by P. J. Fox
Or so he told himself.
“If she doesn’t stop,” he growled, “she’ll find herself hogtied inside a cargo container on the next transport home.”
“Difficult morning?” Aros inquired, tone innocent.
Kisten said nothing. It had been a terrible morning. What stung the worst—what had set him off, in the end—was the inescapable truth of Aria’s claims. Underneath the hurt and jealousy, she was right: he had been the agent of his own destruction, and it was only through Divine Providence that he’d gotten another chance. He liked to think that he’d learned from his experiences, but…had he? He’d been furious with Aria, because she’d made demands on him. He wasn’t used to anyone making demands on him—not personal demands, anyway—and he didn’t relish the experience.
He hated that she made him feel inadequate.
But was that fair of him? To react with fury, when she’d done nothing more than state the truth? Fair was, he realized, a question he’d never considered before. Aria’s job was do to as he wished; he’d never imagined that hurting her would cause him so much hurt.
He felt a flash of the old anger, ashamed and frightened of his own dependence. Drug-addled had been a bit unfair. If she’d been through what he’d been through, the self-important little trollop, she wouldn’t be so sanguine. But no, she, who knew nothing of the world, felt free to—
I don’t know how dangerous it is, because you don’t tell me!
He deflated.
She was right, and he knew it. What right did he have to blame her for being a woman? For being a product of the world that he, and men like him, fought to maintain? Where she was sheltered from the world, and his success in keeping her sheltered from the world a source of pride to him?
This kind of thinking was new to Kisten, and unpleasant in the extreme.
He’d been studying his desk blotter, but now he looked up and met his friend’s eyes. Aros had given up everything to follow him here; Aros, the son of farmers, for whom the navy had been everything. “Your sweetheart on Brontes—Sonam, wasn’t that her name?”
Aros nodded.
“Did you ever find out what happened…after?” After they’d finally gotten out of prison. His own yearning for privacy made him sensitive to others’ boundaries, and he’d never asked questions about his friend’s failed relationship or how he felt about it now. But after what had happened this morning, he found that he had to know.
Aros shrugged. “She’s still married to the rug merchant. I got another Dear Raj letter, later on, but I never told you. All about how much happier she was with him than she’d ever been with me. She has three children, or so my sister tells me; they still keep in touch.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.” Aros turned, gazing out the window at nothing. “The whole time we were in prison, I thought about seeing her again.” He paused, and the silence stretched. “I never have seen her again, of course. To this day, I can’t believe that I was such a fool.”
“You’ll meet someone else.”
“I don’t know if I want to.”
“Because you still love her?” Kisten asked.
“Because I’m embittered,” Aros replied honestly. He stood up, leaving the now-empty mug on the desk. “I need to find that fool of a financial commissioner.”
Kisten waved him off, once again lost in thought. He’d meet Aros outside for the inspection.
There were more reports in front of him: of other arsons, and rumors of sabotage at the mines. Reports that needed his attention. But he found himself thinking about Aria. He wished to God that he hadn’t said what he’d said. You’ll meet someone else, he’d told Aros, just minutes before; but could Kisten? If Aria left him, he’d be alone for the rest of his life. He knew that as surely as he knew his own name. He’d had her only a few months, but in that short time his life had changed. He’d changed. Some fundamental part of him had been missing, and now no longer was. Whatever else happened, Aria was part of him now and always would be.
He’d grown up in a house full of women, so he knew something of their habits, even if he hadn’t had much experience with them socially.
Casual affairs and the overblown, competition-tinged flirtation that came with them didn’t count. Telling a woman that her beauty eclipsed that of the moon while kissing her neck wasn’t the same thing as talking to her like a person. His darling younger sister, who was rather a minx, herself, claimed that jealousy and insecurity were the prerogative of all women and that if a man’s consort exhibited the symptoms of either then he had only himself to blame. Kisten pitied the poor, benighted son of a bitch who ever crossed Zoharin; although he suspected that she’d be married, soon. She’d had the same man wrapped around her little finger for some time. As she was only now coming of legal age, he’d not had the opportunity to press his suit—that was, if she permitted him to do so.
