A Private Little War(103)

“Not in my bed, counselor,” Carter said.

“Good enough.” In a gentlemanly fashion, Fast Eddie Lucas stood, dipped from the waist in a sketched bow, then fell over—asleep before he hit the dirt.

“Christ,” Fenn said. “Now everyone’s going to think we killed him.”

Their laughter was loud enough to wake the dead. The drunk, however, slept on undisturbed.





This was later. A few minutes. An hour.

“So,” Fenn said, leaning back against the door frame. He’d put his jacket on, collar turned up, his cheeks buried in its fur. The cold was bitter. “What do you think?”

“It’s not good,” Carter said. He hugged himself, hands buried in his armpits, rollneck sweater pulled to his nose, muffling his words.

“Not good at all.”

“No.”

Inside, they’d banked the fire. Carter had taken a musty blanket from his foot locker and thrown it over poor, inebriated Eddie, then grabbed Cat from its pile of rags by the door—catching the little monster by the back of the neck while it was still half-asleep—and had tried to hold it, balled up in his sweater for warmth and to keep Cat from murdering Eddie.

Cat was having none of it, though, and had clawed free, hit the ground spitting, and bolted for the door. It huddled ten feet off and stared at Carter and Fenn in the cold, just waiting to be allowed back inside. He and Fenn had followed Cat outside for a breath of air and to clear their own heads. Carter’d kept the lawyer’s cigarettes and was smoking them now through a hole in the neck of his sweater, one after another.

“I think we shouldn’t tell anyone just yet.”

“Agreed.”

“I would desert if I thought there was anywhere to go.”

“I think that’s all part of the plan.” Fenn plucked the cigarette from Carter’s mouth-hole, took a drag, planted it back amid the cabled wool. When he spoke, he exhaled thunderheads. “Leaving us with no options but to soldier.”

“Damn sneaky if you ask me.”

Fenn nodded.

“So, was any of what you told Eddie true?”

“You mean…”

Carter nodded.

“God, no. We won at Palas and on Barson’s World. I shipped home with everyone else, sitting on my bonus payout. You?”

Carter shook his head. “Proxima was a wash after we switched sides. Spent six months plastering the place from a transorbital bomber, flew home on an Argo-Stanislav freighter after the truce. This is bad, though.”

“True enough.”

“Could still go our way. If Connelly attacks, diverts the Lassateirra. If NRI supplies don’t make it into the field fast enough. If the marines stay away or the council ignores the NRI request. It could go our way.”

Heroes, Eddie…

“Could,” Fenn agreed.

“But it won’t.”

Fenn shook his head. “No.”

Carter thought about the ships he’d seen the other night. The hooks of light on the horizon. He’d meant to tell Fenn about them, but hadn’t. Everyone had seen something similar anyway. He’d meant to tell Fenn about NRI. About what they would do when they got here in force. The shock. The death. Cameras rolling while poor scared kids came tumbling out the back of dropships and veterans pressed grenades and pulse rifles into the hands of every native who reached. But he hadn’t. No time. Or something.

“Look, I’ve been told by plenty of bosses what a fuckup I am,” Carter said. “None have ever conspired to leave me for dead before. Eddie’s got to be wrong.”

Except that wasn’t true either.

“Don’t start believing your own propaganda, Kev. That’s dangerous business. It’s a lot of money on the line. A lot of legal troubles and bad press. I can see Eddie’s point. It would be a lot simpler for all concerned if the whole bunch of us just disappeared one day.”

“Well, not all concerned. I’d be pretty pissed about it.”

“It’s about the money, Captain. I think maybe it’s cheaper for the company just to let us die.”

“Bright and shiny, Fenn. Love the way you think. Really.”

Fenn shrugged. Coming out of the dark, they heard the crunching of a native post horse approaching, its big, clubby feet crackling on the scrim of ice that’d formed, like walking over broken glass. They watched as it came on down the line of tents and crossed right before them, its rider upright in the saddle, reins held loosely, eyes like black pools—wet and reflective.

It watched them as its horse picked its way along, head down, swaying slightly. Fenn noted the loop of charms around its wrist—shell casings, buttons, a braided wire, a battery—and the way it seemed made of a single creature, the horse and its rider, each perfectly suited to the other. Carter saw the rifle in its scabbard of stitched plastic sheeting, the scraps of ballistic cloth sewn into a pathetic barding for the horse’s barrel chest, and himself reflected in the absolute dispassion of the indig’s gaze as it went by. The creature did not bow or scrape. It did not smile or move to clap its hands or look away. It simply watched, as though the captains were stones or clouds or something less, and only once it was past them did it make a sound—a breathy hiss in the back of its throat that might’ve been a command to the horse or might’ve not.