless exhaustion.

  The relief lasted for a good long time. A few weeks. She buried herself in a detailed examination of the captured armor, even calling in Lin and his team several times to get more detailed analysis of its pieces and parts than she was capable of on her own. The project consumed her, though it led to the inescapable conclusion that Keene had a secret science division of his own out there somewhere, probably located securely in the Block.

  Her body healed, bones knitting back together, and as she became whole the need to be back in the thick of things reasserted itself. This was not born of a desire to serve or even a need to feel useful—both of those things were easily fed by her work on the suit. Beck recognized the arrogance in what she felt, but could not ignore the reality behind it.

  She needed to take care of things herself because she was afraid that without her, something would go horribly wrong. She did not ignore the fact that the Protectorate hummed along just fine for decades prior to her birth, or that her team managed perfectly well in her absence. Beck was aware of these truths, and they didn’t matter at all. It was a feeling, a powerful urge, not a construct of logic. She dressed it up with the justification that her super-user access to all systems within the Mesh meant she was a field asset of unmatched value.

  But she knew it was only that; a justification.

  Beck would have been back in the field by the third week if the medics hadn’t kept her away. Their treatments not only repaired her skull in short order, but the carbon lace hardening beneath her scalp made the damaged section stronger than before the injury. It wasn’t her wounds that kept Beck on the sidelines. It was the headaches.

  They had come with frequent intensity at first, vast ringing symphonies of pain which sometimes came on so fast she crumpled to the floor in agony. The first few times this happened, she had to be sedated until the episodes passed.

  Just thinking about those first few attacks made sweat bead on her forehead. Being so completely overcome by agony that she could do nothing more than writhe beneath its weight and hope for sleep or death was a new form of helplessness. Even her grief hadn’t been so encompassing and inescapable. At least within its throes she could become distracted and lose herself in work. Having her mind and body immobilized from pain—and at random—felt like having a target painted on her head at all times.

  As much as Beck wanted to get back to work, there was no chance of fooling the medics. Her Brain Interface Monitor constantly streamed status reports on her neurological activity to her temporary jailers. Beck hadn’t put any effort into fiddling with its code, mostly because it was a phenomenally bad idea to screw around with a piece of electronics nestled against your own skull.

  On a purely practical and sane level, Beck didn’t really want to. She was ill. That was obvious. She couldn’t be relied on in a fight, not when an episode could surprise her at any moment. Wanting to get better meant toeing the line and letting the men and women in white poke and prod her at their leisure.

  Her last episode happened on the final day of the fifth week. By consensus, she was deemed fit for light duty seven days later.

  *

  The process of being cleared for work was laborious and frustrating. The short version began after her fitness report was given the green light and involved half a dozen checks of her BIM, including several brain scans which were compared to her records to make sure she could still operate her armor effectively.

  Then she had to operate her armor in a series of controlled tests that took an entire day. Beck was sorely tempted to use her access to shut down the testing bay and annoy the proctors into letting her skate by, but suppressed the urge. Barely.

  The next morning, however, she reported to the Brighton chapterhouse comm room to receive orders from Stein.

  “Good to see you back,” Stein said when the connection opened. “How would you like to get out of the Rez?”

  Beck perked up at this while simultaneously growing suspicious. “A lot. I’d like it a lot. But I’m not cleared for field work. Just in-Rez operations. No combat.”

  Stein shook her head. “You won’t be in combat. Or I should say, you won’t be fighting if anything happens. I’ve had Lin install a temporary override in your suit that even you can’t bypass. It’ll keep you from doing anything…reckless if things get hairy on your trip. Your role here is to accompany Scott on a little field trip. He’s going to convince some of the more reluctant faction leaders what things are like out in the world by showing them firsthand. Since you’ve lived out there I thought you could back him up. You’ll have a full squad of Watchmen protecting you, and you’ll be in a fast transport. It’s programmed to zip back here when the agent in charge hits the distress signal. No heroics.”

  “I’m going to be a tour guide,” Beck said flatly.

  Stein’s mouth quirked up at one corner. “Technically you’ll be a tour guide’s assistant. But it’s what I have. Your team is busy up north at the moment. You can either do this or wait for them. Your call.”

  Beck opened her mouth to accept the mission—because really, anything was better than more sitting around—but hesitated. “Why?”

  “Why what?” Stein asked, slightly irritated. She was a busy woman and had little patience for people wasting her time.

  “Why give me a choice?” Beck asked. “Not that I don’t appreciate it, but you’ve been treating me like an equal since Bowers died.”

  Stein studied her through the video screen for a long time. “He talked about you a lot, you know. Bowers. Told me more than once that the Watch was too harsh. That we broke people down too much in the process of forging them into agents. It was better to take good steel and temper it, he said. The man gave you full access to every system we have. He trusted your judgment. I’m trying to do the same.”

