So even once they were back on the ground—after hearing that and seeing Ted standing there beside the Bristol with Morris’s body in his arms, his shirt covered in gore, waiting while Doc Edison chattered in his ear and someone went to grab a tarp for wrapping the body in—no one said much of anything either.
Ted had already given the lockdown order so, obviously, the planes weren’t going to fly.
And this was how the war on Iaxo began for them in earnest.
PART 2
A PRIVATE LITTLE WAR
TED HAD LOST TRACK OF THE DAYS SOMEHOW. He hadn’t slept. Something in his head felt rattly and broken—some vital component fogged or ligature snapped. Carter had come home. The bombers had come home. A patrol had gone out, flying bomb-damage assessment, and Morris Ross had died in a way and for reasons that Ted couldn’t quite fathom. There was a disconnect somewhere. It didn’t make any sense.
Ted understood that there was a problem. The final orders had stated clearly that the operation on Carpenter was “outside compromised,” meaning that someone knew they were here, meddling, trying to get rich. Someone wanted them to stop, or to get rich themselves, on their own terms, so was feeding supplies now to the other side. Though their technological advantage here was massive, it was also tenuous.
Fact: A bomb, a machine gun, a man in a biplane—all of that was glorious witchcraft to someone who didn’t even know where the wind came from. But it didn’t take much to trump that. As easy as it had been for Flyboy to get here—to ship in the men and the materials to make two years’ worth of one-sided war—it would be just as easy for someone else to do the same. Up to this point, though, their indigs had been the only ones paying. Cavalier, Eastbourne, Palas, Flyboy, and the rest—none of them were working here just for the fun of it. No one was here because they believed in anything. They had their orders. Distant companies had picked the side that was going to win this game of war, pushed their bets with guns and bombs and men and airplanes, and had known that, once all was said and done, everyone would profit handsomely for their work save the dead. Had things been different, they might’ve been fighting for the other side. It wouldn’t have mattered. The other side just had nothing to negotiate with.
But now Morris Ross had died. Ted had carried him on his lap. Ted had held his head against his shoulder, felt the weight of him, smelled the terrible smells that death hangs on a man. He’d been chewed to pieces by someone else’s machine gun, and when Ted had returned with the body, he’d lost control of things. He’d felt it leaving him, that control—a sensation like reins slipping through his fingers, the threads of command dissolving or hanging slack.
He should’ve said something, but he couldn’t. His brain wasn’t functioning; it was filled only with a blankness that he couldn’t think around. He’d clung to Morris’s body as though the weight of it were the only thing holding him rooted in place. Without it, he thought he might just float up and away forever. Or worse, sink. When hands had finally taken Morris from him (to lay him down gently onto plastic, to arrange his arms and his legs in some semblance of order—Billy crouching over him and staring into Morris’s slack face like he was just waiting for him to wake up and say “boo”), Ted had staggered at the sudden lightness. He’d walked off quickly so no one would see him fly away.
There’d been a wake. It’d gotten out of hand. While the men were grieving, he’d washed up, shaved, changed clothes. The indig who did his laundry wasn’t around, so he’d piled his gear in a corner and kicked it. Then kicked it again. That had felt good. He’d stalked the length of his tent and back again a hundred times, then cleared the comms tent and sat in it with Eddie, with maps, with plans. They’d behaved as men do, with coffee and pens and lists, grinding their way through the past two years of violent history and trying to make something good of it. Something that would appease and mollify their corporate masters—some proof that all hadn’t been wasted and that, somehow, their inexplicable failures and thousand wrong moves had all been part of a path to ultimate victory, riches, success. They made lies of everything, but pretty ones.
“Who reads these reports?” Ted had asked of the air, then answered himself. “No one, that’s who. There are only two communications that matter to the company: the one that says we’ve arrived and the one that says we’ve won.”
In the tent, they waited on the final call from corporate—the confirmation of their final orders. That it had only been twenty-four hours surprised Ted. How could it only have been that long? How could this disaster be only a day old? He was losing track of time somehow, the entire business growing distended and strange. Like a bubble in a vein, choking off the orderly flow.