Gears of war, p.4
Gears of War, page 4
Anya sipped the wine. In it she tasted the berries Jamila had mentioned, and realized that this glass of wine was the last one in which she might taste them. Not only might the grapes be lost, but the berries, as well. Even if someone cultivates them, how will I know? How would I find them? That struck her as a petty concern, but the state of the world presented so many problems that the only way to begin to get a handle on it was to start with something small. Like berries. Or dresses. Or a gathering of people who might be able to find solutions.
“You want to rebuild the world, and you want everyone here to do it.” Anya blinked. “That’s a tall order.”
“Oh yes, and one full of troubles.” Jamila sighed. “In the last six months Aaron Griffin has organized whatever survivors he could find in Char. He is intent on recreating Griffin Imulsion Corporation, but he is aware that this requires infrastructure and personnel, as well, obviously, as a new core commodity. He’s educating people. He’s reminding them that they’re not prey for the grubs, but human beings who have potential. He is recreating the world his way, and you know that with a man like him, once he has his power base secure, he will want to expand.”
“I’ve seen him in action.”
“There are others. Down in Hanover the commercial fishing fleet has become the organizational focus. They have a simple command structure and a functioning economy. They’re almost at a point where they could begin exporting food to other locations. Other elements in Hanover are pitching in to bring the city back to life.
“Raul Hasterwith is intent on rebuilding Seradyne,” she continued. “And then there are countless smaller settlements—encampments of Stranded—which have organized themselves. So much potential, both for good and for tragedy.”
“Isn’t this something you should be telling all of them, Jamila? Griffin and others ought to see the sense in people banding together.”
“They should, but they don’t see me as someone who has accomplished what they have. I’ve created no empires. In their eyes all I did in the past was spend the fortune that my forebears had amassed, and now that fortune is gone. Most of the institutions we endowed are dust. I am a curious relic of another age, an age that died a violent death. I am a creature that has no natural habitat in this world.”
Anya’s eyes narrowed. “And yet you organized this reception. You brought disparate people together, and they came even without knowing your agenda for the evening. That speaks to skills they don’t know you have.”
“And skills they will require for the future, yes.” Jamila’s dark eyes glinted. “But how they see me is of little consequence to my purpose.”
“What is it you want of me, Jamila? What is the role you see for me here?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” The older woman laughed lightly. “My dear, you, on the other hand, have actually done something in the world—and I don’t just refer to your role in eliminating the Locust and Lambent. While an admirable accomplishment, and one well done, today it has less application to the future than my knowing the proper honorific to use when addressing a high court judge and her husband. Your communication skills, your facility for command and control, and your abilities in executing logistical tasks, provide you with the tools we will need in the future. Your crisis management skills are a resource we cannot afford to squander.”
Anya frowned. “You want me to be your executive officer?”
“Goodness no, dear. If that were my goal, you’d not be here this evening, and certainly not wearing that dress. No, Anya Stroud, I want you to stand with me as an equal in shaping the world of our future.”
Anya’s mouth went dry. She wanted to protest that she wasn’t cut out for that sort of role. Yes, she could perform all sorts of administrative tasks, and organizing Gears to hit objectives involved coordinating all sorts of resources, but she’d always been lower-level, dealing with a squad and the assets allocated to it.
Or assets I forced to have allocated to it.
“I’m not comfortable with larger situations,” she said finally. “I mean, I have no experience with the big issues. All I’ve done is small-scale.”
Jamila stroked her arm. “It may have escaped your notice, my dear, but the world is small-scale now.”
That remark exploded in Anya’s mind. We’ve lost so much, so very much. Certainly she had lost friends and felt that hurt keenly. Yet in that instant she saw how much the world had truly suffered. The people who died had taken with them all those things that held society together. Civility. Family traditions. Grandma’s secret recipe for cookies or chicken soup. Many of them things that might never be recreated.
A wave of despair washed over her. For a moment everything seemed so hopeless. To think I could do anything to change that would be arrogance.
But to refuse to try? That’s self-pity, and a complete waste of energy.
Anya took a deep breath. It was true. With the world having been reduced to such a small scale, she could do something. It wasn’t a question of looking at how much the world had lost, but of how much of the world they still had with which to work. It would be a huge task, a daunting task, but one that had to be managed.
Humanity had no other choice but to deal with it.