  Beck looked down. “I’m eighteen, Stein. I fuck up. I’m only just starting to know how much I don’t know. Sometimes I think it’d be better if you just treated me like any other Watchman.”

  To her surprise, Stein burst out laughing. “Right. That would last right up until you decided an order I gave you was stupid. Or wrong. Then you’d disobey and do what you thought was right anyway, damn the consequences. Look, kid, I don’t always like your choices. No way around it. But I respect Bowers’s decision because I know how high his standards were. Hell, the fact that you’re even willing to admit you might not be perfect at your age is kind of incredible. Maybe you have to be older and jaded to understand that.”

  Stein grew serious, leaning toward the camera. “I’ll say this much. If I had to pick someone to have my back, you’re on the short list. Scott will be there in about an hour. If you’re going with him, let him know. I’ll be in touch when I can.”

  She closed the connection, leaving Beck to ponder the conversation. She knew the surface reason Stein bent her own natural inclination to expect obedience when it came to Beck. Bowers had been her friend, a lifelong mentor. His trust in Beck carried a lot of weight.

  Beck hadn’t asked because that fact was unknown to her, but for the much more primal reason that she had to voice her doubts about her own leadership and lack of experience. Things had changed drastically since the old man died, and Beck had accumulated failures along with the victories.

  It never occurred to her before that the thing that made her a mediocre soldier might be the very quality Bowers appreciated. Stein was absolutely right in that regard—Beck would always do what she thought was right
or necessary. Disobedience appeared to be a feature, not a bug.

  There was a certain irony in that realization combined with the fact that Beck never consciously made the choice to take the mission. She left the comm room on autopilot, arrived in the bay where her suit waited to open upon her approach, and made her way to the Loop station after stepping into it. All without the slightest awareness a decision had been made.

  Her self-awareness was at best highly selective. Beck simply lacked the capacity to see through manipulation at a certain depth. This was especially true when the person manipulating her did so by telling the truth as Stein had.

  And so she waited with minor impatience for Scott and his delegation to arrive, tapping one metal foot against the printed stone of the Loop platform and hoping whatever today’s plan was it involved more than a basic circuit through the boring orange dust surrounding Brighton.

  She remembered the horrific wounds Tala had taken in a sudden flash before revising her hope. First and foremost, she would be happy if everyone came home safe.

  The Loop carriage pulled in on time and fully loaded. Half a dozen wild-eyed citizens followed Scott through its doors, leading nine Watchmen in heavily scarred armor who all nodded to her as they passed. All but the last in the group. The ID tag hovering on her HUD made Beck smile.

  “Hear you’ve had a rough time lately,” the Guard said to her over an ad hoc private channel. Beck tilted her helmet in the obvious way adopted by the Watch to show others their mannerisms.

  “Judging by the state of your armor, I’m not the only one,” Beck said.

  Reeves, the man who’d taught her cohort to fight and to think, who had led them through a bloom and the hell which followed, laughed. “The thing about this job you can’t ever forget, Miss Park, is that the work? It’s never done.”

  14

  The rapid transport took them to one of the sites proposed for a new settlement by the Dians. Members of both factions filled the passenger space, with the faint hope that the experience would be just terrifying enough to scare the Dians into calming down but less frightening than the Trads expected, making them more open to the inevitable change.

  Beck wasn’t impressed with the site itself. There was no receiver for orbital power transmission like Brighton had, meaning whatever might be built here would have to rely on photovoltaic coating on the buildings or wind turbines like much of the Protectorate did. They were past the dust roughly northwest of the Rez, a hundred and fifty miles away. Beck had been farther from time to time, but it was clear from the nerves jangling through the compartment that the passengers felt out of their depth.

  She took perverse pleasure in opening the hatch manually, gesturing with her gauntleted hand for the passengers to step out.

  “Hell, no,” said McCallister, one of the Trad leaders. “I didn’t ask to be dragged out here. I’m not wearing armor like you. I could be dead before I even know what’s going on.”

  In response, Beck shrugged and stepped through the hatch and dropped four feet to the ground. She stepped away from the transport a few yards before opening her suit and stepping out. “You weren’t asked to come here because it was part of your sentence, sir. You caused trouble well after the riot amnesty went into effect. You don’t come out here, then I talk to Enforcement when I get back. Your call.”

  With a grumble, McCallister stepped down the ladder set in the side of the transport. Despite his best effort to maintain grumpy, middle-aged disdain, the look of wonder on his face couldn’t be hidden.

  All around them was green. Not the same vibrant growth she’d seen around Canaan or further south, but far more than anywhere inside a Rez. Citizens weren’t ignorant of this sort of thing—every Rez had gardens of some kind. There was a crucial difference between seeing fields of grass or crops outside a Rez wall, which was the best most citizens could hope for beyond the small contained gardens, and stepping into a world without those walls where life sprang up without effort.

  No. Not just without effort—despite all odds. Life that was recovering, struggling, but refusing to be anything but verdant nonetheless.

  It was a hell of a thing to step into.

