“I have something for you,” he said and fastened the chain around her neck. The diamond caught the light, like a tiny comet. He touched the diamond with his finger then pressed his lips to the dome of her right breast, then her left, and then, last of all, her lips. “A diamond lasts forever, and so will my love for you,” he murmured. “I want you to remember that, Liz, no matter what.”
And she’d known at that moment what was going to happen. Still, she pulled him close. His skin was smooth from their lovemaking, and she inhaled musk, and the faintest hint of sweat. They were silent for a few moments. Then she said, “You’re going away, aren’t you? You’ve decided to…” She couldn’t say the word defect, not just then, so she didn’t.
He didn’t answer at first, just traced the length of chain along her collarbone with a finger. Her eyes burning with unshed tears, she waited him out. “Yes,” he said finally. “I’m sorry. But after Tikonov, the way the war is going… Liz, I don’t think Victor’s right. I’ve given it a lot of thought and I’m not sure his claim is… authentic.”
“And Katherine’s is?” She wanted to be angry. She wanted to shout and tell him that he’d lost his mind. But she couldn’t do any of those things.
He’d sighed, then rolled onto his back. “I don’t know anything anymore. But I have to do what’s right, what feels right. This… the Twenty-Third, fighting for Victor… Liz, I can’t stomach it. I can’t pretend loyalty to a cause that I don’t think is just.”
She propped her head on her elbow so she could look into those intense blue eyes. “What about us, John? What am I supposed to do? Resign my commission? Report you?”
His eyes held hers. “You could. You know you could. I’ll be a traitor.”
“Terrific.” She gave a bleak laugh. “They’ll execute you and pin a medal on my chest. What kind of choice is that?”
“Then come with me,” and then when she’d shaken her head, his hands gripped her biceps. “For God’s sake, why stay? What’s here for you?”
“My duty, John. My job. And I believe in Victor,” she said. Her heart raced, but she kept her voice steady. “Besides, my oath is just as important as yours. You’re not the only one with a conscience. I have to do what I think is right. Defection isn’t, and there’s no way you can make that choice right, not for me.”
“And if the Eleventh and the Twenty-Third…” His voice was husky with emotion. “Liz, if it comes down to a fight, Lyran against Lyran, regiment against regiment…?”
“Then we do our jobs, John,” she said. “We follow orders. We hope for the best.”
“Oh, God,” he said, pulling her down onto his chest. She nestled there, her ear pressed against his heart. She listened to its strong, steady beat and, for the moment, felt her fears recede. His hands stroked her long blonde hair, the back of her head. “It won’t come to that. I promise.”
“You can’t know that,” she said, and now her tears came. “It’s not your promise to make, John.”
“I know.” He lifted her face and framed it with his hands. “But this is, Liz. This is my promise to you.” And then he’d kissed her fiercely, hungrily, his need flowing into her.
They hadn’t spoken again after that for the rest of the night—at least, not in words. She’d fallen asleep in the circle of his arms but the next morning, when she woke, he was gone.
Only five months ago. She closed her finger around the diamond pendant and pressed it to her lips. Love is forever, my darling; the war isn’t. But there was no end in sight, and now she was on one side, and Jonathan was on the other. Her gaze swung back to the distant mons, the tiny ´Mechs. She saw a plume of smoke rise, and the wind reached her; there was a sound of thunder, and she smelled ozone, vented coolant, and the stink of sulfur.
I wish it would rain. I wish it would rain and wash away all the blood and the stench, and then the world would be clean, and we could start again, forget this horror.
But it didn’t rain. She really didn’t expect it to. Trainer finished her cigarette, then let it fall to the hard earth, and ground it to dust beneath her boot.
• • •
“I won’t kid you,” said the colonel, looking at the various command staff assembled around the table. He wasn’t a tall man and his scalp was capped with a shock of white, unruly hair that always seemed like it needed a good brushing. His gray eyes sunk into his face from too many hours tending patients, and he looked as if he hadn’t slept in a month. “The situation’s bad. Command hasn’t been able to slow down McDonald’s advance. There’s a real, imminent danger of her people breaking through our front lines.”