“I will work beside you, Jamila, but with the understanding that I have no ambition to lead. We’ve lost so much that I don’t want to lose more. So I’m in.” Anya drank down the rest of her wine. “I can’t believe I said that sober.”
“Sobering times, Anya, but a beginning.” Jamila linked her arm through Anya’s. “So let us get you another glass of wine, and I shall make a few more introductions. I’ll let you size up the others we’ll be working with—and then we begin to plan.”
5: SHIN MUSEUM OF MODERN CULTURE
EPHYRA, SERA
15 HARVEST 18 A.E.
Marcus kept his face impassive as Hasterwith smiled, then the industrialist caught someone else’s eye.
“Excuse me, gentlemen, do have a good evening.”
Colonel Hoffman nodded. “And you, Mr. Hasterwith.” As the gathering swallowed the industrialist, he glanced at Marcus. “Assessment?”
“His guns worked. Chainsaw bayonet, too.”
“Sergeant, you’re no longer a Gear. You’ve succeeded in your mission. Part of your new mission, whatever you choose that to be, will require you to use all of your words.”
“I already do that, Colonel.”
“You’re being admirably low-key by avoiding the profane ones.” Hoffman snagged a glass of red wine from a passing server. “I’m never going to apologize to you for things that got said or done during the war. I’m never going to tell you that secretly I liked you or was proud of you. You were, next to the grubs, the greatest pain in my neck. What I admired—what I still admire, Marcus—is that you kept going. You saw the war from your perspective, but from where I sat, lots of people just stopped. You didn’t. Because you didn’t, we can be here.”
“I did what needed doing.”
“And you went beyond that.”
“Begging your pardon, Colonel, but why are you telling me this?”
Hoffman half smiled. “This new mission, your new life, it’s going to require new things out of you. Since E-Day, since the Locust emerged and launched their assault, how many days have you been outside your armor, just breathing free?”
“Couple weeks, maybe.”
“Uh-huh. And tell me, how many exits are there to this room? How many security personnel?”
Marcus looked Hoffman in the eyes. “Four, and not enough.”
“Back to the wall.”
“You said it made you comfortable, too.”
“True.” Hoffman drank. “The wars shaped us both and, for me, making the transition from a line unit to command, it took time. It’s still a work in progress. Just remember that.”
“Thank you, Colonel. I’ll be fine.”
“Do yourself a favor, Marcus. Don’t keep telling yourself that.”
Marcus didn’t feel inclined to do more than grunt in response, but before he could do so, two women came walking up to them. The taller of the two spoke first.
“Colonel Hoffman, we just wanted to thank you for saving all of us.”
“Yes, thank you for your service.” The smaller one appeared skeletally thin, suggesting that wartime food shortages had seriously impacted her life. She smiled at Marcus. “And you, too…”
Hoffman smiled politely. “This is Sergeant Marcus Fenix. He led the team that put an end to the Lambent.”
“Oh. Yes. Of course.”
The taller one looked at her friend. “Wasn’t he the one in prison?”
“I got time off for good behavior.” Marcus attempted a reassuring smile, but given the women’s sudden change of expression, his effort fell short. “I’m proud to have been of service.”
“I should imagine you are,” the taller woman said, but her opinion of Marcus had been set the moment she realized he’d done time. She returned her attention to Colonel Hoffman. “Colonel, we won’t hold you up, but you simply have to come and dine with us some evening. I would love to hear of the war from your perspective.”
Marcus wasn’t surprised at having been excised from the conversation. She wouldn’t have liked to hear about the war from his point of view, anyhow. Wiping blood off his face, picking strings of viscera off armor, combing fingers through his hair only to find chunks of brain tissue and bone fragments tangled there. Using Locust intestines to tie a door closed because that was the closest thing to cord I could find.
The women moved off into other knots of people and Marcus watched as news of who he was flew through the room. People began to saunter over, trying to appear casual, yet with fear in their eyes. They’d all open with the “Thank you for your service” line, then lower their voices, moving closer. They all had a question to ask, or a story to share.
One man approached and opened with, “So, I guess you saw a thing or two out there.” He had thinning hair and enough excess jowl flesh to suggest that he’d been twice his current size, once upon a time. “You know, I once wanted to be a Gear. I thought about applying to the Academy, but my uncle owned Sunlight Chemicals. Big firm, did lots of Imulsion refining.” What he wanted from Marcus was reassurance that he could have been a Gear, could have been a hero.
