by John Ringo
“Good.” Dinny flicked a glance her way and the twinkle of friendliness in his eyes clicked off like a lightswitch. Dinny Ghamal knew exactly who she was — and why she’d refused to attend his wedding. He said in a cold voice, “Let’s move. The commodore’s waiting.”
He turned on his heel and led the way back through the trees.
“He don’t cotton much to you, does he?” Phil asked, glancing at her.
Yalena shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”
They followed Dinny through a thick patch of forest, then slid and slithered down a steep foot trail that emerged at the edge of a sheer cliff. It formed one wall of Dead-End Gorge, which was merely the final bend in Klameth Canyon, where a volcanic intrusion of harder rock had diverted the flow of the Klameth River, forcing it into a sharp turn. That was the spot Jefferson’s earliest terraforming engineers had chosen to build the dam. Phil whistled softly. “That is one bitch of a drop.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” Yalena had done some rock climbing on Vishnu, enough to have a healthy respect for the steep cliff below their feet. The wind whistled past their ears, rustling through the trees behind them and singing across the broad face of the dam. Dinny Ghamal, waiting at the railing that edged the top of the dam, turned impatiently.
“We don’t have all day,” he snapped.
“Yeah, yeah, keep your shirt on,” Phil muttered, striding across the open ground. He stepped across the railing onto the concrete that formed the immense upper edge of the dam and sidled past a defensive battery of artillery, infinite repeaters, hyper-v missile launchers, and a 10cm mobile Hellbore that was nearly seven meters long. The top of the dam was wide enough, they could’ve built a two-lane highway, up here, if they’d needed one. Yalena followed Phil and Dinny silently, edging her way past the first real artillery she’d seen, since all of her training to date had been done on simulators.
Five minutes later, they were inside the dam itself, which was hollow throughout much of its upper structure, providing space for the immense turbines and machinery necessary to the power-generating plant. There were also maintenance tunnels, stairways, elevators, and equipment storage space for the engineers and inspectors who kept the dam in good repair. They entered the dam through an access door that led into the rabbit-warren maze of tunnels and finally stopped in front of a closed door on the reservoir side of the dam, near enough to the immense turbines that the floor rumbled underfoot and they had to raise their voices to be heard clearly over the industrial-strength noise.
“The commodore will see you first,” Dinny told Yalena. “He wants to ask you some questions about the students who came with you from Vishnu. If you’ll wait here, Mr. Fabrizio, I’ll have someone bring up something to eat.”
“Oh, man, that would be some kinda’ wonderful. There ain’t shit to eat in town, these days.”
“Yes,” Dinny said drily, “I know.”
Phil just grinned at him and winked at Yalena.
She was beginning to like this brash and ill-mannered idiot, who had somehow managed to overcome a whole series of handicaps, most of them worse than her own.
Dinny just gave a snort and left. Yalena tapped on the closed door and heard a deep, masculine voice invite her to come in. Her hand was wet with sweat as she touched the door knob. Then she opened it quickly and stepped into the room beyond.
“Close the door.”
The voice sounded natural enough to fool just about anybody. It nearly fooled Yalena and she knew better. She clicked the door shut behind her and faced the disconcerting faceplate of a battle helmet. She couldn’t see anything of the face behind it. The uniform was bulky enough to disguise the shape of the body under it. The “Commodore” stood looking at her — just looking — for several dangerous moments. Then one hand lifted, swiftly, and stripped off the helmet.
Her mother had aged. More than four years’ worth. For long, painful moments, neither of them spoke. There was too much to say, all of it important — too important to just blurt it out.
“You’ve grown up.” The whisper sounded nothing at all like the leader of a world-class rebellion.
“I’m sorry,” Yalena said, stupidly, meaning she regretted the utter waste of her childhood and the memories they should have had.
Her mother didn’t ask why she’d apologized. She just bit one lip and whispered, “Can you forgive me?”
Yalena felt her eyes widen. “For what?”
