CHAPTER 19

“I think you must surrender, Lieutenant,” Casani said. “We can’t go on.”

It was exceptionally hot in the council chamber that afternoon. The stench of the city was sometimes relegated to the background because hunger took priority, but at other times it was hard for Hoffman to ignore. The smell of smoke from burning garbage and bodies was almost a relief.

Hoffman had lost twenty kilos; he was one of the luckier ones. And while he sympathized with Casani and the thousand or so citizens who’d died of dysentery, starvation, or simply taken their chances and fled over the walls, he had less intention of surrendering now than he’d ever had.

Anvil Gate had gone past the point of compromise. They said that throwing good money after bad was the hallmark of a fool. Hoffman’s defense of the fort had cost lives, but deciding now that it had all been a mistake simply pissed on their graves. If it had been worth any of their lives, then he’d die before he opened those gates to the UIR.

His orders were still to defend the fort. Nothing had changed. If he’d been told to hand it over, he suspected he would have stayed there alone, even though he now missed Margaret so much that he’d almost cried himself to sleep some nights. He could think of little else beyond ending—winning—the siege now.

“I never made you stay, Alderman,” he said.

“But we have no guarantee of a safe evacuation without your forces withdrawing too. That’s the offer on the table from the UIR. No compromise.”

“I can’t take that offer, and you know it.” Hoffman felt the responsibility for the fate of the civilians sitting squarely in his lap, refusing to budge. Whatever decision he took would be wrong. “I won’t be blackmailed by the UIR or anyone else.”

Casani looked terribly haggard. It was partly hunger, but probably mostly the ordeal of watching helplessly as his city fell apart so fast despite its long and defiant history. Hoffman had switched off some weeks ago, and only allowed himself to feel whatever he needed to keep his Gears alive. He hardly dared think of home. It just made matters worse.

And the rations store had been raided again.

It was impossible to keep the garrison thief-proof now because so many of the internal walls of the fort had been smashed by mortars. There had always been a loose and uncertain boundary between city and garrison anyway, but now it had vanished, and the honesty and trust it relied on had vanished too.

We’re all animals, deep down. And not so deep, either.

All the time that the ration packs had been disappearing in ones and twos, he was simply angry. But the Pesangs would go out and hunt some of the local wildlife to make up the shortfall. Now it had reached the stage where the thefts were compromising his Gears’ ability to fight, and everybody knew that the penalty for stealing essential supplies in wartime was death. The Kashkuris here might have thought that nobody really meant that, because this war had been a permanent fixture for three generations, but this was an extreme situation—not stealing paper clips, but robbing fighting Gears of food during a siege.

Hoffman meant it. He had to. He was letting his Gears down if he didn’t.

“Alderman, I’m not a diplomatic man,” he said. “The food thefts will stop. One way or another, they will stop. My Gears found a man with a pantry full of COG rations. Geril Atar.”

Casani had his chin resting on his fist, his mouth against his knuckles, looking halfway between prayer and trying to stay silent. Dust motes drifted in the shaft of sunlight that had managed to infiltrate the heavy drapes drawn against the heat of the sun. The place was airless. It felt as if the city was running out of oxygen as well as everything else.

“Atar has two children,” Casani said at last. “He’s a clerk. He’s not a traitor. Desperate, yes. A threat? He’s watching his family starve.”

Hoffman found himself about to suck in a breath to rage at Casani about what Gears had to do, and why they deserved to eat what little was set aside for them, and how the civilians had equal allocations according to their levels of activity. He was about to let rip on why taking food from a Gear endangered not only them but a widening circle that rippled outward. But as soon as the first word formed in his mouth, he knew that was irrelevant. All that mattered was doing what was necessary to stop it from happening again.

Should have done it from the start. My fault.

Hoffman knew that if he’d been Atar, he’d probably have done the same, but he wasn’t, and he had responsibilities to his men.

“We arrested him,” Hoffman said. “He admits he did it. Hard to deny, anyway. You know what I’m going to say next.”

“I’m not sure that I do, Lieutenant.”

“You’re the civil leader here. I expect you to carry out the lawful punishment.”

“Are you serious? Execute a man who’s starving to death anyway?”

