“If only.” Jessup topped off both drinks. “Nine months after the treaty’s signed, and we’re still dancing around the crystal issue.”
“And the slaves,” Killian reminded the general. “Which, between us, I have no particular issue with. As long as the Coalition is allowed the use of unpaid labor, they might be less inclined to push for access to our crystal veins.”
“Hopefully those bleeding hearts from Ford and Fuji will come around to that point of view.” Jessup raised his glass in a toast of agreement.
“But if, as you say, the talks aren’t the problem?” Killian let the question hang.
Before answering, Jessup glanced at his wife, who’d reached the climax of her tale, and was now basking in a round of laughter and applause.
Seeming satisfied, he stepped closer to Killian, and turned slightly away from the crowd in the center of the room. “I recently learned that a difficulty from my past—a difficulty I’d thought permanently resolved—has come around again,” he said quietly. “And, as it happens, this particular difficulty arrived in Nike earlier this evening.”
“A difficulty?”
“A man,” Jessup clarified.
“Anyone I’m familiar with?” Killian asked over a sip.
“Only if you were paying attention to news from the ranks six—no, closer to seven years ago, now. News of a colonel of infantry being court martialed for treason, and attempted murder.”
Killian let his eyes cross over the room, and the glittering company within, as he thought back to that troubled time… a time of economic growth for those with certain investments.
Killian’s shares in Tenjin Corporation, the company which supplied crystal to the Air Corps, had resulted in immense profits, as so many airships were in need of crystal to power their engines, and cannon and… cannon… that was it.
“Yes, now I remember,” he looked back to Jessup. “The colonel who went over to the other side, or tried to, and then attacked you when he was found out.”
“My knee still aches on damp mornings,” Jessup said, looking out the window. “And in Nike every bloody morning is damp.” He raised his glass and took a gulp as hefty as that for which he’d berated Killian, earlier. “But Quinn confessed to the—to his crime—and was sentenced to Morton because of it.”
Even brimful of whiskey, Killian couldn’t miss Jessup’s quick correction. Not that it was his concern. If Jessup said this Quinn person deserved punishment, then punishment he deserved. “And you believe he’s here, in Nike?” he asked.
“I know he is,” Jessup said, his expression grim. “My contact in the prison telephed the news on the day Gideon Quinn was released.”
“And you believe this man means to—wait,” Killian raised his glass, with one finger extending to point at Jessup. “You say his name is Gideon Quinn?”
“A name I’ve cursed daily for seven years,” Jessup said, then his eyes tracked over Killian’s shoulder, his expression changing so drastically that Killian knew someone was approaching. “Darling,” Jessup greeted his wife, “Killian’s just been telling me about his difficult evening.”
The hint was obvious. For whatever reasons, Jessup didn’t want his wife to know of this problematic colonel. “As you may know,” he took his cue, turning to Celia, “the mother of my grandchild is proving difficult. After months of argument and tantrums, I’d finally made arrangements on my own, to establish her in my own home until the birth of the child.”
Celia made appropriate noises as she poured more whiskey for the men and, as the story of the evening’s escapade continued, both Rands listened with a gratifying interest.
And when he came to the point of the tall, blue-eyed soldier appearing out of nowhere to best the Ohmdahls, he turned his gaze to Jessup. “I confess myself shocked to find a man of the infantry—and a colonel at that—involved with a woman of such character.”
Jessup’s facial expression remained calm but Killian saw his eyes sharpen.
“It’s not so shocking is it?” Celia asked, seemingly oblivious of the undercurrents to the story. “After all, most soldiers—especially the infantry—come from the lower classes.”
“Perhaps it was simply that he was so much older than the girl,” Jessup murmured.
Celia smiled. “I was more impressed by the way you described his eyes,” she recalled with a delighted shiver. “How vividly you tell the story, Kill.”
“Perhaps I was inspired by my hostess,” Killian said with the smallest of bows.