He would have been dead before his first clip was empty.
Colonel Hoffman patted the man on the shoulder. “The war made demands on all of us. Imulsion was what kept us going, so without people like you, frontline troopers never would have stood a chance.”
“I just did what I could, Colonel Hoffman.” The man snapped to attention and tossed off the sloppiest salute Marcus had ever seen. “Victors write the history.”
Marcus scowled as the man walked away. “I’m not sure he understands what he just said.”
“Nope, but he’ll tell his friends, and they’ll pretend it was profound.” Hoffman shook his head. “They mean well. Some of them, at least.”
A couple approached and, given their relative ages, Marcus would have guessed they were father and daughter, but the way they touched suggested otherwise. They just wanted to share their story of the miracle that brought them together. They’d lived their entire lives within a mile or so of each other, but neither knew the other existed. And then the Locust came and they both hid in the back corner of a basement. A Locust had been down there hunting them, but there was an explosion and part of the building collapsed and crushed it. The experience gave them a bond, and that grew into love and, “So you see, not everything that happened was evil. We’re the silver lining in the dark cloud.”
And you want us to tell you that just because you two found each other and true love, that your love somehow balances the deaths of hundreds of millions? Marcus had to stop his hands from curling down into fists. The image of Dom and Maria floated through his brain, and he would have traded a million of this couple for them to be back.
“Even in the darkest times, we had to hope there would be pinpoints of light.” Hoffman reached out and shook the man’s hand. “Thank you.”
Marcus stared at the man’s hand a moment before following suit, and had to restrain himself from just crushing it. “Yeah, thank you.”
People continued coming over. Some wanted to know “What was it really like?” Others offered grand conspiracy theories, suggesting that the Locust were really an old biowarfare weapon from the Pendulum Wars, and that’s why Jacinto had to be sunk because that’s where all the records were. Several people looked Marcus up and down, assessing him, appearing rather intent on taking him to bed and adding another notch to their bedposts.
The stream slackened after Hoffman got called away and Marcus deepened his scowl. These people had no clue of the sacrifices the Gears had made for them, and that fact just raked cold claws through his brain. The war was all in the past for them, and they could return to what they had been before. It was a bad dream that they could forget.
Not an ongoing one that refuses to vanish. They faced the Locust horror when it came hunting them; they never went hunting it back. They never tried to exterminate it. They never lost friends who chose to die so they would live—a brother I would have done the same thing for.
Rage and sorrow burned in Marcus. He wanted to yell that they had no idea what it was like. They had no idea how unsafe they were. If the Locust erupted right here, they’d all be dead. Sure, Hasterwith makes Lancers, but does he have one with him? No. He’s dead. We all would be dead.
Marcus felt the solid stone against his back, as if he were trapped between it and an invisible hammer. He slipped to the side and twisted away. He headed toward the eastern entrance, vaguely aware that Anya had last gone that way. Looked for her, but couldn’t find her. He caught himself reaching up to activate his radio and call out for her, then slowly lowered his hand.
While looking for Anya he spotted another familiar face. Aaron Griffin. In an instant anger flashed through him. He wanted to fly over and brace the guy, closing the book on Marcus’ last visit to Char. But he held back. Not the time, not the place. No purpose in resurrecting that ugly bit of the past.
He turned away from Griffin before the man noticed him. His anger began to fade, but he found himself surrounded by more of the people who had spoken with Colonel Hoffman. They all look proud of themselves for having survived, but do any of them really understand what they survived? They want nothing to do with the reality, and instead just hope politeness can make it all go away.
“They’re kind of relentless, aren’t they?” A slender man, dark-haired, about a head shorter than Marcus and a third narrower, nodded back toward the center of the gallery. “They want you to tell them they did all they could during the war, or that they could have done what you did during the war.”
“Which class do you fall into?”
“Neither.” The man jerked a thumb toward the refreshments table. “Let me buy you a drink.”
“They’re charging for drinks?”
“Figure of speech. I don’t know if we actually have money anymore.” The man shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t have any.”
Something in the man’s attitude separated him from the others. “So no retirement pay?”
“Probably not. Don’t tell the others. A lot of them are hoping that bank balances from before E-Day will magically reappear.” The man offered Marcus his hand. “Brandon Turrall. Don’t even… we’ve never met.”