“Your call, Alderman. If you won’t do it, I will.”

As soon as Hoffman said it, he knew he couldn’t climb down. The trigger was as good as pulled. Casani wouldn’t take any notice of him again, the thefts would continue, and things would spiral down even further. If anyone was going to come out this place alive, Hoffman had to keep control.

Casani sat back in his seat and started to argue, more to himself than to Hoffman. “What are we living for if we have no compassion? These are my neighbors. Friends. I can’t kill one to save others, even if it would achieve that.”

Hoffman cut him short. “You can take your people out of here. I’ll get a message to the Indies to let you go.” Hoffman watched the decision materialize in front of him. “If you head north, they’ll have a lot of trouble shelling a scattered crowd anyway. Many of you will make it. But if you stay here, you stay under COG law. Do you understand?”

Hoffman had simply run out of time and energy. He could only see the objective. He got up and hauled Casani to his feet, gripping his biceps, and pushed him toward the door. Atar was in a small side room down the corridor, guarded by Bai Tak.

The Pesang didn’t look at Hoffman as he pushed Casani in front of him to the door and opened it. Atar was sitting on a wooden chair with his head in his hands; thirtysomething, thinning dark hair, still looking tidy despite the privations. An ordinary guy—no more or less. He got up when Casani entered the room.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I had to do it.”

“I know,” Hoffman said, “I’m sorry as well. But you know what the stakes are.”

It had to be done quickly. Dragging it out was unfair to the man, and this wasn’t personal in any way. Maybe that made it worse. Hoffman put the pistol in Casani’s hand.

“Do it,” he said. “It’s the law.”

“I can’t. Not even a hearing? Not even a—”

“You don’t have a goddamn choice, Alderman.”

“How can I blame him? How can I say I wouldn’t do it myself? He’s watching his family die.”

Hoffman wondered if it was hunger that had cooled him down to this tick-over level. He saw the world very clearly, and it was like this; without minimum rations, his Gears wouldn’t be able to fight. They would die one way or another, but they had followed the rules, written and unwritten. This man hadn’t, however understandable his desperation.

Sam Byrne wouldn’t even let me bend the rules to get him and his wife and his unborn kid to safety. That’s a Gear. That’s a man. His life counts.

It didn’t really matter who pulled the trigger as long as the civilians understood that theft of food in this siege was a crime that had consequences. Hoffman took the sidearm back from Casani’s hand—always unsettling, that, touching a hand that wasn’t familiar—and checked the chamber again. He motioned Bai Tak to stand clear. Their eyes met for a moment, and Bai didn’t look shocked at all. He understood. This was survival.

Hoffman held the muzzle to Atar’s head. He wasn’t certain of the exact wording of the charge, but he knew it well enough, and there would be no appeal on technicalities.

“Geril Atar.” He felt an idiot intoning these legalities. What would a lawyer like Margaret think of his clumsy delivery? “You’ve admitted to an act of injurious theft as defined by the Military Emergency Measures Act, that by stealing rations intended for Coalition soldiers you endangered them and their ability to defend the COG. The penalty is death, and in the name of the Chairman of the Coalition of Ordered Governments, I shall now carry that out.”

Atar said nothing. Hoffman met his eyes, looked aside, and pulled the trigger.

He’d killed at close quarters before because that was what infantry did, but he’d never been an executioner. It felt strangely anticlimactic. Maybe that was the heat and the hunger, too. He lowered his weapon and tried to take in what he’d done.

I must talk to Pad. The thought kept going through Hoffman’s mind. Pad understands this. He says snipers do it in the cold of the moment, full awareness of the consequences of not killing the target, not a reaction to threat. He’ll explain it to me.

Casani was staring at the body on the floor, sobbing. Hoffman just wanted the civilians to know that the sentence had been carried out. If Casani wanted to say who did it, that was fine. The rations would be left alone, and his Gears would stand a chance of finishing the job here. There were thousands of other Gears depending on them doing that.

Hoffman knew his conscience would gnaw at him one day, but not half as much as if he hadn’t done it. He put the pistol back in his holster, beckoned to Bai, and called a medic to deal with the body.

