This Shattered World (14 page)

When she’s gone, I let myself melt back against the cot, trying to find a comfortable position, listening to the fibers creak as if in answer to my creaky ribs. I can’t remember the last time I disobeyed orders, much less outright lied to my commanding officer. And yet, I’m not the only one. It can’t be a coincidence Commander Towers shut down my debrief when I mentioned the sector to the east.

But believing that would mean believing Cormac’s insane conspiracy theories. Might mean believing I actually saw more than a hallucination in the moments before passing out.

My thoughts turn in frantic circles, the room spinning away around me as though all laws of gravity and physics have abandoned me along with my principles.

I can’t afford to lie here, letting uncertainty overpower me. Captain Lee Chase doesn’t
get
confused. She doesn’t hesitate, she doesn’t think twice.

I force myself upright again, swinging my legs over the edge of the cot and swallowing down the nausea pushing bile up in my throat and making it burn.

A light breeze wafts in through the window, carrying with it the earthy, peat-sulfur smell of the swamp. One nice thing about Avon: it’s too young to have a thriving insect population. No screens on the windows. The hospital is more centrally located, but I’m in a halfway house, one of the temporary buildings erected to deal with the greater numbers of minor illnesses and collapses that afflict newcomers to this environment. On this side of the building, the small, square windows overlook the swamp, only the perimeter fence between it and the wilderness.

I find myself straining to pick up the scent of rock and damp that pervaded the rebels’ underground cave system. All I want is for everything to get back to normal. Hopefully I’ll never see Flynn Cormac again—because if I do, it’ll probably be on the other end of the barrel of my Gleidel.

It’s a few days before the medics clear me to leave the base, and though my ribs still ache a little, that’s not enough for me to stay cooped up. I’m not quite ready to go back to Molly’s yet, so instead I’m walking down this town’s sorry excuse for a main drag with a few of my platoon.

There’s not much to do on the base; our comms aren’t much better than the ones the rebels have cobbled together out in the swamps. The HV signals are so bad, it’s not worth watching unless you’re truly desperate and willing to watch shows that are ninety percent static. We have retransmission satellites for official business, but unless Towers is in an uncommonly good mood, we never get to use them for anything as basic as entertainment.

But it’s a nice night for a walk. As nice as any on Avon ever is. The air is still close and cold, clammy with damp. There’s no fog, so the meager lights along the packed-dirt road disperse most of the shadows.

It’s always sobering to go into town, though. Caught between the military enforcing TerraDyn’s claim to the land here and the rebels protesting the conditions, the townspeople bear the brunt of the strict rules and curfews. Most of them work in the algae swamps or as surveyors of the surrounding ecosystems—necessary work if Avon’s ever going to stabilize and support life on its own. But as many rebels as there are living out in the swamp, there are plenty of sympathizers living quietly here in town. And all it takes for a sympathizer to become a rebel is one irresistible opportunity.

Things have been quieter since the ceasefire started a few months ago, but even though we’re off duty, we can’t relax, not completely. We have to watch every passerby and monitor every shift in the air. And, knowing how close the Fianna are to open rebellion, I’m more jumpy than anyone.

I’m sure the walk was Alexi’s idea. He and Mori showed up at my door after I left the mess hall. Of everyone, I think he suspects most that I’m not being honest about what happened to me out in the swamp. But he can’t know the truth. He’s being careful, keeping me close. My ribs are healing well, and thanks to the boosters the medics gave me, the bruising’s almost completely gone. But it’s not the visible wounds and symptoms that Alexi’s worried about. And he doesn’t know what to do about it.

I try my best to show him I’m okay. Mori’s telling some wildly inappropriate joke that’s so offensive to everyone involved—officers, terra-trash, and more racial groups than I can count—that it goes straight through offensive and out the other side. I laugh and threaten to make her clean latrines for a week, then climb up and walk along a fence post for a few yards. I jump down again as soon as I can, though. Still too dizzy for that. Still too unsettled.