“Marcus Fenix.”
“I gathered.” They shook hands. The man had a firm grip and looked Marcus in the eye as they shook. “I’ve seen plenty of your handiwork. Maybe not yours per se, but Gears’. Not everyone is a fan.”
“That include you?”
“I’ve had moments.” Brandon broke their grip. “Your house burns down, the firemen save as much as they can. Doesn’t make much sense to be angry with them that they couldn’t save everything.”
“We tried.”
“I know.” Brandon led him over to a table where there was a mix of wine glasses. “Name your poison.”
“I’m not a…”
“Connoisseur?”
“Never had time to develop the skill.”
Brandon smiled at the young redhead filling the glasses. “Angela, yeah? Do you have that bottle set aside for Mr. Pendergast? Be a dear and pour us each out three fingers.”
Marcus frowned. “Pendergast? On the board of Raven Aviation?”
“That was his dad.” Brandon took two glasses half filled with whiskey and handed one to Marcus. “Tyrus Rain. Some of the best single malt left on Sera.”
“Won’t Pendergast be angry?”
“He’ll get over it if he hopes to ever have any more of this.” Brandon raised his glass. “To your health.”
Marcus touched his glass to Brandon’s, then took a healthy sip of the whiskey. He caught a lot of peat and smoke, but that disappeared as the liquor scorched the back of his throat. He swallowed and the burn coursed down into his stomach. He swallowed a second time, then shook his head.
“Finest single malt on Sera?”
“Finest I could find.” Brandon swiped at the tears in the corners of his eyes. “Bottle said it had been aged eighteen years.”
“Eighteen minutes, tops.”
“True. I think some of it actually was Tyrus Rain, but what they cut it with was probably paint thinner.” Brandon stared at the glass. “Though where they found that much paint thinner, it’s anyone’s guess. Don’t worry. We’ll have to finish the whole bottle before it blinds us.”
“If you could target some specific memories, I’d take a gallon.”
“If it could do that, this stuff would be the new Imulsion. The world would run on it.” Brandon sighed. “You know, all those people who talked to you, they think they were in the thick of it, but they just had front-row seats. They’re what historians would call witnesses to history. You, and Colonel Hoffman, you were making history. These folks won’t ever see the difference.”
“Which were you? Witness or a maker?”
“Depends on the day and who’s telling the story.” Brandon shrugged. “Fact is, I spent most of my time getting stuff for people. Made life interesting.”
“You want to rebuild the world, and you want everyone here to do it.” Anya blinked. “That’s a tall order.”
“Oh yes, and one full of troubles.” Jamila sighed. “In the last six months Aaron Griffin has organized whatever survivors he could find in Char. He is intent on recreating Griffin Imulsion Corporation, but he is aware that this requires infrastructure and personnel, as well, obviously, as a new core commodity. He’s educating people. He’s reminding them that they’re not prey for the grubs, but human beings who have potential. He is recreating the world his way, and you know that with a man like him, once he has his power base secure, he will want to expand.”
“I’ve seen him in action.”
“There are others. Down in Hanover the commercial fishing fleet has become the organizational focus. They have a simple command structure and a functioning economy. They’re almost at a point where they could begin exporting food to other locations. Other elements in Hanover are pitching in to bring the city back to life.
“Raul Hasterwith is intent on rebuilding Seradyne,” she continued. “And then there are countless smaller settlements—encampments of Stranded—which have organized themselves. So much potential, both for good and for tragedy.”
“Isn’t this something you should be telling all of them, Jamila? Griffin and others ought to see the sense in people banding together.”
“They should, but they don’t see me as someone who has accomplished what they have. I’ve created no empires. In their eyes all I did in the past was spend the fortune that my forebears had amassed, and now that fortune is gone. Most of the institutions we endowed are dust. I am a curious relic of another age, an age that died a violent death. I am a creature that has no natural habitat in this world.”
Anya’s eyes narrowed. “And yet you organized this reception. You brought disparate people together, and they came even without knowing your agenda for the evening. That speaks to skills they don’t know you have.”
“And skills they will require for the future, yes.” Jamila’s dark eyes glinted. “But how they see me is of little consequence to my purpose.”