Zoharin was a true Mara Sant, and suffered from the same curse they all did: she knew exactly what she wanted.
Kisten stared at his tablet without seeing the writing on the screen. He didn’t know what he’d do if he lost Aria, and he was equally as afraid of losing her to violence as he was losing her to his own callous disregard of needs that he didn’t, as yet, fully understand. Hers or his.
He thought about calling her, and decided that bothering her was probably a bad idea. She could use some time to herself, and they’d have all the time in the world tonight. Besides, he had more pressing problems to deal with this afternoon.
He stood up and walked over to the window.
If the 29th was beyond hope, then ordering this inspection was a terrible mistake. Except he only had two choices: try to enforce discipline, or give the regiment up for lost and let its members lounge around smoking and staring at the sky. Apart from the fact that he couldn’t afford to lose the manpower, what message would that send?
That the governor was afraid of his own army?
That the 29th, by acting out, had put themselves beyond the reach of discipline?
TWO
The compound housing the Blues was large, and divided into several sections that were separated by walls and accessed through gates large enough to admit a tank. Each gate could also be closed and barred, giving the false impression that they were equipped for war.
Along the outer wall facing the city marched a series of guard towers and, between them, warehouses. The central administrative quarters, in which Kisten was now standing, had been placed in the exact middle of the compound and bisected it into two discrete areas: where the men lived, and where they trained. With the enlisted men’s barracks and officer’s housing were the commissary, the enlisted mess, the officer’s mess, and the recreational facilities. There was also a small parade ground. On the other side were the large training ground and training facilities—obstacle courses and so forth—the vehicle repair, maintenance and storage facilities, the generator station, sewage station, well house, infirmary, munitions depot, and, of course, the brig.
The small parade ground was about the size of a football pitch, while the training ground, obstacle courses included, was almost the size of a polo field. As yet, however, there were no stables. And thus no horses.
Kisten considered this to be a regrettable, if understandable oversight. The horse hadn’t been relevant to battle for millennia. It was, however, a magnificent animal. Team sports fostered character, and gave people a chance to know each other. Equestrian sports, in particular, gave them a chance to vent their passions in a socially acceptable—or at least legal—fashion. Passions that might otherwise sour into resentment.
There was nothing quite so satisfying as hurling your half-ton animal into the half-ton animal of your opponent. Polo had grown a great deal more gentrified since the days when it was used to train cavalry regiments, but people still died. Which Kisten found appealing.
But whether polo or pinochle, these men needed activities. They were fomenting dissent, at least in part, because they were bor
ed. The other problem was that they didn’t know each other as people—only as fellow soldiers, cardboard cutouts in uniform. Real loyalty, the kind that survived differences of race and religion, took time to foster. Time, and a goddamned lot of hard work.
Almost five hundred soldiers were stationed in this compound alone, five hundred men who might or might not be loyal. Kisten had done his best to prepare for a siege, but he could do nothing to protect them from each other or from the insidious whisperings of men like Lance Corporal Baugh. Kisten had insisted that all the compounds have access to their own water supply, an oversight on Jhansi’s part that he could hardly believe. New wells had been dug, and existing wells deepened; he wanted the shafts to be far enough beneath the water table that they weren’t easily contaminated.
Jhansi had relied on the city sewer system, which could be accessed by anyone at any time—including the Brotherhood.
Kisten had seen what happened, when a well was poisoned.
The door flew open, banging against the wall behind it as his aide rushed in. “We need you,” he managed, his hands on his knees as he caught his breath. “Now.”
