A Private Little War(110)

He’d called all of the planes back in from their patrols. He’d felt that, if he just held out long enough, an idea would come to him. Some plan. Some scheme for turning it all around. His only responsibility, he’d thought, was to keep everyone alive until something told him what to do next. But things were happening now. The action was coming and time was running very short, so all he could hope was that the wisdom would come quickly.

Ted staggered again, turned out and away from the ruckus of planes and bodies moving to and fro and the pressure of motion all around him. After Captain Teague’s flight had landed, Ted had given orders that all planes be turned around for immediate flight upon landing, hoping that he wouldn’t need to send them out again but knowing that he probably would. This was it, he thought. Might be it. The beginning of the end. He’d spoken briefly with a god in whom he did not believe and asked for more time. Just a little. But he didn’t think his call had been received.

Ted stopped, briefly, on the close-cropped apron of the strip and took a breath. There were things that needed to be done now. There were orders he needed to give. He looked up into the sky, one hand shoved deep into the pocket of his uniform trousers and fingers wrapped around his radio handset as he shaded his eyes with the blade of the other. And while anyone who saw him at that moment would’ve thought only that he was searching the skies for danger, for threats coming from unusual directions or, perhaps, the approach of planes that only he knew about, the truth was that Ted was only pinching himself through the pocket of his uniform and biting the inside of his cheek until it bled to keep from bursting into tears.





Charlie Voss and Emile were walking across the work yard wearing their gear and trying to enjoy the thin comfort of the sun that’d suddenly emerged from a break in the solid ceiling of cloud. They looked, oddly, like young men again in the light—walking in a bubble of strange calm through the riot of planes and men and weapons and mechanics. Like children almost, on a day out at the museum, stopping here and there to touch a wing, a strut, a bomb. They were talking about the marines coming because, today, that was the rumor: that the Colonial Marines were on their way. And that was the only thing that anyone was talking about, discussing what they thought would become of them when it happened, if it happened, if the company didn’t come and get them first.

“We’ll do jail, I think,” Emile said.

“Jail for sure,” agreed Charlie.

“But not for long.”

“No.”

“A warm bed. Hot meals. Quiet.”

“No missions.”

“No fucking indigs. And the company, they’ll get us out, I think.”

“Yeah, they will. Have to, I’d think.”

“Have to. Be an embarrassment otherwise. And we’re still worth something to ’em.”

“Sure. Absolutely.”

“It’ll be a nice break, I think.”

“You think?”

“I really do.”





Fenn was still shaking even though he’d been down on solid ground now for almost fifteen minutes. His legs were jerking so much that he’d had to cross them at the knee like a dandy to keep them from jumping, sitting in the mess, on a bench, leaning back against the edge of a table in an attempt at looking calm. His face was locked in what he hoped was a look of bemusement. When he’d landed, he could barely walk. His hand on his coffee cup shook enough to make rings in the greasy liquid surface. His jaw was clenched against the chattering his teeth wanted to make, and he breathed in a hiss—drawing in air across his teeth, blowing it out his nose—while his heart (disloyal organ that it was) tried to hammer its way out of his chest or climb out through his throat. Go for a jog. Run.

He focused on breathing. On stilling the tremors that coursed through him. He didn’t know how long he was going to have to sit there. He thought, perhaps, a very long time.

Emile and Charlie came in, saw him, sat.

“That was something, eh?” Emile asked.

“Something,” said Fenn, favoring his squadron mates with a smile. “It truly was.” All three of them had been up near Riverbend. All three of them had broken the rules, violated the cordon that Ted had put up around the walled cities, had poked their noses too deeply into enemy territory. They had seen the high moors, the invisible land just over the artificial horizon created by months of stalemate, covered in men and indigs and equipment. Hundreds of containers. Thousands of bodies. An army just sitting, waiting for them. When the battle had erupted on the ground, they had come together into tight formation to watch the sudden collapse of time frames, of anachronisms fighting one another in the dirt and frozen mud. Fenn had begged release from Ted to turn his flight loose upon the enemy, but he had been refused, had been called home with guns cold. That wasn’t what had scared him, though.