“For dying. For lying about it.” Pain burned behind her mother’s eyes. Not the pain of separation. The pain of a deep and burning shame.
Sudden anger flared, anger that her mother would feel shame. “Don’t you dare apologize for that! That’s my fault! Mine and nobody else’s! You think I haven’t realized that, every second since I found out?”
Her mother’s mouth twisted, wrenching at her heart. “At least you didn’t punch me in the nose.”
Yalena couldn’t help it. Laughter bubbled up — and turned to sobs in the very next breath as something that had lain frozen in her chest broke loose in painful spasms. Her mother moved or maybe she did or maybe the ground actually tipped and tilted, propelling her into her mother’s arms. It didn’t matter. Time flowed past, dim and diffuse as dawnlight through early morning fog. Warmth and safety poured into her, a balm that healed wounds she hadn’t realized she carried. Yalena had never known such a sensation and hadn’t realized how utterly barren her life had been, without it.
At length, her mother began to speak. Not about anything serious. Just little things. A time Yalena had skinned her knees. A favorite dress they’d chosen together. A school play in which Yalena had been inept enough to knock down most of the set, only to steal the show by improvising so cleverly, it had looked like a planned part of the play. She hadn’t realized there’d been anything happy for her mother to remember. But the biggest surprise of all came when her mother slipped a hand into a uniform pocket and came out with something carefully folded up in a scrap of velvet.
“I went back for it,” she said in a low voice. “That very night. While the whole city was still in chaos. There were a few things I couldn’t bear to leave. There was so much rioting, looters set fire to the building just as I was leaving again.” Her mother put the scrap of velvet in her hand. “Open it.”
Yalena unwrapped the cloth and her breath died in her throat. Pearls. The necklace she and her mother and her grandparents had made, together, for her tenth birthday. She couldn’t say anything. The words in her heart were too large to squeeze past her throat.
“Here,” her mother said, taking the strand, “let’s see if they still fit.”
They’d made the strand extra-long, so that she’d worn it doubled, as a child. Now the pearls lay quietly against her throat, a soft and perfect fit.
“You look an angel in them,” her mother said with a smile.
Yalena started to cry again. “You saved them,” she choked out. “You saved so much…”
“It’s in my job description,” her mother said, smiling again, wiping tears from Yalena’s cheeks. “Rescuer of presidents. Leader of rebellions. Savior of pearls.”
“You’re sure you’re not casting them before swine?”
Her mother’s eyes went wet. “Oh, no, honey, never even think that.” She was brushing damp hair back from Yalena’s face. “You forget, I’ve had your father’s reports, these last four years. I’ve cried, sometimes, I was so proud of you.”
She swallowed hard. “I can’t think why.”
Another smile touched her mother’s lips. “Try asking the friends who followed you home.”
“I can’t. I’m too scared of the answer,” she admitted.
“Ah. You’ve learned wisdom, as well. That’s good. You’ll need it,” she said quietly, reminding Yalena painfully of the reasons they were both standing in this windowless little room in the heart of Klameth Canyon Dam. “Now, then. Why don’t you tell me about these friends of yours?”
Yalena spoke quietly, outlining their s
kills, candidly assessing their capabilities and weak points, and reporting what her father planned to do, using them to wage an escalating guerilla campaign. Her mother listened quietly, without interruption, but with a ferocious intensity that would have been disconcerting, if she hadn’t been concentrating so hard on giving the best account she was able to give. She also handed over the gear they’d brought: more biochemical containment suits, antivirals and antidotes to the various war agents Vishnu suspected Vittori Santorini had cooked up, medical diagnostic equipment, battlefield medications unavailable anywhere on Jefferson.
They’d already delivered large loads to various rebel camps, by way of air buses that had come down with the Bolo’s lift platform. But none of those air buses had been able to get near Klameth Canyon, not with the heavy artillery the P-Squads had thrown against the defenders here.