Most of the buildings in town are residences, some of which have had their front rooms converted into shops or trade rooms of varying kinds. We’re headed for this one house where the husband will take folks’ grain allotments and give them baked goods back in return. We’ll trade some of the military ration bars for some of the locals’ homemade bread. The bread tastes a little like the swamp, but eat enough decade-old shelf-stable meals at the mess and you’re willing to put up with some swamp in your bread.

We round the corner of the house and Alexi collides headlong with someone. They both go stumbling back, but the other guy recovers first, rocking forward on the balls of his feet.

“Watch it!” He’s not much older than we are, but his face bears as many scars as any soldier.

“Hey, man, sorry.” Alexi’s quiet, calm. He’s the best man possible in a crisis. “Didn’t see you. Where you headed?”

“Like I have to tell you?” There are people like this all over the place on Avon. They were all over Verona, too. Angry about everything and willing to take it out on whoever comes through their line of sight. The ceasefire between the military and the rebels doesn’t mean the townies like us any better.

Mori steps forward, putting herself between Alexi and the kid. “Actually, you do.” Mori’s not big, but she’s strong and competent, and in this moment, she looks it. She casually rests her hand on her holster, where her Gleidel sits. “Curfew’s in half an hour.”

The boy spits to the left of Mori’s shoe. “You’re just gonna have to wonder, trodaire.” The way he throws the word at her is more biting than any insult.

“Let’s go,” Alexi suggests with a roll of his eyes. “If we want bread, we’ve gotta scramble.”

Mori doesn’t move, doesn’t even acknowledge Alexi. Her eyes are on the townie boy—all the animation has left her face. The hairs begin to rise on my arms, on the back of my neck. Something’s wrong.

“You’ll tell us where you’re going,” says Mori. Her voice is cold. No way this is the same girl who minutes before was joking and laughing. “And roll up your sleeve, we’ll need to scan your genetag.”

“Corporal,” I interject. “Leave him. Let’s go.”

The townie’s noticed the shift in the air. He doesn’t know Mori like we do, but he’s no idiot, not living where he does. He can read the change in a crowd. He takes a step back, glances over his shoulder. There’s a small face pressed to the glass of the window in the house. With a jolt, I realize the boy’s looking back at his little brother, who’s watching the whole thing. No wonder he’s trying to act tough.

I can see the boy fighting the urge to back down, to play it safe. I will him to go home.
Walk away.

Then his jaw clenches. “Yeah, well you can suck my—”

Gunfire rends the quiet, and for a half second I’m blinded by its laser flash. I launch myself backward, my own gun leaping into my hand. I’m searching for the shooter for what feels like an eternity before I see the townie drop to his knees. Before the sound of the brother inside screaming hits my ears. Before I see that half the boy’s face is gone. Before I realize Mori’s hand is holding the gun, and it’s pointed at where the boy was standing.

The next few seconds are a blur. I leap for Mori, Alexi throws himself down by the townie’s body as the townspeople nearby start to run—some toward us, some away. Somewhere there’s a woman screaming. I can smell burned hair.

Mori’s staring straight ahead, her face calm, her eyes blank. I shake her once, twice—then I slap her hard. Her face jerks to the side with the impact of my blow, but her expression doesn’t change. I fumble for the flashlight on my belt and shine it at her face. Her pupils are dilated so far her eyes look black, unchanging when I shine the light directly into her eyes.

No. There were no signs—there wasn’t any warning. Where were her dreams?

Alexi abandons the body in the mud and lurches to his feet. “Lee,” he gasps, “we’ve gotta get out of here. It’s going to get ugly, we need to be gone.”

Then Mori wakes up. I’m the first thing she sees, and she blinks at me once before she speaks. “Hey, Captain. What’s up?”

I’m frozen for half a breath before instinct takes over, and I’m jerking her away. I half march, half drag her back down the street while Alexi brings up the rear, Gleidel in hand, making sure no one’s out for immediate revenge.