“Tough, sah,” Bai said, following him down the corridor and out into the hot, stinking street. “You did right. Right don’t always feel good, though.”

“Thanks, Bai.” Hoffman had to blinker himself and simply look at the next objective. It surprised him that he could do that, but it was a detached kind of surprise, more a making of mental notes. “What have we got plenty of? What’s the one thing we actually have supplies of and haven’t used in this heat?”

Bai shrugged. There was almost nobody out on the street, and it was so quiet that Hoffman thought he could hear gunfire from across the mountains. The few Kashkuri sitting on their doorsteps or sweeping their paths just stared listlessly at the two Gears.

“Fuel?” Bai said.

“Got it in one. Get the platoon together, and round up the rest of the aldermen.”

“Sah, you thinking strange things?” Bai looked alarmed. “What are you planning?”

“Surrender,” Hoffman said. “Open the gates, and let the Indie bastards in.”

*  *  *

Lau En and Naru Fel came back from reconnoitering the Indie lines at about two in the morning.

“Hoffman’s waiting,” Bai said. “Get a move on.”

“Has he gone nuts this time?” Lau asked. “Seriously. He’s not really going to hand over the fort to them, is he? He’s got orders.”

“Just tell him how many there are down there. He knows what he’s doing.”

Bai herded them into the small room that Hoffman used as a planning office, the one with the dead captain’s paintings still on the wall. Hoffman, Byrne, Evan, Pad, and Carlile were huddled around a desk poring over a street plan of the city.

“So?” Pad said. “How many for the fry-up? How many Indies?”

“About two hundred,” Lau said. “Very young, most.”

“Okay, we can probably get most of them inside the walls before we kick off.” Byrne was marking lines on the street plan. “It’s pretty basic, Lau. Most of this city is wood, except the gun emplacement and the structural things we need, so we’re going to burn it with them in it. We’ve got plenty of auto fuel and dry garbage loafing around. We soak everything with fuel, we rig a few flamethrowers, a few concealed gun positions, snipers, and then when they’re in, we block them in and ignite the materials simultaneously at multiple points. Rare, medium, or well-done.”

Bai knew roughly what Hoffman had planned, but he couldn’t quite work out how the Gears and the handful of civvies were going to escape being grilled along with the Indies.

Lau had obviously pondered this too. “How we get out?”

Carlile showed him on the street map.

“If we trap the bulk of them in this quarter, we won’t have to,” he said. “That’s almost one hundred percent wood structures, but the square here acts as a firebreak for the next block, and it’s all stone construction between this road and this one. We pull back to there, and if it gets really shitty, we go down into the tunnels and sit it out.”

Lau didn’t look convinced, but he wouldn’t argue, and neither would Bai. They’d come this far and they were going to make this work. Bai made a conscious effort not to think of Harua, but he didn’t manage it.

It’s not going to happen to me. I’ll survive this.

Hoffman hadn’t said a word. Bai wondered if the execution was starting to sink in. The lieutenant was staring at the map in that defocused way that said he wasn’t actually seeing it but rehearsing something in his head.

“I’d better do it now,” Hoffman said at last. “We need to know if the Indie offer is still on the table. Got a comms channel for them, Sam?”

Byrne picked up the headset and listened while tuning the dial. “I know they use this one,” he said. “Not encrypted, so I don’t know how fast they respond to it. If this doesn’t get their attention, we can just call Brigade on an open channel and let the Indies eavesdrop.”

Bai sat back on the nearest desk. Hoffman was pulling an ambush on the Indies, probably the only chance they had of surviving but he still seemed thoroughly ashamed to use a surrender to do it. He really did take things like honor so seriously that lying over something this important was beyond his limit. He was an honest man. Rude, even insulting sometimes. But you knew where you stood with him, and Bai put all his faith in him because of that.

Hoffman took a deep breath, which made his cheeks look even more hollow, and put the mike handset to his mouth.

“This is COG garrison Anvil Gate, Lieutenant Hoffman commanding, to any UIR call sign in range. Please respond. Anvil Gate to any UIR call signs. Over.”