“Celia,” Jessup broke into the moment, “it looks as if the Porters are leaving. Would you do the courtesies?”
There was the slightest of pauses, no more than three beats of the heart, as she met her husband’s gaze.
“Of course,” she said, then turned to Killian. “Kill, thank you for confiding in us. If there is anything the General or I can do to help you with the matter, I hope you’ll not hesitate to ask.”
Killian, watching her walk away, was again struck by feelings a man of his age truly ought not to be feeling anymore.
Jessup was a lucky man.
He turned to his host, meaning to say just that, when he saw Jessup was also watching his wife. On his face was an expression so raw, so conflicted, it was all Killian could do to keep his own expression bland as yesterday’s eggs when Jessup’s focus finally returned to him. “Vivid as it was,” he said to the frank question in the other man’s eyes, “I did not tell the entire story. I did not–” he set his glass down, “–tell you the soldier’s name.”
Jessup waited, saying nothing.
“The urchin called him Gideon.”
19
By the time Jinna had gathered up a few belongings from her nearby flat, and Gideon had “arranged” transportation—he informed Mia they would absolutely be returning the sassy little Edsel Comet, as soon as they had Jinna settled—it was well after 14 midnight, and the main airfield gates were locked.
Luckily, Mia was able to lead them to a smaller gate, the one used by the field and ‘ship crews.
It was, in fact, being used as they approached, by two somewhat worse-for-wear aeronauts.
“All I’m saying is, life on airships’d be a deal simpler, if we had us some matter transporters, like they had back inna day.”
“You’re sauced.” His friend tried to slap the speaker’s arm, and hit the air instead, proving the sauce had not been selective in its targets. “Ain’t so nuch thing as matter tranposters. Never ‘ave been.”
As one, Mia, Jinna, and Gideon—carrying Jinna’s carryall—slowed their pace, the better to avoid being brought into the drunken debate.
“A’course there were,” drunk number one insisted, weaving to a halt. “S’in all’a records ain’t it?”
“Them’s ficshun, Johnny,” drunk number two opined, drunkenly. “If all’a books our aassestors brought wiff’em was a record, we’d be arse to elbows in fairies, an kaiju, an’ coffee.”
“Oh my,” Gideon whispered.
Jinna elbowed him.
“I don’ know how you can close your mind so, Ken.” Drunk number one shook his head—and almost face planted because of it.
“An I don’ know how you can hear past the wind whislin’ through that empty skull, John.”
At this point, the pair turned off towards the passenger liners, and though Gideon feared they were going to come to blows (or, given the level of sobriety, near misses), at least they’d be doing it far, far from him.
“I never did believe in coffee,” Mia was saying as they wove their way through the anchored cargo vessels.
“I’ve always wanted to,” Gideon said.
“There it is.” Jinna pointed and all three froze, staring at the uniqueness that was the Errant.
“It flies?” Mia looked from the ship, to Jinna, and back again.
“If it does, I bet they serve coffee, too,” Gideon said.
They did not serve coffee, but Rory assured them that the Errant did indeed fly. “She’s
nae much to look at, but she’s a rare lass,” he said.
The visitors looked up at the much patched hard-shell of the airship’s dirigible, then back to Rory, currently perched atop the port aft engine pod, with his torch in one hand, and spanner in the other.
“I can believe that,” Gideon said.
“Maybe this was a bad idea,” Mia offered.
“What’s a bad idea?” Rory asked. “And for that matter, what are you doing out and about, and it so late?”
“It’s nothing,” Jinna began.
“Jinna’s in trouble,” Mia said at the same time.
“Trouble?” Rory was already halfway down the pod’s ladder as he asked, “Of what sort?”
And whatever Gideon might have thought of the Errant—or her captain—the gaze the young man turned on Jinna was reassuringly serious.
“You’re dead pale,” Rory observed before Jinna could protest again. “You’ll come inside and have some tea while you tell us what’s what.” Already he was leading the small party around to the rear gangplank.