“There’s more in Madison,” Yalena told her mother, “a lot more, but we couldn’t pack any more than this into the skimmer.”
“And you couldn’t risk coming in a bigger aircar. We had some gear with us, but this is a welcome addition, Yalena, believe me. Particularly the antivirals.” Her mother pursed her lips, thought for a moment, and finally said, “I think I can add a few interesting wrinkles to what your father has in mind. I want to talk to Mr. Fabrizio, though, before I finish making plans. Ask him to come in, please. Why don’t you go up-top and take a look around? I want you to familiarize yourself with our defenses, including the gun emplacements and artillery crews.”
“I’d like that,” Yalena said softly. “I’ve had four years of theory, but no real experience.”
Her mother gave her one last hug, ruffled her hair, then picked up the battle helmet that was her greatest defensive weapon. She gave Yalena a rueful smile before settling it into place. “You know, I’ve almost come to hate this thing.”
“I don’t know how you do it,” Yalena admitted. “I couldn’t.”
A fleeting expression passed across her mother’s face, like mist drifting past the stars, and her eyes focused on something so distant, the sun it orbited was farther away than Vishnu.
“What you can do — when you must do it — is often a very great surprise. It’s also,” she added with a candor that wrenched at Yalena’s wobbling emotions, “lonely beyond endurance. Yet one endures. Sometimes, I think that’s the very essence of being human.” She gave herself a sharp shake. “But that’s not what we’re here to accomplish. Send in Mr. Fabrizio, if you please.” The helmet went back on.
Yalena nodded. She knew that she would think about her mother’s words, later, when there was time. She would think deeply, come to that. But for now, her commanding officer had issued an order.
“Yes, sir.” She saluted the commodore with a crisp snap of the wrist.
Then she turned on her heel and opened the door. “The commodore wants to see you now,” she told Phil. Then she headed topside, taking the stairs up to the access door that led out onto the top of the dam. The afternoon breeze was strong enough this high above the canyon floor to qualify as a stiff wind. It caught her hair and sent it streaming across her face, until she pulled the strands aside and stuffed them down her collar. The view from up here was spectacular. Far below, where the water from the spillway poured into the much-tamed Klameth River, she could see a base camp where her mother’s artillery crews bivouacked between duty shifts at the guns defending the gorge and the dam.
To her right was the volcanic outcropping of tough, dense rock that had deflected the Klameth River’s course. Around the bend she could see a small farmhouse that sat right beside the access road into the Gorge. Directly below was the hydroelectric power plant huddled against the foot of the dam. Beyond the farmhouse were other farms and what had once been orchards. Most of the trees had been hacked apart for firewood, doing God-alone-knew how much long-term damage to agricultural production. The wood was green and wet, but even a smoking, sullen fire to cook food over was better than no fire at all. Fresh fruit was going to be mighty scarce for a long time to come.
Between the high canyon walls were the people who’d chopped down those trees, thousands and thousands of refugees, all gathered into sprawling camps that had taken over pastures and fields. The nearest such camp was maybe two kilometers from Yalena’s vantage point. Ragged, makeshift tents had been formed from blankets, bedsheets, poles, and rope, providing minimal shelter. Yalena strained against the afternoon glare, trying to take in details. She wasn’t seeing very many animals in those pastures. Whether that was due to owners’ decisions to keep their animals penned in barns and farm-yards, or whether it was due to starving refugees slaughtering the herds to fill empty bellies, she wasn’t sure.
If the latter, Jefferson’s farmers would spend years trying to rebuild herds, because they sure as fire didn’t have enough cash to buy off-world breeding stock. Not even frozen embryos would help much, if there weren’t female animals in which to implant them. It was sobering, standing up here and looking down at the ruination of what had been Jefferson’s last remaining agricultural jewel.