Hoffman put his hand over his eyes and rested his elbow on the desk. It took a while for the response to come back, a polite and calm voice like someone who worked in a bank rather than an enemy who’d been shelling them for months.

“UIR Control Vasgar to Anvil Gate. This is Major Toly. Go ahead.”

“I need to evacuate the civilian population of Anvegad.” Hoffman sounded rough, and he wasn’t acting. It seemed to hit the spot with the Indies. “Does your offer of safe passage for them still stand?”

“It does. But we demand the surrender of your garrison too.”

Hoffman waited for a beat of five, now staring ahead at the captain’s painting on the wall in front of him.

“I’ve got no other options left, Major,” he said at last. “If you let the civilians leave, I’ll open the gates and you can move in. But I won’t open them until the civvies are clear of the fort. Is that understood?”

“You have my word,” said the major.

Bai saw Hoffman wince. “Then I’ll start moving them out now. If I see the slightest movement toward them, if I hear one cough that makes me think it’s a rifle round, then the deal’s off.”

Hoffman put the radio mike back in its cradle. He turned to Byrne.

“You’re driving,” he said. “We can’t get them all in vehicles, but we can move the priorities. You take your wife, you fill the rest of that truck, and you drive east, okay?”

Byrne looked at Hoffman for a long while, licking his lips nervously. “Can’t do it,” he said. “Sorry, sir. I’ll put her on the truck. She can drive. But I’m not leaving the lads. Or you.”

Hoffman shut his eyes for a second.

“I could give you the crazy-bastard speech,” he said. “But I have to move fast. Last chance. Go. Please go, Sam. Go with your wife and kid. I want you to.”

“Yeah,” Pad said. “We all bloody do. Get going, mate. Now.”

Byrne shook his head. “No, it’s about me. I can’t run from this. I’m the platoon sergeant. That’s what I am. I’ll catch up with her later.”

Byrne didn’t give anyone a chance to carry on the argument. Hoffman just rolled his head, exhausted, and gestured to the door.

“Okay, let’s crack on with this. Lots of fuel to move. Clear the city street by street, remember. Any civvie who decides to stay—either they have a rifle or they take their chances.”

Bai and the rest of the Pesang squad started going around the houses on the west side of the city, banging on the doors and ushering people out. Some still wanted to stay put and needed persuading, but a lot of the men were former Gears anyway and wanted to fight. Bai wasn’t sure if they understood what would be left of Anvegad after the gates opened, but it was too late to have second thoughts about that now. He moved on, door-to-door.

Cities could always be rebuilt, especially small ones.

It took six hours for the Gears to assemble the population and start loading the trucks and carts. Bai saw Byrne cuddling his wife, patting her pregnant belly and telling her that he’d see her at New Temperance. He helped her clamber up the step into the driver’s seat and hung on to her hand through the open window until the last minute. Did he tell her he had the chance to go with her? Maybe some things were better left unsaid.

“You come and find us, Samuel,” she said. “We’ll be waiting.”

The truck pulled away down the road, turned right, and then its tail lights vanished around the bend. Byrne stood there for a while staring into the night, maybe waiting to make sure that the Indies didn’t break their word and open fire, and then he scratched his head and walked back to the gates.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s finish the job.”

What was it—seventy, eighty days? A hundred?

Hoffman had lost track of the length of the siege in the time it took to walk from the garrison compound to the outer gates. Sam Byrne walked beside him. Hoffman didn’t need to put on an act to look like the defeated commander whose tragic last stand backfired; he really did feel like shit.

But that was because he was willing to fake a surrender.

It was like crying rape for no reason. It meant that the next person who really, really meant it would find it harder to make anyone believe them. It would make surrenders more uncertain, the enemy less likely to put on the safety catch and move into the international laws of decency and treating prisoners humanely. He’d abused an ancient convention of war that was as near as damn it sacred, and for good reason, but that still didn’t make it feel right.

“Here we go, Sam.” He looked up at the iron gates and their archaic but perfectly operational locking system of ratchets and cogs. His Lancer was slung in the low port position, magazine housing visibly empty, safety catch on. “Sorry I dropped you in this shit.”

“It’s okay, Vic,” Byrne said. “You’re a bastard, but you’re our bastard.”

