Страница 53 из 70
Commanding General Headquarters
New Alamo, Terra
Prefecture X, Republic of the Sphere
15 July 3135
“You call this an intelligence network?” Commanding General Tina Magnusson-Talbot was a big-boned woman, with a whiskey burr, ash-blond hair, and a thick middle from years of pushing paper and what she perceived rightly as the usual bureaucratic cow crap. The general aimed a blunt, nicotine-stained index finger at her intel director, a long-suffering lieutenant colonel named Larry Coleman, and fired another salvo. “You people couldn’t figure out what I had for breakfast much less what’s going on in those Dracs’ heads. Look at this garbage.” She tossed a ream of papers onto her desk, already brimming with paper and three ashtrays loaded with crumpled butts. “The Dracs make it all the way to Al Na’ir, millions dead and screw the Ares Conventions, and what are we doing? Sitting with our thumb up our ass, that’s what. Wondering what the Dracs are up to… I’ll tell you what they’re up to! Consolidating their gains, that’s what those damned Dracs are doing now! Deneb Algedi, Al Na’ir… Any fool can see they’ll fan out next for Mashira, Telos IV… Kervil! So what are you people going to do about it?”
Ah, you people. Coleman cleared his throat. “Actually, the ball’s in your court, General.”
“Don’t tell me my business! I know whose ball it is! This isn’t te
Not even his father called him son. “Well, seeing as how the Dracs have been quite thorough—”
“Thorough?” The word exploded from Magnusson-Talbot’s mouth like a pistol shot. “For God’s sake, they destroyed a dome. I’ll tell you what it is: barbaric.”
“And savage,” Coleman said. Actually, he’d been thinking expedient. In a clear-eyed, cynical way, the Dracs were models worthy of emulation. Obviously, they didn’t want to spend their time quelling rebellions. So they’d killed as many people as possible in as spectacular a way as possible. Pretty good way to make sure no one bothered you. Besides, domes were inherently indefensible. “The long and the short of it is we don’t have the manpower. Our most experienced troops have been shuffled off to counter the Liao incursion and Falcon invasion. All we’ve got left are greenbacks, people who haven’t fired a shot outside of a training range. Hardly battle-hardened.”
Magnusson-Talbot began rooting around her desk. “And your point?” she growled, fishing out a crumpled pack, knocking out a smoke, jamming it into her mouth, then flicking a match to life with her thumbnail. “You’ve got a point, right?” she repeated, squinting through a curl of blue smoke.
“Always.” Coleman inched back a discreet distance but knew that, by the end of the interview, he’d smell like a bar at threeA .M., minus the booze. “But The Republic’s fighting on many fronts. The Capellans on one side, the Falcons storming through IX and currently on Skye, and now the Dracs practically knocking on our front door. It’s not exactly as if we have an overwhelming force at our disposal.”
Magnusson-Talbot snorted out twin streamers, like a dragon. “Don’t remind me. We’re up to our elbows in manure. No way I’ve got troops to spare, and the rest of the prefecture, hell, it’s up for grabs. But I’ll tell you one thing.” She sucked smoke, and then continued, words punctuated by tiny puffs. “Dieron, that’s the key. That’s where they’re going, the sons of bitches.”
“But they won’t stop there. I wouldn’t. It’s short-sighted. Yeah, sure, so you take back what you lost, but if you really want to cripple The Republic? Take Terra. We’re to The Republic is what Luthien is to the Dracs. The best way to stop the Dracs is to keep Dieron from them. Do that, they’ll flat out stop. They might even retreat.”
“You’re dreaming, son. Still…” Magnusson-Talbot stroked her chin with her thumb, cigarette and its drooping tube of ash pinched between first and second finger. Then she took aim again, this time with the two fingers scissored around her smoke. “Good point,” she said, flicking the cigarette hard enough to knock off ash. “All right, we’ll consolidate our forces along the border with Prefecture II. Wish we could do something for those poor souls in harm’s way, but there’s no help for it. I’ll get word to Prefecture I about what’s going on. See what they can do from their end. Maybe hack into the Dracs’ flank from Dyev and Asta, cut our losses. Question is, will it work?”
“You want honesty or the party line?”
Magnusson-Talbot barked a wheezy laugh. “I want party line, I can spend time with any number of kiss-ass sycophants. Politicians’re like fleas. By the time you know they’ve bit you, there’s a damn feeding frenzy going on.”
“Okay,” said Coleman. “Then I think we’re going to get our butts kicked.”
“Yeah, so do I.” Rising, Magnusson-Talbot stabbed out her cigarette. “You drink?” she asked, jetting smoke.
“When there’s an occasion.”
“Son, there’s always an occasion.” The general tugged open a desk drawer, withdrew a bottle half full of amber liquid, and two crystal glasses. She splashed a liberal amount into each glass, handed one to Coleman.
The bourbon fumes were so strong Coleman’s eyes watered. “What shall we drink to?”
“Survival.”
“That’s it?”
“Hell, son.” Magnusson-Talbot knocked back her drink, inhaled against the burn through her teeth. “We survive? It’ll be a goddamned miracle.”
29
Scarborough Manufacturers, Al Na’ir
Prefecture II, Republic of the Sphere
15 July 3135
Three days after Phoenix fell, Worridge had suited up and gone tramping through what remained of a city that had once been home to over thirty million souls: tangled skeins of steel and concrete poking at odd angles through a dense smog layer of sulfur dioxide and methane; sidewalks and sewers choked with the bodies of literally millions of animals and insects that crunched and squelched underfoot. And there were people: in mounds, struck down in mid-run, locked in a last embrace. The bloated corpses were rotting, green veins worming through skin and black purge fluid coursing from nose, mouth and ears.
Worridge didn’t know why she chose the park. Maybe she thought the park would be soothing. It wasn’t. The trees were denuded, the grass a desert brown, and the artery of a river that had flowed through the park’s heart was choked with a silver mat of dead fish.
That’s where she found them, at the river’s edge; a mother and daughter; the girl’s arms clasped around her mother’s neck and the mother hugging the child to her breast. The girl had blond curls matted flat with dried blood that had boiled out of the mother’s mouth. Mercifully, their eyes were closed. They lay on their sides atop a blue blanket. The remains of their last meal, sandwiches and, maybe, potato salad, had been reduced to a sludgy mess.
Now, Worridge pushed food around in her blue-and-white ceramic bowl before pinching a beet-red sliver of braised burdock between her chopsticks. Normally, she enjoyed Kinpira-goba, but the limp strip of vegetable resembled a piece of raw liver—no, no, more the rusted blood caked onto the girl’s head.
A voice, male, a little slurry around the edges: “Something bothering you, Worridge?”
She looked up to lock eyes with Sakamoto, who sat opposite across an expanse of low table loaded with dishes. Sakamoto always ate well the evening before a campaign, and tonight was no exception. A myriad of delicacies littered the table. He was chewing with gusto, and she was suddenly repulsed. Replacing the braised vegetable in her bowl, she laid her chopsticks on their rest and folded her hands in her lap. “Tai-shu, I think the time is right for us… for you to discuss our future plans with the coordinator.”