“What is it you want of me, Jamila? What is the role you see for me here?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” The older woman laughed lightly. “My dear, you, on the other hand, have actually done something in the world—and I don’t just refer to your role in eliminating the Locust and Lambent. While an admirable accomplishment, and one well done, today it has less application to the future than my knowing the proper honorific to use when addressing a high court judge and her husband. Your communication skills, your facility for command and control, and your abilities in executing logistical tasks, provide you with the tools we will need in the future. Your crisis management skills are a resource we cannot afford to squander.”
Anya frowned. “You want me to be your executive officer?”
“Goodness no, dear. If that were my goal, you’d not be here this evening, and certainly not wearing that dress. No, Anya Stroud, I want you to stand with me as an equal in shaping the world of our future.”
Anya’s mouth went dry. She wanted to protest that she wasn’t cut out for that sort of role. Yes, she could perform all sorts of administrative tasks, and organizing Gears to hit objectives involved coordinating all sorts of resources, but she’d always been lower-level, dealing with a squad and the assets allocated to it.
Or assets I forced to have allocated to it.
“I’m not comfortable with larger situations,” she said finally. “I mean, I have no experience with the big issues. All I’ve done is small-scale.”
Jamila stroked her arm. “It may have escaped your notice, my dear, but the world is small-scale now.”
That remark exploded in Anya’s mind. We’ve lost so much, so very much. Certainly she had lost friends and felt that hurt keenly. Yet in that instant she saw how much the world had truly suffered. The people who died had taken with them all those things that held society together. Civility. Family traditions. Grandma’s secret recipe for cookies or chicken soup. Many of them things that might never be recreated.
A wave of despair washed over her. For a moment everything seemed so hopeless. To think I could do anything to change that would be arrogance.
But to refuse to try? That’s self-pity, and a complete waste of energy.
Anya took a deep breath. It was true. With the world having been reduced to such a small scale, she could do something. It wasn’t a question of looking at how much the world had lost, but of how much of the world they still had with which to work. It would be a huge task, a daunting task, but one that had to be managed.
Humanity had no other choice but to deal with it.
“I will work beside you, Jamila, but with the understanding that I have no ambition to lead. We’ve lost so much that I don’t want to lose more. So I’m in.” Anya drank down the rest of her wine. “I can’t believe I said that sober.”
“Sobering times, Anya, but a beginning.” Jamila linked her arm through Anya’s. “So let us get you another glass of wine, and I shall make a few more introductions. I’ll let you size up the others we’ll be working with—and then we begin to plan.”
5: SHIN MUSEUM OF MODERN CULTURE
EPHYRA, SERA
15 HARVEST 18 A.E.
Marcus kept his face impassive as Hasterwith smiled, then the industrialist caught someone else’s eye.
“Excuse me, gentlemen, do have a good evening.”
Colonel Hoffman nodded. “And you, Mr. Hasterwith.” As the gathering swallowed the industrialist, he glanced at Marcus. “Assessment?”
“His guns worked. Chainsaw bayonet, too.”
“Sergeant, you’re no longer a Gear. You’ve succeeded in your mission. Part of your new mission, whatever you choose that to be, will require you to use all of your words.”
“I already do that, Colonel.”
“You’re being admirably low-key by avoiding the profane ones.” Hoffman snagged a glass of red wine from a passing server. “I’m never going to apologize to you for things that got said or done during the war. I’m never going to tell you that secretly I liked you or was proud of you. You were, next to the grubs, the greatest pain in my neck. What I admired—what I still admire, Marcus—is that you kept going. You saw the war from your perspective, but from where I sat, lots of people just stopped. You didn’t. Because you didn’t, we can be here.”
“I did what needed doing.”
“And you went beyond that.”
“Begging your pardon, Colonel, but why are you telling me this?”
Hoffman half smiled. “This new mission, your new life, it’s going to require new things out of you. Since E-Day, since the Locust emerged and launched their assault, how many days have you been outside your armor, just breathing free?”
“Couple weeks, maybe.”
“Uh-huh. And tell me, how many exits are there to this room? How many security personnel?”
Marcus looked Hoffman in the eyes. “Four, and not enough.”
“Back to the wall.”
“You said it made you comfortable, too.”
“True.” Hoffman drank. “The wars shaped us both and, for me, making the transition from a line unit to command, it took time. It’s still a work in progress. Just remember that.”
“Thank you, Colonel. I’ll be fine.”
“Do yourself a favor, Marcus. Don’t keep telling yourself that.”