Hoffman managed a smile. “I’ll remember that and use it one day.”

“Two-Six RTI, the Unvanquished.”

“That’s us, Sam.”

Hoffman turned the handwheel, and the gates swung slowly inward. The UIR captain standing a few meters away with a squad of troops was a young man who didn’t look as if he wanted to dominate the world or slaughter refugees, and that made the whole damn thing ten times worse. Hoffman needed an enemy he could loathe with every fiber of his being, an enemy so monstrous that anything he did was justified and right, because he hated the gray areas that didn’t give him clear answers and left him wondering where his enemy ended and he began. Just once in his life, he wanted that complete clarity.

The young captain looked stunned for a moment, staring right past Hoffman. Of course; he’d probably never seen a city in this state before. Bombed and broken was one thing, but piled with garbage, uncremated bodies, and excrement was another nightmare entirely. He must have been able to smell the place three klicks away.

“Captain Benoslau of the Fifteenth Furlin Cavalry.” The Indie saluted. “Lieutenant Hoffman, the Union of Independent Republics thanks you for your honorable decision. I now require your formal surrender.”

Hoffman handed Benoslau his Lancer two-handed. He’d run out of ammo anyway, and he clung to that fragile approximation of honesty like a kid crossing his fingers behind his back while lying shamelessly.

“Sir, I want to talk about the conditions of treatment for my men and some civilians who’ve refused to leave. Will you come to the city authority’s office?”

“We’ll need to secure the city. My company will move in and occupy the area now.”

It was all very civilized, and for a second, Hoffman thought, Fuck it, let them have the place, let’s not die over this. But it was gone in the next breath, like a pointless impulse to heave a brick through a window after one beer too many.

“Go ahead,” Hoffman said. “We’re all in the old quarter anyway. Might as well follow me.”

At that moment, it turned from a surreal ritual to the beginning of the endgame. This was the real battle for Anvil Gate.

“Oh … God,” Benoslau murmured.

“We tried to burn as much as we could,” Byrne said. “That’s what happens when you stop the water and food supply to five thousand people. We’ve got dysentery and some kind of respiratory epidemic, too, so that’s why we’re all huddled up here. You might want to do the same.”

Now it was down to the Pesangs and Pad to monitor the movement into the city. When the bulk of the 15th Furlins were inside, the gates would be shut, and the fires lit to cut off the main routes.

We might all burn to death. I never thought I’d just be curious about what it finally feels like to die.

There were machine-gun positions on the walls, of course. But they’d been there throughout the siege. Now they were idle and without belts.

And we have ammo.

The twin guns were silent again. Benoslau paused to stare up at them.

You’d be amazed how much explosive you can extract from a few of those big, shiny shells.

And there were eighty men with rifles, bayonets, and even machetes that would take your goddamn head clean off—if the fires didn’t get you first.

Sorry, Captain.

Casani’s old office seemed suddenly even bigger and more empty. Benoslau sat down at the table with his lieutenant, and Byrne left them to it. Hoffman tapped his ear.

“You don’t mind me keeping my radio open, do you? My men need to keep in touch. They’re pretty wrung out.”

Benoslau took a water bottle off his webbing and handed it to Hoffman. He also laid his sidearm on the table in full view. “My apologies. I didn’t think.”

That gesture almost poleaxed Hoffman. This enemy wasn’t supposed to be compassionate, better than him. It was not how he saw this event panning out. Despite himself, he twisted the cap off and drank. There was, and never would be, anything that tasted better than that liter of fresh water, however warm it was.

“Thank you,” Hoffman said.

“Do I have to sign anything?”

He could hear the whispered exchanges between Pad and the others in his earpiece. He had seen the ambush happening fast, a frenzy of confusion, but he’d underestimated how long it took two hundred troops to get their asses in gear and move into a city—even a tiny one—and imagine they were securing it. The longer this took, the worse he felt. He didn’t want to find any common ground with these people now, because it changed nothing, and he still couldn’t let Anvil Gate go.

The dead are still dead. Do your job.