  The other passengers followed. Reeves and his squad came first, then the Dian leader who refused to answer to anything but his nickname, Red. The other faction members deferred to him and McCallister. The briefing made that much clear, but it was obvious all on its own. These were the two men Beck and Scott, who exited last, needed to convince.

  “Let’s have a rotating perimeter,” Reeves said. He stayed put as the squad spread out in near unison to watch from all directions, moving in a constant, wide circle around the group.

  “Look at all this green,” Scott said, inhaling deeply through his nose. Beck thought it made for good theater. The knee-high grass here was salted heavily with yellows and browns, far less healthy than what he was used to. Not that you could tell by the loose grin on Scott’s face—he might as well have been standing in Eden itself.

  The site was a hilltop, wide and broad, looking down on gently rolling valleys. Thickets of tall bushes dotted the landscape, some bearing what looked like small fruit or berries. Distant trees rimmed the series of hills in a nearly perfect circle almost a mile wide. It was as ideal a place to settle as could be imagined, at least in the limited experience of the people who wanted to rush into the badlands to live here.

  “It’s not as barren as I expected,” McCallister grudgingly admitted. He turned to Red, who was gazing at the hilltop with barely constrained tears. “I would have thought you’d want somewhere with buildings. Something defensible.”

  Red, a tall black man in his late twenties, smiled. “Look at where we are. People have been building hill forts for centuries. We can farm all that land out there and stay behind the walls when the Pales come.”

  Beck glanced over at Scott, who gently pinched his lower lip between two fingers before speaking.

  “You’re almost right,” he said in a gentle but firm voice. “That’s how we do it at Canaan, except no Pales can get near our crops in any great numbers. It’s why we built where we did.”

  Red frowned. “Why does that matter?”

  “Pales are smart,” Scott said patiently. “They crave protein, but they’ll eat your crops in a pinch. If they’re already well-fed, they’ll stomp any food you try to grow into the dirt just to keep you from eating it. Have you thought about how you’ll even build here? What materials you’ll use?”

  This was Beck’s cue to speak up, one she and Scott had discussed in the little time alone they had alone before leaving. “Any settlements approved by the government will be given assistance in construction. We’re spinning up projects to make prefabricated structures and walls that can be transported and set up with minimal effort.”

  Scott looked suitably impressed. “Well. That’s great. So tell me, Red, what you plan to do about children?”

  Every faction member reacted to this sentence, which was free of any context, with confusion. Red shook his head. “I’m not sure what you mean. We’ll have them, of course, though we’ll follow the Tenets about not overpopulating.”

  Scott waved a hand dismissively. “No, what will you do to keep babies from screaming in the night? Because if there’s one thing Pales will come running for, it’s the sound of helpless prey.” His face grew serious, the faint crow’s feet around his eyes sharpening as his eyes grew sad. “That’s a lesson our people learned early and hard. Living out here is never easy. Worth it? Absolutely. But it can’t be a choice made without a lot of consideration. Take care you think it through before you make any rash decisions.”

  *

  They stayed for a few hours. Scott, in what Beck thought was an inspired move, gave a basic lesson on survival. It was one she knew well from her Deathwatch training—how to start a fire—but not something the average citizen would know how to do without any modern technology.

  The Trads, especially McCallister, grew less nervous over time
. That was to be expected. Fear’s most common root was in the unknown. Decades of viewing the outside world as an endless wasteland full of nothing but death was a lot of emotional momentum to overcome. Yet the trip’s total immersion in it forced the deep reptile parts of their brains to shift ever so slightly toward recognizing the basic truth that the world out here had a lot going for it.

  Scott even led the group, watched over by Reeves, in picking some of the riper berries. These were of a variety unknown to Beck, but he apparently ate them regularly.

  Beck had been concerned that she would have to come up with a lot of answers for these people, talking about the time she spent in exile in a way that could appeal to both groups. Hell, they’d barely looked at her once the initial shock wore off and Scott took the reins. In most situations she would have been furious at the idea of losing control that way, but facts were facts. The man knew the business of living out here in ways she had only scratched the surface of, and was far better at managing people without having to order them around.

  She kept herself available just in case. It wasn’t needed. Once in while Scott would pause when sharing some anecdote about her stay in Canaan and she would speak up, which was the extent of it.

  Scott was in the middle of showing the crowd how to tie grass into small dense bricks to fuel the fire when the comm in her ear beeped a low warning. She stepped back from the crowd and tapped it.

  “Park,” she said under her breath.

  “This is Brighton overwatch,” a voice said. Beck’s spine straightened. Overwatch was a position that was only active in the middle of an operation of some kind.

  “Go ahead,” Beck said. It had to be important—for communications this far past the repeaters, comm drones would have to have been flown up over the horizon in a line to carry the signal. Though it was possible Reeves did that anyway since no one wanted the disaster that would come from letting the faction leaders get attacked out here with no way to call for backup.