“Well, then we needed to start evacuating yesterday morning,” said Dale Ramsey, who was seated next to Trainer. Ramsey was the unit’s chief surgeon: a small, bantam-rooster of a man with a thatch of fiery red hair. “The OR’s hopping. I can barely keep up, and my patients are packed tighter than sardines in post-op. If you’re really serious about evacuation, then we need to start sending people out now.”
The colonel sighed. “I wish it was that simple. The reality is that Command won’t spare us the transports because they’re already in use.” There was a general buzz of conversation around the table, and the colonel raised a hand. “Hold on, people. There’s more. The scuttlebutt is that the retreat’s already begun. Happened last night, under cover of darkness. A splinter of the Twenty-Third peeled off south, and they’re about ten klicks away now and going fast. There’s still a forward unit, a token force on the volcano spearheading the offensive against McDonald, but they’re spread thin. And the bad news is we stay put, right smack dab in the middle.”
“To fight another day?” asked Ramsey. His tone indicated just what he thought of that plan. “What, we’re the bait? The sacrificial lambs?”
The colonel bobbed his head. “That’s about the size of it. We run for it, and the Eleventh might suspect that we’re not throwing all our man- and firepower at them here. Call it a diversionary last stand. We’ve got lots of wounded, plus anyone we can get well enough to send back to the forward line, so we can keep things looking pretty darned busy. By the time the Eleventh gets here and figures out that we’re not actually shooting, Command’s betting that we’ll have bought the splinter group time. So, in the end, Command will have conserved their healthiest soldiers and gotten them the hell out of here.”
“While we do what?” asked Trainer.
“Our jobs,” said the colonel. “No matter what, we’ve got to stay put. We’ve got patients to tend to who can’t be moved. They need us.”
“We need back-up,” Ramsey said. “And some firepower would be nice. I don’t much like the idea of defending my patients with a laser pistol, or serving as target practice for some Banshee. And what about that nice big Zeus? We’ve got all that power out there and no one here qualified to pilot it. Are you telling me Command’s going to leave it behind?” When the colonel nodded, Ramsey blew out in exasperation. “Well, Christ Almighty, then how about sending a MechWarrior our way?”
“No can do. In a more normal war, where we had a bit more time, didn’t have to cut and run, what with Command trying to cover Victor’s tracks, maybe. Hell,” the colonel exhaled a laugh, “can’t believe I even said that. Whatever flavor war you call it a soldier ends up just as dead. Anyway, I can’t argue with you, Ramsey. ´Mechs are damn valuable, we all know that. But Command’s pulling out so fast they can’t even spare time to button their flies, much less hustle a pilot our way. And you, Ramsey, will defend your patients with your trusty laser pistol only if you are fired upon. No one engages anyone except in defense of a patient, got it?” The colonel gave each of the medical staff a hard stare. “I know this is a tough one to swallow, but you’ll do your jobs, I know that. Now, everybody, go get some sleep. Dismissed,” he said, and then added, “All except you, Major Trainer. The rest of you can go.”
Ramsey shot her a look with raised eyebrows. Trainer responded with a slight hike of her shoulders. The colonel waited until the o
thers had filed out, then closed the door to the command conference room.
“Sir?” she said, standing with her hands clasped behind her back. Not quite at attention, but not at ease either.
The colonel waved a hand. “Sit back down, Liz,” he said, sliding into a chair himself. She did. He gave a slight groan. “God, I’m getting too old for this. Okay, Liz,” he rubbed at his face, “I’m going to give it to you straight. We’re going to lose this in a big way. My own assessment. Command thinks they can salvage something? Christ, they’re dreaming. This won’t be the last stand, but it’s probably the second-to-last.”
She’d half expected this, but now that the words had been said—really out in the open—she felt her heart go numb and a feeling of something cold as glacial ice settle into the pit of her stomach. “If that’s true, why are we staying? Why not say to hell with it and evacuate now?”