“Yes, there really is a document,” Benoslau said. The lieutenant seemed to be looking for it in his pack. Hoffman handed back the bottle and steeled himself to stop thinking, right now. “We have medics, by the way, and if any of your personnel are infected or wounded, we can transfer them to a military hospital rather than a prisoner-of-war camp.”

“They’re in,” Pad’s voice said. “Or most of them. Ready to roll.”

Hoffman shut his eyes. This response was just a whisper. “Yes, do it for Sander.”

“Sorry, I didn’t hear you, Lieutenant,” Benoslau said.

The first explosion blew out the windows in the office; it must have been a lot closer than Evan and Carlile had planned. The ceiling caved in but didn’t collapse completely. Hoffman ducked under the table to dodge the beams that were creaking and sagging over his head and drew his sidearm.

It was pure chaos from that second onward. The dust was as thick as smoke. He had to get out of that room and regroup with the platoon.

“But we were talking—” Benoslau said, as if Hoffman’s worst crime was breaking his word about that. The man was on the ground, head bleeding, feeling around the floor for something. It might have been his sidearm or he might have been reaching to check where his lieutenant was, but he wasn’t going to find the pistol anyway.

He knows that. So do I.

Hoffman still fired twice because that was what he’d been drilled to do. It was muscle memory, hardwired and independent of the voice screaming, How could you do that, how could you do that to him? in his brain. He found himself scrambling through the broken door, looking for escape before he’d even started regretting what he did.

Out in the street, the fires were taking hold. The Silver Era architecture, the carved wooden frames and gargoyles and plaster made with horsehair, went up like a match. Evan—somewhere, unseen—triggered explosions in a long chain all the way down the street that ran north-south. It cut the city in half, igniting an almost instant blaze down a whole block. The fuel vapor that had wafted from soaked garbage and filled empty spaces started exploding almost at random. Automatic fire rattled from every direction.

Hoffman no longer knew what was going to blow next. This was the point to start pulling back to the walls and concentrating fire toward the center. He ran for the stone stairs that led to the first-level gantry and got his first elevated look at Anvegad burning. He could already see three Gears down and couldn’t tell who they were. But there were a lot more Indie bodies sprawled in the roads.

“Hoffman to all call signs.” The radios were still working, so the comms room was still in one piece. “All call signs, fall back to the perimeter. Fire teams—get to the wall positions.”

He didn’t know if they heard him. But he did hear the Stomper, the belt-fed grenade gun, and when he reached the end of the gantry, he saw Byrne manning it with Jarrold.

Jarrold spotted him and pointed at the target taking all the Stomper’s rounds. “Sir, Indies in the warehouse over there—about twenty. Bai Tak’s gone into the alleys with other Pesangs.”

“I’ll find him. I’ve got to grab a rifle.”

Hoffman retrieved one from a dead Gear who turned out to be one of the engineers, Hollis. The fires were spreading through this half of the city, but there was nothing Hoffman could do right then to move bodies out of the flame path. He knew he wouldn’t even remember where they were if he went back later. He just had to keep moving out of the fire, engaging anything that wasn’t a Gear or a civilian. The wholesale arson had definitely flushed them out into the open; there was nowhere to find safe cover without crossing that square, and that was where Evan’s crews had moved the light machine guns. They just sat there picking off anyone who tried to get out. Hoffman moved back road by road, heading for the oldest part of the city that was all narrow alleys and overhanging balconies that no vehicle could get through.

This quarter wasn’t on fire. Either the charges hadn’t gone off or it was somewhere no fuel had been spread. But the Pesangs had chased a squad of Indies in here, and Hoffman wanted them out so he could find the engineer with the flamethrower and clear the area the hard way. When he reached the center of ten or so winding passages, he found Bai, Cho, and Shim. He heard them before he saw them, and it was the stream of unintelligible Pesan punctuated by shrieks of sheer animal terror that told him he’d found them. They came out of a small shop with their Lancers still on their backs and their machetes drawn.

“Did you lose them?” he asked. For some reason he thought they’d given up and were trying another tack. Then he looked inside the shop front. There was a damn machine gun aimed out of the front window, and five dead Indies in there, all hacked about.

Bai wiped the sweat from his nose on the back of his hand, as if the rifles were an afterthought.