Kisten lost no time in following him, his reverie instantly forgotten. Lieutenant Motiani led him out through the back door of the massive building and toward the barracks. He barely even noticed as his personal guard followed them out. The sun was bright, and he winced. As they hurried across the compound, Kisten’s aide shared what little he knew. “The 2nd Battalion had just arrived, and was parading to the main training ground where they’d form up into rows for inspection,” he said breathlessly. Kisten nodded. He knew this. “But a few of the men detached from the main column, it seems.”
“No one noticed?”
“That’s the devil of it—no! Sergeant-Major Hewson claims that one of his men gave the word that something was wrong, not any of these newcomers.” Sergeant-Major Hewson, a Tara by birth, was also a devoted Blue. “He sent for me, and I sent for you.”
“Where’s the lieutenant governor?”
“With General Bihar, keeping an eye on the rest of the men. He thought it best to segregate them.” Things were bad, then. Kisten felt a chill. But Bihar was right: if there was going to be trouble, the last thing he wanted was several hundred angry men at his back.
“How many men?” Kisten asked.
“Six, seven—I don’t know!” Motiani bit his lip, and he’d never looked more like a lost man-child.
As much as Kisten questioned him, he knew nothing else—nothing except that a group of men had refused to participate in the inspection and were “acting strangely.”
As they reached the munitions depot, Hewson joined them. “I left three of my own men to keep an eye on the troublemaker,” he said, in response to Kisten’s unasked question, “but I thought you’d better be prepared before you go over there.” He had news, then.
“Where’s Hanafi?” Kisten demanded. Major Isha Hanafi was the ranking officer in the Blues. A Bronte in theory only, he’d been born on Tarsonis and lived there most of his adult life. He was a lean, hawk-faced man with a terrible temper and one of the finest officers with whom Kisten had ever served. He and his consort, Deliah, had taken in young Alice.
“I sent for him, too,” Hewson said.
The man himself appeared a few moments later, having come rushing in from the other direction. He’d spoken to his own men, apprising them that there was a situation—no one knew precisely what yet—and then gone to find Kisten. Whatever poor excuse for a pair of pants officer had led these men into the compound was with General Bihar. God knew, he could be anything from a lieutenant to a colonel; the frontier force just wasn’t that well organized. Kisten had found men of all ranks, ages and abilities in all manner of positions; there was simply no rhyme or reason to who’d been put where.
But if this so-called officer’s own men were disappearing on him to play hijinks, either he was an incompetent fool—or he shared their sympathies.
“I don’t know anything about him,” Hanafi said, referring to the unknown soldier. “I’ve had enough trouble with my own men.” He shook his head. “I can’t be bothered to babysit an idiot.” And that was the problem: the handful of intelligent people on this rock were too overworked and overwhelmed to see much beyond their own noses.
Kisten waved him off. It didn’t matter. They’d know soon enough.
They reached the mess house. The long, low building sat at right angles with the line of officers’ housing. These—they could only be called bungalows by the extremely charitable, and more closely resembled packrat warrens—housed those who hadn’t gotten married or were too young to. Before attaining the age of thirty or becoming a captain, whichever came first, a man needed his superior officer’s permission to marry and it was rarely given.
Kisten’s mind flashed briefly to Dan Lusha, by this time undoubtedly back aboard the Nemesis, and hoped that he and Hannah were well.
The two buildings formed a secluded corner, which gave the impression of being almost deserted. Lunch had ended, so there was no reason for anyone to be going in or out of the mess. A stand of trees gave the impression of green, and behind those trees paced Lance Corporal Baugh. If other men had defected with him, they were gone now. Kisten stood with Hanafi, Hewson, Motiani and his guards—Blues, all—and watched. From the corner of his eye, he saw that other men had crept out to do the same. He knew why no one had made an effort to intervene: Baugh wasn’t dangerous, as yet, but he could be.