“Because we haven’t gotten the go-ahead, for one, but that’s not a real reason. Hell, I’d move us in a heartbeat if I could, but we don’t have the people-movers, nothing that can really get us out of here, pronto, and I’m not leaving one of our patients behind.”
“What about DropShips?”
“Already asked, already declined.” He chafed his biceps with both hands. “I think that the simple truth of the matter is that if these soldiers are too banged up to fight, then Command’s going to call it a loss and keep on going.”
“So we’re written off? But what about our patients? They’re not statistics. They’re men and women!”
“They’re casualties, Liz. We all are. It’s damage control, pure and simple. You want to stop hemorrhaging, you got to control whatever’s bleeding you dry. Well, we’re bleeding out men and materiel on this offensive. Command’s not going to pour more resources into this end of the Twenty-Third, that’s all there is to it. They’ve calculated the odds and figured it’s better to cut their losses.”
“And leave us behind, with nowhere to go,” said Trainer, bitterly.
“Like I said, chances are McDonald’s forces are going to march in here and take us all prisoner. Good for our patients, bad for us, but at least we’ll be alive. That’s something.” The colonel screwed up his features. “But there’s one more thing, Liz. I need you to get your patients up and out.”
“Out? You mean, as in back to the front lines? But you just said…”
“We need to maintain the illusion that we’re making a fight of it. Pull out too many people, and McDonald, she’ll figure it out and you can bet she’ll come running. Never met the woman myself, but she’s got a rep, and on the basis of what’s flowing down that volcano, I believe what I hear,” said the colonel. He sighed, shook his head. “It’s hell; I know, Liz. I don’t like it, but I can’t argue with it. Look, those boys and girls out there, your patients, they’re Command’s best shot.”
“They’re convenient cannon fodder is what you mean,” said Trainer. Her voice was saturated with disgust. “Colonel, you’re ordering me to send those men and women off to die—in order to prolong a battle that we’re going to lose eventually anyway.”
The colonel ducked his head in agreement. “I wish I could say it was otherwise, Liz. But I need you to do this. Ramsey, his patients are too damn banged up to help Command any. But yours can. You just got to push them a little faster.”
“How fast?”
“I want them out day after tomorrow.”
“The eleventh.” Trainer exhaled. “That’s fast. Some of them only came in this afternoon.”
“I know that. And there’s one more thing. Stanton: It’d be real nice if you could get him up and moving back to the front line. Shame to see a ´Mechs just sitting and it’s no use to us, anyway. Might just give McDonald’s forces the wrong idea.”
“You mean that we might put up a fight.” Trainer gnawed on her lower lip, then shook her head. “The problem is I don’t think he can. A lot of those kids, probably I can get them out. But something’s really got Stanton by the throat.”
“Something you can medicate?”
“It’s not that type of sickness. Anyway, any medication that strong, and you can forget his being able to walk, much less pilot anything. Stanton’s got a… soul sickness.”
• • •
She was dismissed a short time after. It was a moonless night, and she almost didn’t see Ramsey waiting for her outside. He peeled away from the side of the command Quonset. “Well?”
Trainer jammed her hands in her cammie trouser pockets and shivered. The desert cooled off at night. “It’s bad.”
“Hell. Got a smoke?”
“Sure,” said Trainer, taking out her pack and tapping out a cigarette. There was a small metallic snick of a lighter, and then she saw Ramsey’s face, a ruddy mask, as if a switch had been thrown by the tiny flame as he lit up. His face was lost in darkness again as he cut the lighter. “That stuff’ll kill you,” she said, tucking her pack back into her breast pocket.
“Hunh. Sound medical advice,” Ramsey said, around his cigarette. A puff of smoke shot out of the corner of his mouth. “That is, if our brothers and sisters of the Eleventh don’t first.” He inhaled, held it, then blew out. Trainer’s nose tingled with the scent of burned tobacco. “What’s the story?”
She told him. When she finished, Ramsey was silent, and in the darkness, she saw only the orange glow of his cigarette, and to the west, the sparkle of weapons’ fire. She heard Ramsey drag in a breath then say, “Things must be worse than bad.”
“I’d say so.” She turned back to Ramsey. “You going to fight?”