Marcus didn’t feel inclined to do more than grunt in response, but before he could do so, two women came walking up to them. The taller of the two spoke first.
“Colonel Hoffman, we just wanted to thank you for saving all of us.”
“Yes, thank you for your service.” The smaller one appeared skeletally thin, suggesting that wartime food shortages had seriously impacted her life. She smiled at Marcus. “And you, too…”
Hoffman smiled politely. “This is Sergeant Marcus Fenix. He led the team that put an end to the Lambent.”
“Oh. Yes. Of course.”
The taller one looked at her friend. “Wasn’t he the one in prison?”
“I got time off for good behavior.” Marcus attempted a reassuring smile, but given the women’s sudden change of expression, his effort fell short. “I’m proud to have been of service.”
“I should imagine you are,” the taller woman said, but her opinion of Marcus had been set the moment she realized he’d done time. She returned her attention to Colonel Hoffman. “Colonel, we won’t hold you up, but you simply have to come and dine with us some evening. I would love to hear of the war from your perspective.”
Marcus wasn’t surprised at having been excised from the conversation. She wouldn’t have liked to hear about the war from his point of view, anyhow. Wiping blood off his face, picking strings of viscera off armor, combing fingers through his hair only to find chunks of brain tissue and bone fragments tangled there. Using Locust intestines to tie a door closed because that was the closest thing to cord I could find.
The women moved off into other knots of people and Marcus watched as news of who he was flew through the room. People began to saunter over, trying to appear casual, yet with fear in their eyes. They’d all open with the “Thank you for your service” line, then lower their voices, moving closer. They all had a question to ask, or a story to share.
One man approached and opened with, “So, I guess you saw a thing or two out there.” He had thinning hair and enough excess jowl flesh to suggest that he’d been twice his current size, once upon a time. “You know, I once wanted to be a Gear. I thought about applying to the Academy, but my uncle owned Sunlight Chemicals. Big firm, did lots of Imulsion refining.” What he wanted from Marcus was reassurance that he could have been a Gear, could have been a hero.
He would have been dead before his first clip was empty.
Colonel Hoffman patted the man on the shoulder. “The war made demands on all of us. Imulsion was what kept us going, so without people like you, frontline troopers never would have stood a chance.”
“I just did what I could, Colonel Hoffman.” The man snapped to attention and tossed off the sloppiest salute Marcus had ever seen. “Victors write the history.”
Marcus scowled as the man walked away. “I’m not sure he understands what he just said.”
“Nope, but he’ll tell his friends, and they’ll pretend it was profound.” Hoffman shook his head. “They mean well. Some of them, at least.”
A couple approached and, given their relative ages, Marcus would have guessed they were father and daughter, but the way they touched suggested otherwise. They just wanted to share their story of the miracle that brought them together. They’d lived their entire lives within a mile or so of each other, but neither knew the other existed. And then the Locust came and they both hid in the back corner of a basement. A Locust had been down there hunting them, but there was an explosion and part of the building collapsed and crushed it. The experience gave them a bond, and that grew into love and, “So you see, not everything that happened was evil. We’re the silver lining in the dark cloud.”
And you want us to tell you that just because you two found each other and true love, that your love somehow balances the deaths of hundreds of millions? Marcus had to stop his hands from curling down into fists. The image of Dom and Maria floated through his brain, and he would have traded a million of this couple for them to be back.
“Even in the darkest times, we had to hope there would be pinpoints of light.” Hoffman reached out and shook the man’s hand. “Thank you.”
Marcus stared at the man’s hand a moment before following suit, and had to restrain himself from just crushing it. “Yeah, thank you.”
People continued coming over. Some wanted to know “What was it really like?” Others offered grand conspiracy theories, suggesting that the Locust were really an old biowarfare weapon from the Pendulum Wars, and that’s why Jacinto had to be sunk because that’s where all the records were. Several people looked Marcus up and down, assessing him, appearing rather intent on taking him to bed and adding another notch to their bedposts.
The stream slackened after Hoffman got called away and Marcus deepened his scowl. These people had no clue of the sacrifices the Gears had made for them, and that fact just raked cold claws through his brain. The war was all in the past for them, and they could return to what they had been before. It was a bad dream that they could forget.
Not an ongoing one that refuses to vanish. They faced the Locust horror when it came hunting them; they never went hunting it back. They never tried to exterminate it. They never lost friends who chose to die so they would live—a brother I would have done the same thing for.