To Kisten’s left was Baugh; to his right was the flat, open expanse of the smaller parade ground. It looked like a no man’s land. Devoid of life, baked hard and brown by the sun, the very emptiness seemed somehow sinister. He tried to shake the unworthy thought, and found that he couldn’t. Eyes stared from windows and shadowed doors as men lurked, waiting. They’re waiting to see how the tide turns, he thought uneasily.
Baugh had a gun in his hand, and a second shoved into the waistband of his pants. A sword hung at his thigh, its sharpened blade glittering in the sun. His jacket hung open to reveal a sweat-stained undershirt. His shirt was missing. His hair was disheveled and when he turned toward Kisten, his pupils were pinpricks in his pale irises.
“He’s high.” This from Hanafi.
Kisten had an army at his command, and he was standing in the middle of a large military installation, but he might as well have been alone. I’m the only man who sees this, he thought crazily. Part of the problem was that, although he felt like he’d been out here for hours, less than ten minutes had passed since he left his office—probably closer to five. No one had formulated a plan, because not enough time had passed for anyone to figure out what was actually happening. Everyone had sensed, seeing the frenzied gleam in Baugh’s eye, that this was a powder keg. One wrong move—by anyone—and it would explode.
That neither General Bihar nor the rest of the 2nd Battalion had appeared from the other side of the compound, Kisten had to take as a good sign.
Baugh stopped suddenly. He took a deep breath and, turning slowly, addressed a compound that only looked empty. But he, like Kisten, must have felt the weight of unseen eyes.
His voice carried.
Men began to creep out of their barracks as, at the same time, men from the 2nd Battalion finally began to appear. There was no sign of General Bihar, although Kisten saw his aide in the crowd. Some of the men looked angry; these were mostly Blues, a good many of whom had emerged from their barracks without bothering to get fully dressed. They, too, had sensed the danger. Like the men on either side of Kisten, they scanned the growing crowd with an alertness belied by their state of dishabille.
“Too many of us,” Baugh said, “imagine ourselves to be citizens of a much higher civilization somewhere else. A more advanced civilization; a better civilization. And, in so doing, we’ve bought the greatest lie of colonialism: that we are citizens. But we’re not!”
Some of the men looked enthralled. A few even nodded their heads in agreement. Seeing this,
Kisten’s blood ran cold.
“The Alliance does not see us as its equals!” Baugh waved his fist, still clenching his gun, the barrel pointing this way and that. “We’re drones—we serve a purpose, nothing more and nothing less.
“Hospitals, you say! Schools, you say! Without our mines, mark my words, the Alliance wouldn’t be here!” He paused for effect. “Don’t you see? These people are doling out scraps to us in the hopes of pacifying us. We should accept that they’re raping our planet, because they’re plying prostitutes with antibiotics! Cleaning up their own mess, I say!
“And look at all of you! You wear the uniform. You follow the orders, whether you understand them or no! You honestly believe yourselves to be better than the rest of us, because you’ve got a flushing toilet and citizenship papers! And it’s this dishonest, cowardly state of mind”—he gestured again for emphasis—”that allows you to turn around and subjugate the rest of us, to arrest your own people for demanding freedom! To lie! To cheat! To help steal our resources! To abuse women! After all, what are the rest of us”—he’d forgotten that he, too, had enlisted—”but subhuman aboriginals?” Baugh’s eyes were bright; with drugs but, far more dangerously, with fanaticism. He looked like he’d been taking opium, but the drug hadn’t slowed him down; only made him dangerous.
“They forbid us to wear the tam, they distribute their Scriptures—”
Kisten had had enough. He stepped forward. “That order,” he said calmly, “was rescinded.”
His sheer placidity in the face of so much rage acted like a bucket of ice water on the crowd. A good number of the men turned, staring. Some shook their heads, like they’d just woken from a strange and troubling dream. Kisten knew that he was treading a dangerous path. They’d tipped one way, and they could just as easily tip back. The fate of the compound hung in the balance, and one wrong word could spell disaster. Men glanced back and forth between the lance corporal and their governor, and at each other with suspicion.