“You mean, defend my patients with my trusty pistol? I don’t know. We pick up a weapon, then we’re fair game.”
“And if we don’t, then we get to trust Lady Luck.” Trainer sighed. “You think we’re going to get out of this?”
“As in with our skins?” Ramsey flicked his cigarette into the darkness. The small orange dot arced like a tiny meteor and disappeared. He blew out a streamer of smoke. “I think the answer’s pretty obvious, don’t you?”
• • •
The next afternoon dark clouds gathered on the horizon, beyond the mountain. Maybe some rain, finally.
She sat across from Stanton who was huddled on his cot. Stanton looked like crap. He was unshaven, and his steely-gray hair was mussed. The nurses said that he’d been restless during the night and unable to settle down, even with a sedative. He’d been given a fresh change of uniform, but he hadn’t washed and his clothes smelled sour. His eyes were staring at some spot on the floor in front of her boots.
Sighing, she put her hands on her knees. “Captain, you can stay mum for as long as you like. But I can sit here, too, because that’s my job. Now, that means if you won’t talk to me, then you’re giving me no choice.” Empty threats, she knew. She had no intention of drugging him. What purpose would it serve? But she had to try.
“You have a choice,” said Stanton, suddenly. His gaze crawled up to her face. “You’re just choosing one way over another.”
Good, keep him talking. Better to fight than sit and stare. “Oh? Tell me my choices, Captain.”
Stanton exhaled a laugh that was mainly air. His lips were cracked. “You could leave me alone. You could walk away. You don’t want to know what’s inside in my head, Doctor.” His bloodshot eyes roved away a second, then returned. “You just don’t.”
“You don’t know that. I’d like you to trust me.”
“Why?”
“Because I can help.”
“How?”
“Well, by talking, I think you’ll feel better and . . .”
“Listen to yourself.” Stanton’s lips widened into a strange grin. “You’re such a hypocrite. At least, I’m honest about my kind of killing. I get into my ´Mechs . I blast someone to hell before he can blast me. But you.” His gaze clicked down to her boots then back to her face. “You call yourself a doctor, but you’re just a killer. You pull the trigger every time you send one of us back to fight.”
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Trainer felt herself flush. “We’re not talking about my job,” she said. She licked her lips. “We’re talking about…”
“Killing,” said Stanton. “We’re talking about what you do. We’re talking about what I’ve done.”
Trainer keyed in on the words. “What you’ve done. You’ve said that before. You said that I didn’t know what you’d done. What would happen if I did know, Captain?”
“I don’t know.” Stanton looked askance. Trainer saw the small muscles working along his jaw. “Maybe it’s more that if I say it, out loud, it becomes real. Not that you can judge me any more than I hate myself.”
Trainer sensed she was close to something. “Why? Why do you hate yourself, Captain? What have you done that’s so terrible?”
For a moment, she didn’t think he would answer. And then his face quivered, and broke apart, and he was crying from what she knew was an awful, limitless grief.
An overwhelming feeling of compassion for the man washed over her. Tears stung her eyes, and she blinked the tears back. “Captain,” she said. She put her hand on his knee, just the slightest touch. “Captain, tell me.”
“I…” Stanton said, his chest heaving, his voice hitching, “I… I killed… I killed the enemy.”
“But, Captain, you… you were just doing your job.”
“No,” said Stanton, and the haunted look of loss and misery in his eyes would stay with her for the rest of her life. “No. Not when it’s… your daughter.”
No. She was prepared for anything but not this. Brother against brother. Father against daughter. And Jonathan against… Horror left her numb and speechless, and she could only watch Stanton weep out his grief and loss. A little while later, she ordered sedation for Stanton, and then she left the Quonset. She couldn’t bear anymore.
That evening, at dusk, she stared at the volcano. The flow of casualties had diminished—either because they were getting luckier, or there were no more soldiers to kill. The clouds were closer now, and there were lightening-like tracers of weapons fire all along the near slopes of the volcano, as if a swarm of fireflies had gotten loose.
BattleTech Page 3