Rage and sorrow burned in Marcus. He wanted to yell that they had no idea what it was like. They had no idea how unsafe they were. If the Locust erupted right here, they’d all be dead. Sure, Hasterwith makes Lancers, but does he have one with him? No. He’s dead. We all would be dead.
Marcus felt the solid stone against his back, as if he were trapped between it and an invisible hammer. He slipped to the side and twisted away. He headed toward the eastern entrance, vaguely aware that Anya had last gone that way. Looked for her, but couldn’t find her. He caught himself reaching up to activate his radio and call out for her, then slowly lowered his hand.
While looking for Anya he spotted another familiar face. Aaron Griffin. In an instant anger flashed through him. He wanted to fly over and brace the guy, closing the book on Marcus’ last visit to Char. But he held back. Not the time, not the place. No purpose in resurrecting that ugly bit of the past.
He turned away from Griffin before the man noticed him. His anger began to fade, but he found himself surrounded by more of the people who had spoken with Colonel Hoffman. They all look proud of themselves for having survived, but do any of them really understand what they survived? They want nothing to do with the reality, and instead just hope politeness can make it all go away.
“They’re kind of relentless, aren’t they?” A slender man, dark-haired, about a head shorter than Marcus and a third narrower, nodded back toward the center of the gallery. “They want you to tell them they did all they could during the war, or that they could have done what you did during the war.”
“Which class do you fall into?”
“Neither.” The man jerked a thumb toward the refreshments table. “Let me buy you a drink.”
“They’re charging for drinks?”
“Figure of speech. I don’t know if we actually have money anymore.” The man shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t have any.”
Something in the man’s attitude separated him from the others. “So no retirement pay?”
“Probably not. Don’t tell the others. A lot of them are hoping that bank balances from before E-Day will magically reappear.” The man offered Marcus his hand. “Brandon Turrall. Don’t even… we’ve never met.”
“Marcus Fenix.”
“I gathered.” They shook hands. The man had a firm grip and looked Marcus in the eye as they shook. “I’ve seen plenty of your handiwork. Maybe not yours per se, but Gears’. Not everyone is a fan.”
“That include you?”
“I’ve had moments.” Brandon broke their grip. “Your house burns down, the firemen save as much as they can. Doesn’t make much sense to be angry with them that they couldn’t save everything.”
“We tried.”
“I know.” Brandon led him over to a table where there was a mix of wine glasses. “Name your poison.”
“I’m not a…”
“Connoisseur?”
“Never had time to develop the skill.”
Brandon smiled at the young redhead filling the glasses. “Angela, yeah? Do you have that bottle set aside for Mr. Pendergast? Be a dear and pour us each out three fingers.”
Marcus frowned. “Pendergast? On the board of Raven Aviation?”
“That was his dad.” Brandon took two glasses half filled with whiskey and handed one to Marcus. “Tyrus Rain. Some of the best single malt left on Sera.”
“Won’t Pendergast be angry?”
“He’ll get over it if he hopes to ever have any more of this.” Brandon raised his glass. “To your health.”
Marcus touched his glass to Brandon’s, then took a healthy sip of the whiskey. He caught a lot of peat and smoke, but that disappeared as the liquor scorched the back of his throat. He swallowed and the burn coursed down into his stomach. He swallowed a second time, then shook his head.
“Finest single malt on Sera?”
“Finest I could find.” Brandon swiped at the tears in the corners of his eyes. “Bottle said it had been aged eighteen years.”
“Eighteen minutes, tops.”
“True. I think some of it actually was Tyrus Rain, but what they cut it with was probably paint thinner.” Brandon stared at the glass. “Though where they found that much paint thinner, it’s anyone’s guess. Don’t worry. We’ll have to finish the whole bottle before it blinds us.”
“If you could target some specific memories, I’d take a gallon.”
“If it could do that, this stuff would be the new Imulsion. The world would run on it.” Brandon sighed. “You know, all those people who talked to you, they think they were in the thick of it, but they just had front-row seats. They’re what historians would call witnesses to history. You, and Colonel Hoffman, you were making history. These folks won’t ever see the difference.”
“Which were you? Witness or a maker?”
“Depends on the day and who’s telling the story.” Brandon shrugged. “Fact is, I spent most of my time getting stuff for people. Made life interesting.”