Yalena lifted her gaze from the canyon floor, looking for the defenses her mother had mentioned. She couldn’t see rebel gun positions on the surrounding mountainsides, although she knew they were there. She tried letting her eyes go unfocused, looking for movement, rather than trying to pick out details, and finally spotted two or three positions within half a kilometer of the dam. Those gunnery crews were good — very good — at staying hidden. She could learn a great deal from crews that good. If there was time…
“Well,” she told herself, “there are a couple of crews I can talk to right now, without having to climb halfway up a mountain to reach them.” She headed for the nearest gun emplacement atop the dam. There were three of them: one at each end and one slap in the middle, all of them bristling with battle-blackened gun snouts. The access door she’d come through was near the left-hand end of the dam, so she headed toward it.
Yalena wanted to ask the gunnery crews what skills and techniques served them best in a combat crisis. She’d listened to the off-world combat vets aboard the Star of Mali more than enough to know that seasoned troops could give her tips and techniques that no textbook and no drill instructor could ever match. She wanted to learn the tricks of her new trade and she wanted to put those tricks and techniques to good use in the field.
So she approached the battery at the end of the dam and swept her gaze across the massive weaponry guarding this portion of Dead-End Gorge. The battery consisted of five 30cm anti-aircraft guns, a dozen ranks of hypervelocity missile launchers, and a miniature forest of infinite repeaters, clustered in twenty separate pods. Each infinite repeater rested in its own rotational mount, creating a complex gun system that allowed every single barrel to swivel and track independently or could be configured to whirl them all in unison, to deliver massed, volley-style fire.
The centerpiece of the battery, planted squarely in the middle, was the 10cm mobile Hellbore. Its snout looked as wicked as Satan’s backside and as full of death as the devil’s heart. The last time she’d been this close to Hellbores, they’d been attached to a Bolo intent on crushing everything in its path. She held in a shiver and made herself cross the last couple of meters to reach the first of the guns. The men and women manning those guns watched her come, eyes shuttered. No one offered her a greeting.
There was just one thing to do. She lifted her chin, gave them a wan smile, and toughed it out. “The commodore asked me to come up and get familiar with the gun emplacements.” The wind snatched her words and dashed them against the mountain slopes. Nobody answered. “I’ve never been this close to an artillery battery,” she added, determined to see this through.
“You’re from town.” The shuttered stares were cold as ice. Colder. The speaker was a woman who looked like she’d crossed swords with Satan more than once. “You rat-gangers have a lot of nerve, coming out here and trying to join up. Your kind took POPPA’s handouts for twenty years. You sang Vittor
i’s praises to the skies. You only switched sides when you finally got hungry. We’ve been fighting to survive. You’ve been living on free handouts POPPA took from us at gunpoint. We don’t need your kind out here. So just climb back into your skimmer and get the hell out of our canyon.”
Yalena’s face flamed, but she didn’t back down. “I’m no rat-ganger,” she said with an icy chill in her own voice. “I’ve never lived anywhere near Port Town. I’m a college student back from Vishnu. A whole group of us came home to fight. So did a shipload of combat veterans on their way home. Estevao Soteris taught me things not even my instructors on Vishnu knew about combat. But I’ve never seen a live artillery battery, before. So the commodore asked for my report on what the students are doing in town, then sent me up here.”
Her uncle’s name acted like a magic talisman. Suspicion and hostility thawed. The woman actually quirked one corner of her mouth in a faint smile. “You couldn’t ask for a better teacher, honey. What’s your name, girl?”
“Lena, ” she said, using an abbreviated version of her name. The last thing she wanted was for these battle-hardened warriors to figure out who she really was before she’d earned their trust. They were more than capable of “accidentally” nudging her over the railing and watching her fall the long, ghastly drop to the canyon floor.
“C’mere, then, Lena. I’ll show you how to program a fire mission into a battle computer. My name’s Rachel.” She paused for a moment, then added, “My sister is married to General Ghamal.”
Yalena’s eyes widened. “You were part of the Hancock Co-op?”
Rachel’s eyes went hard with memory. “Oh, yes. We were. The commodore risked his life, going into Nineveh Base to rescue us.”