“Rory,” a male voice emerged from the gondola as they approached, “have you figured out what’s going on with the port engine, yet?”
“And here’s John,” Rory said, patting Jinna on the shoulder. “I’m still sussing it out, Captain, but there’s another problem we’ve to see to.”
“Problem?” the man echoed. “I’m not sure we can afford any more problems with this job… ah, pardon me, Jinna.” He paused halfway down the gangplank as he noticed the young woman Rory was shepherding aboard. “I didn’t realize Rory had company.” He glanced up, saw Mia and Gideon, and dropped his chin in a nod of greeting before returning his attention to the mechanic.
Gideon, watching, found himself annoyed by Pitte’s lack of distinction.
There was nothing about him to suggest a man complicit in the institutionalized murder of half a company. He looked, in fact, like what he was supposed to be—an ordinary freighter captain, dressed in shirtsleeves and faded trousers held up by equally faded suspenders.
Physically he was almost as tall as Gideon, and about the same age, though his hair was more fair, his eyes a warmer shade of blue, and his physique more solid than Gideon’s rangy frame.
Then again, Pitte hadn’t spent half a dozen years in the stir, harvesting crystal, and fighting for every spoonful of Morton kibble.
“So, what kind of problem are we talking about?” Pitte was asking, coming the rest of the way down to the tarmac.
“Jinna’s got some sort of trouble,” Rory explained, then looked back at the others. “This is John Pitte, captain of the Errant. John, this is Jinna’s friend, Mia.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance.” Pitte smiled down at the dodger, who grinned back.
“Sorry,” Rory said, looking at Gideon, “but I never caught your name.”
“I didn’t throw it,” was Gideon’s short reply.
Pitte’s eyes turned to him, and then he took a step closer as he asked, “Don’t I know you?”
Gideon’s chin dipped once in acknowledgment, but he said nothing. He did see, however, the moment the starbuck dropped, because Pitte’s face went white and blank, as if he’d seen a ghost.
In a way, Gideon supposed, he had.
“Colonel Quinn,” Pitte said, the name falling hollowly between the two men.
Gideon’s chin dipped again. “I’m surprised you remember. We never met. Formally.”
“No,” Pitte said, his face still unreadable, until he looked past Gideon’s face, and his expression became actively puzzled. “You kept the coat?”
Gideon nodded to Pitte’s civilian garb. “You didn’t.”
“No,” Pitte said again. “It didn’t feel right…”
Which was all John Pitte had time to say, because that was when Gideon’s already thin hold on control snapped and, with a rushing shove, he slammed Pitte back, headfirst into the Errant’s hull, where he then grabbed the stunned captain by the throat with both hands and began to squeeze.
Behind his eyelids, he read the names etched in the wall of his cell… Eitan Fehr… Esther Carver… Bertie Walsingham…
Around him, Gideon heard voices rising in shock, hands tugging at him in protest.
But there was no protest in Pitte’s eyes.
There, all Gideon saw was acceptance, and, he thought, relief.
It was as if Pitte had been waiting for this moment.
Waiting for judgment.
Pitte’s silent affirmation of his own guilt served only to make Gideon more angry. “Six soldiers,” he said as he’d wanted to say so often over the years. “Six of my company died on your order.”
“N-not mine,” Pitte’s voice creaked out as an arm, presumably Rory’s, snaked around Gideon’s own throat in an attempt to pull him back.
But Gideon wasn’t letting go. Six dead soldiers lent him more than enough strength to hold on. “Liar.”
“No,” Pitte managed to force out. “My fault, but not… mine.”
Which made squat all sense to Gideon.
Distantly, he was aware of Rory’s arm falling away. Going for the cops, maybe?
Didn’t matter. He’d be too late.
“Maybe,” he said to Pitte, “you’ll get to explain it to them.”
“In fact,” a new voice—its cultured Fujian accent the twin to the dead Eitan Fehr’s—cut into Gideon’s awareness, “he has already explained it to me. Repeatedly.”