“No room to fire in there,” Cho said. “We do close quarters our way.”

The fires were now a complete wall of searing heat and the rattle of weapons was gradually becoming more intermittent. Hoffman couldn’t raise anyone on the radio now. The best he could do was search the relatively undamaged side of the city road by road, and work out who he still had standing.

His watch told him it had been an hour since the first explosion kicked off the ambush. He’d have to take its word for that.

Gradually, he found more of the gunners and his own platoon, some of them searching the stone buildings, some just blurs of armor as they ran past at the end of a road and were gone. He went back to the Stomper position while looking for Byrne. He could have been anywhere, but the Gears all knew to muster at the gun emplacement when they lost comms and could move freely.

“Sam?” Hoffman still approached it carefully, alert for any lone Indie. “Sam? Come on, man. Where are you, Byrne?”

Byrne hadn’t left his post. He was still half-sitting, half-squatting on a shallow ammo crate with one arm draped over the Stomper and his forehead resting on the optics. Hoffman’s stomach knotted instantly. He knew what he was looking at, but he still wanted to believe that Byrne had paused for a moment, exhausted. But he didn’t move even when Hoffman went right up to him.

“Shit, Sam.” Hoffman felt for a throat pulse, but then he saw the big exit hole in the center of his back. “Shit. I’m sorry. Goddamn it, I’m sorry.”

Byrne would still be there when Hoffman had finally got his shit together. He made himself move on, counting off bodies on his fingers, trying to recall who he’d seen alive and who he hadn’t. He decided to go back to the muster point. Pad was already there with five of the Pesangs and a lot of the gunners. Carlile had bad burns to his hands, but he was alive.

“We did it, sir,” Pad said. “I got a call in to Brigade. They know we’ve held it. Still the Unvanquished.”

“Yeah,” Hoffman said. He could hear automatic fire, just the occasional burst. “So we are.”

His legs wouldn’t support him much longer. He went into the office and tried to sit down, but the chairs were gone so he slumped against the wall and slid down to the floor, eyes shut. He couldn’t get the taste of smoke out of his mouth no matter how much he spat. It was probably all for nothing in the end. But the bastards hadn’t taken Anvil Gate.

That wasn’t going to be much comfort to Sheraya Byrne.

“Sah? Hoffman sah!” Bai Tak was standing over him, shaking him. “You got radio? Listen!”

The Pesang put the headset to Hoffman’s ear. It was a helicopter pilot, some cheery woman with a double-R call sign, one of the new Raven pilots.

“RR-One-Seven to Anvil Gate, are you still receiving?”

Hoffman couldn’t manage an answer. Bai Tak did the talking. “Anvil gate to RR-One-Seven, this is Rifleman Tak. Lieutenant Hoffman, he injured but he says, where the fuck you been, lady?”

The Raven pilot still sounded sunny and charming. “RR-One-Seven to Anvil Gate—there’s a lot of COG traffic heading your way from both sides, ETA one hour, but stand by for air casevac in ten minutes.”

Hoffman wasn’t elated. Hoffman didn’t weep for joy, or give Bai Tak a manly hug, or even come out with an astoundingly apt or funny one-liner to draw a line under the nightmare, as the movies had convinced him he should. Real life was a disappointment. He was just angry. He couldn’t even frame that anger in a stream of curses. The near-unbearable thing was that two kids would now never know their dads. Hoffman couldn’t imagine anything worse than that.

Bai Tak reached above him and took something off the wall. It was one of Sander’s many small watercolors of Anvegad. He rolled it carefully like a scroll and put it in the empty holster on Hoffman’s webbing.

“There, sah,” Bai said. “For your Missus Hoffman. So she know what you did at Anvil Gate.”

Adam Fenix struggled out of the cab, determined to stand upright and look well for Marcus’s sake.

It was hard to explain to a small child that limping on crutches didn’t mean that his dad was badly hurt. The first impression counted. Adam wanted Marcus to see only that his father had kept his promise and come home. It was probably a memory that would stay with the boy, and it had to be a positive one.