Mori’s baffled questions halt abruptly. When I look down, I see her eyes fixed somewhere behind us. And I know she’s seen the slumped, motionless form lying in the mud.

The shop’s bell chimes, and the girl lifts her head from her reader.
Don’t
, she thinks.
Wait. This one’s different.

“Welcome,” her mother calls. The girl, under the counter, watches her mother’s legs as she turns toward the customers. “Can I…” But her mother doesn’t finish.

“Hello, Mrs. C.” The voice is light, but the moment she hears it, the girl’s heart freezes. “Had some time to think about our offer?”

The girl puts her eye to the crack in the plastene. She sees her father coming down the stairs, watches as he pauses.

“We told you we weren’t interested,” the girl’s father says, slowly moving the rest of the way down the stairs, putting himself between the customers and the girl’s mother.

“Noah,” the girl hears her mother whisper. “They’re on something—look at their eyes.”

Through the crack in the counter, the girl shifts her eyes toward the men in the doorway. Their eyes look like dolls’ eyes, like black marbles with no pupils.

THE WIRE AT THE BASE
perimeter where i got in last time has been repaired, but the same weak spot repeats a hundred feet along, and this time I take care to wind the ends of the fencing back together more carefully and hide my tracks. It looks like they’ve increased their security since the shooting in town, but a few extra guard patrols won’t be enough to stop McBride—especially when they don’t know he’s coming.

I hate that I’m here. My ill-fitting uniform, stolen off the back of a resupply shuttle a few months ago, feels itchy and coarse on my skin. No matter how many times I remind myself that this isn’t a betrayal, that I have to warn the base if I’m going to avoid shattering the ceasefire and dooming my people, it
feels
like I’m a traitor. It was horrifying enough to discover the munitions cabinet was ripped open and McBride and his followers are armed. With this new killing they have the excuse they’ve been waiting for, and that means I’ll be whatever I have to be, tonight.

I duck my head as I pass one of the patrols and hurry down a makeshift alleyway. For once I’m glad for the rain, which started back up as I poled my way here; it means no one’s looking too closely at anyone’s faces.

I shouldn’t know where Captain Chase sleeps at night, but our intel on the base is better than the trodairí realize. They don’t have the personnel to staff the base entirely with soldiers, so some of the people living in town get work here as cooks and stockers and janitors. Nothing high-security, nothing anyone could use against the base—except that janitors are invisible and they’re allowed to go anywhere. We’ve got a pretty good map of this place.

Most of the officers’ quarters are makeshift arrangements. Jubilee is stuck out in one of the temporary sheds, and I’m pretty sure her bedroom used to be a storage area. There’s no real window, only an air vent they’ve enlarged a little and covered with clear plastene to let in some light.

The fear is sitting deep in my gut that if McBride has his way, this could be the day we’ve been dreading. The day the body count gets so high that TerraDyn and the military launch an all-out assault. That this could be the day we lose too many of our people, they lose too many of theirs, and Avon descends into the chaos that’s been waiting for her for years.

I don’t know how to stop it, so now I’m about to crawl through a window in the middle of a base full of soldiers, looking for the one ally who might have enough sway to help me hold our people apart.

It only takes half a minute to yank the covering off. I grasp at the sill, swinging myself up and ignoring the complaints of shoulder muscles sore from poling through the swamps. The room inside is sparsely furnished, exactly what I’d expect of a trodaire’s quarters. My eyes go first to the pale gray combat suit hung neatly on the wall, standing like a ghostly sentry over the sleeping soldier nearby. If she’d been wearing it outside the bar, it’s unlikely my bullet would’ve even scratched her unless I got lucky. I try to swallow the anger that wells up, a well-conditioned response to the sight of those suits. They get state-of-the-art armor as thin as cloth; we get nothing but smuggled munitions and heirloom pistols.