Gideon shook his head. He was just hearing things, that was all; memories surfacing in the face of Fehr’s killer.
“Let him go,” another voice snapped from behind, this one female, supremely angry, and not known to Gideon.
He might have ignored the order, but it was accompanied by the press of a something cold, metallic and humming at the base of his skull.
“Let him go,” she said again, “or I will be decorating the hull with your brains.”
“Gideon,” Mia’s voice, strangely thick, followed the threat.
“I won’t bother to count to three,” the woman said.
From atop the gondola, Elvis let out a low croon.
But it was Pitte’s expression—one that had no name, but which Gideon had seen in countless mirrors since that day in Nasa— that had his fingers loosening, and his hands falling to his sides.
Pitte, no longer held up by Gideon’s murderous fury, slumped down onto a supporting shoulder.
A shoulder that belonged to Eitan Fehr.
Which was impossible, because Eitan Fehr was dead.
Gideon’s hand half rose, then fell again.
He was just turning to Mia, who was, unbelievably, crying, when he felt a sharp thunk at the back of his head.
And then he was slumping too, all the way to the wet tarmac, where he heard Pitte’s voice, much the worse for wear, berating the woman.
“Jagati, that was hardly necessary.”
“Were you without oxygen long enough to suffer brain damage?” the woman asked. “Because that was absolutely necessary.”
To Gideon’s mind, Jagati probably had the right of it, though he was too far down the long slide to unconsciousness to say so.
“You have such a way with people, Quinn,” Dani said, leaning over him on the wet tarmac.
Her dark hair was loose this time, spilling down in a curtain, closing him off from everyone else.
“It’s a skill,” Gideon told her. He reached out to touch that hair, the midnight rain of it, and saw his hand was still shaking from the effort of nearly murdering a man.
She jerked her head back, taking her hair with it. At her side he could see Pitte, still supported by the surprisingly not-dead Fehr.
Standing next to both men was a tall, statuesque woman with skin like umber, and hair as dark as Dani’s, but tumbling in a riot of curls while Dani’s fell straight as the rain currently falling on the airfield.
The woman’s hand was gripped around her gun, and she was glaring at Pitte, which told Gideon this w
as probably the Jagati who’d knocked him senseless.
To either side, Mia and Elvis, and Jinna and Rory, were looking on in various states of shock and anger.
None of them were moving.
“What?” he asked, looking back to see Dani watching him. “What’s wrong?”
“You,” she told him. “This,” she gestured at the tableaux surrounding them. “What you are letting yourself become? What you are letting Jessup Rand turn you into?”
“Rand’s not turning me into anything,” he said, then watched her tilt her head in that particular way she had, and cursed. “Fine, what’s he turning me into, then?”
“Him,” she said simply.
“Which would be bad,” Gideon said, amazed at the coldness in his own voice, “if being Rand weren’t working out so well for him.”
And that, he thought, as she shook her head and faded into the rain, was exactly the wrong thing to say.
20
What eventually came to be known as the Nasa Incident—a designation Gideon always thought too clean, as if it referred to nothing more dire than wearing one’s combat uniform to the Regimental Ball—was, to most of the United Colonies, no more than a blip in the wartime annals, at worst a smattering of crystal dust, swept quickly into Containment, where it could pose no threat to the well-tuned machine of the Colonial Infantry.
But when he let himself think about it, even Gideon had to admit the—incident—hadn’t lasted long.
Minutes only, he’d remember; a handful of minutes to see half his team dead and the rest, along with himself, in detention.
It had been shorter even for Gideon, who’d missed the last of that handful of minutes after a shot of plasma took out a nearby cypress, a small chunk of which had struck him in the head.
He’d woken to the prodding of a boot, and a voice, high-pitched from nerves, demanding he rise and surrender arms.
At first Gideon didn’t understand what the voice was saying, a little because his ears were still ringing, but mostly because he was laying on his side, facing Corpsman Estelle Carver, also on her side.
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