Elain opened the door—no housekeeper, as usual—and just stood there expressionless for a while. Homecomings were always difficult. They had so much to say and get out of their systems, and yet Adam never knew if he wanted to hold her, or cry on her shoulder, or rush to see Marcus, or … damn, he wanted to do it all at once, and his father had never shown him how it was meant to be done, only that it wasn’t. Paralyzed by the overwhelming relief—yes, he really was home, he wasn’t dreaming this, and he would still be at home when he next woke—Adam just walked carefully up the steps and buried his face in her hair.

“When the news said that Two-Six was at Anvil Gate,” she said at last, “I thought it was you. I thought you were there. I thought there’d been a mistake and you weren’t wounded.”

“I’m okay,” he said. “It was Connaught Platoon. Poor bastards.”

“Daddy! Daddy!”

Marcus came running across the tiled hall. Adam crouched and opened his arms, ready to scoop him up; this time, Adam would damned well not be like his own father. He’d do all the spoiling and indulgently emotional things, all the hugs and love and promises never to go away again. But Marcus suddenly slowed to a dignified walk as if he’d remembered that he had to behave and be the man of the house. He looked Adam in the eye, the same height at that moment, as if he expected the same decorum of him.

“I missed you, Marcus,” Adam said, straightening up. He’d lost the moment completely now and settled for ruffling his son’s hair. “I really did.”

“What’s wrong with your leg?” Marcus asked. “And did you save everyone?”

Adam had lost more than half the Gears in his original company. It was the most painful question he’d ever been asked.

“No, I didn’t save them all,” he said. “But I’m going to change things, and make sure I save everyone else in the future.”

Marcus looked up at him, that I-don’t-believe-you tilt of the head that was probably just bewilderment. Elain took his hand, and Adam’s.

“We can do all this on the doorstep,” she said, “or be like normal people and go sit down in the kitchen. Marcus, go get the drawing you did at school to show Daddy.”

Marcus went upstairs, all sensible sobriety, and disappeared along the landing. Elain squeezed Adam’s hand.

“He’s okay, darling,” she said. “He’s all very grown-up since he started school. But he’s got this thing about making sure he knows where I am and that I’m safe. It’ll pass now that you’re back.” She had that look, the one that said she was about to ask something she’d promised not to raise. “I know this isn’t the time to ask, but how long are you going to be home?”

Adam had made up his mind. He didn’t want anyone to misunderstand his motives. He’d had enough of the fighting, but it was a different kind of disgust, one that would change things instead of just turning his back on them while other men and women couldn’t.

I don’t want anyone to think I’m a coward. I don’t want Marcus to think that, most of all. This is for him, too, because I’m damned if I’ll see him lined up and used as a Gear.

“I’m not going back,” Adam said. He’d rehearsed how he would justify his decision, in case Elain thought he was too scared to fight. “I’m going to take that post at the DRA. Weapons research. Because nobody in this day and age should fight wars by walking infantry into battle or firing damn hundred-year-old cannons or starving each other to death in sieges. There will be deterrents. There will be weapons that mean politicians stupid enough to carry on this war are going to face the same risk of dying as the men and women they send to fight it. I’m going to create those weapons. I’ll make these ghastly little demagogues think twice.”

Adam meant that like he’d meant his marriage vows. It was absolute, an oath, and he would live it. He could feel his pulse pounding in his throat. Elain just looked at him, tears in her eyes, and smiled.

“You will,” she said. “Damn right, you will, Doctor Fenix.”

“Just Major,” he said. “My promotion came through. But it won’t change my mind.” He took the torn page of newspaper from his pocket and held it up for her. All the promotions were published in the press. “See? Second paragraph.”

Elain read it. “Good grief, so many Royal Tyrans. You have to leave some glory for the other poor regiments, Adam. Oh, look—Helena Stroud, Captain. She’s going to make General. Count on it.”

Adam took the page back and smiled. Helena was welcome to as much gold braid as she wanted.

He noted, too, that Lieutenant Victor Hoffman, 26 RTI, had been promoted to Captain and decorated with the Sovereign’s Medal for his defense of the Anvil Gate garrison. Adam wondered just what that unlucky man had endured for so little reward, and if he’d ever meet him to ask that question.