Endgame (6 page)

“That’s not right,” Sasha says indignantly.

It’s really not.

I go on, “So we’ve been trying to get legal permission to open centers where the La’hengrin can come in for treatments.”

“But they don’t want to let you,” the kid guesses. “Because once people get free, they’ll kick the helmet guys off the planet.”

Succinctly put, he encapsulates our problem. There was no way we could ever drum up enough support to deploy the cure legally. It doesn’t matter; it was worth trying. I live for the day that people surprise me by doing the right thing.

“Well said,” Loras says.

“What’s your plan?” March slides to the floor from the couch, drawing me back against him.

I contemplate prevaricating, but there’s no point. He can dig it out of me; he doesn’t have to ask. So I lay it out for him, step by step. And when I finish, he’s shaking his head.

“Guerrilla wars are seldom won, Jax.”

Loras cuts in, “That depends on how you define it. I can name several where the invaders were driven out because holding that colony became too expensive.”

I nod. We’ve looked at the historical precedents. Well, Vel and Loras did. In this one instance, I’m content to be led.

Sasha aims a chiding look at his uncle. “Don’t tell them they can’t win. When I competed for the blue ribbon, you said I just had to believe I could do it. Were you lying?”

I seam my lips together as March squirms. “Of course not. But this is—”

“The same thing,” the kid says implacably.

One of these days, he’ll be a force to be reckoned with. But then, any kid with such strong TK, raised by March, couldn’t turn out any other way. I like him more this time; he’s at the
age where you can reason with him. He’s a small person instead of a bundle of agitated impulses.

“Fine,” March mutters.

I know better than to expect he’ll shut up without having his say. He just does it where Sasha can’t hear.
I don’t like this, Jax. It’s dangerous. You don’t have the equipment, experience, or personnel to mount this kind of ground war.

Teach us what you can in ten days. Loras has been studying guerrilla warfare for the last turn, but you can help him figure out what strategies are practicable.

March doesn’t want me fighting a war without him, but he can’t stay; the conflict threatens to tear him in two. Under no circumstances could he choose to stay here with Sasha, under these conditions. But he
wants
to. And his pain is staggering.

All right.

This isn’t how I planned to spend his visit. I thought we’d roll around in bed the whole time and come up only for a few bites of food. But it’ll give the rebellion a better chance if March assesses installations, analyzes the battlefield, and tells us where we can create the most chaos. He mutters, “I’ll help while I’m here.”

“I knew you would,” Sasha says proudly. “In fact…we should stay, shouldn’t we? They need you, and I can help, too. You’re always saying I have an obligation to use my powers for good. What could be better than—”

“Enough, Sasha. I’m retired, and you have to get back to school.” Wisely, March doesn’t say it’s too risky for them to linger on La’heng. Nothing rouses a kid’s interest faster than a whiff of danger.

Even so, from Sasha’s expression, I suspect we haven’t heard the last of this.

Later, after a long planning session and we’ve retired to
my room, March pulls me into his arms.

He’s sleeping with me, of course. For the short time we’re together, I won’t have anything between us, not even a wall. After he’s gone, I’ll deal with the heartbreak, just as I did before. The separation hasn’t been easy, but I didn’t expect it to be. Anything worth having is worth fighting for.

“Do you think we have any chance of pulling this off?” I ask softly.

He thinks for a few moments. “With any other team, I’d say no. But I know what you and Vel can accomplish together. So…maybe?”

“I’d prefer more confidence.” I poke him. “It’s not just us, you know. Loras has quietly been building underground resistance. There are more supporters of an independent La’heng. They’re just not under this roof.”

“You need a face for your rebellion,” he says, pensive.

“We have one,” I say at once. “Loras. He was the first to receive the cure. He’s free of the
shinai
-bond, the first La’hengrin to have free will in so many turns. His people will think he’s a hero even before the fighting begins.”

March nods. “Perception is everything.”

“Not everything. But it matters a great deal.”

“He’ll work,” he says. “He has charisma and resolve.”

“Did I share the most interesting thing?” I project a gossipy tone, prompting a quirk of amusement from March.

“No. Do tell.”

“The former chancellor, Tarn, is on world.”

He arches a brow. “Really? Why?”

“I’ve no idea, but he’s been helping with the petitions and appeals. I was surprised as hell to see him.”

“That’s…interesting. Does he have another job here as well?”

I shake my head. “That’s why it’s so odd. But without him, we wouldn’t have gotten the motion as far as we did.”

“Only to be blocked in the High Court,” March mutters. “Imperial bastards.”

His bitterness is a tangible force between us, like a serrated blade. I remember the story he told me about losing so many men on Nicu Tertius, the pain of the endless war and betrayal. When March worked as a merc for these Imperial bastards, it meant a fat paycheck waited at the end of each contract, but at such cost. And irony is, those turns cost him his sister, who tired of waiting for him to save enough credits to buy a ship and save her, a sin for which March will spend the rest of his life trying to atone.

But I’ve got my ghosts, too. Doc haunts me still. He comes to me in the night, gone but not gone, so long as his memory lingers in the neurons and electrons that comprise my brain. You’d think the dreams would be nightmares, but he only talks to me in the way he used to—with dry humor and quiet wisdom.

Then I imagine living on Venice Minor, where he died, and I have to ask, “How do you stand living on Nicuan?”

I’d think the memories of failing Svetlana would be even stronger there, as that’s where March was when she died.

“It’s best for Sasha,” he replies simply.

That makes sense. He can expiate that grief by doing better for her son. With effort, I tamp down my emotional turmoil and go on with the conversation. “But I
did
think it odd that Tarn is here. I wondered if he intends to make up for the fact that Conglomerate tried to hang me out to dry.”

“I’m sure he feels a little guilty over that,” March admits. “Mary knows I do. But then I remind myself they were your choices. If you’d gone about it a different way, I could’ve shielded you.” There’s tension in his tone, even after all this time.

“Hey,” I say, sitting up. “I am
never
going to ask you to give an order that could result in my death. You couldn’t live with it.”

He’s been inside my head so many times that I know exactly where his stress fractures lie. And failing to protect those he loves—starting with his sister, Svetlana? That’s a wound he wouldn’t recover from. Yes, he might be strong enough to send me to die, but then,
he
would, too. And I’ll never let that happen.

“You know me too well,” he says softly.

“Not as well as I used to. Fatherhood has changed you.”

“For the better?”

I consider this. “You’re calmer. Less hard-edged. So, yes, I think so. When you’re inside me”—I touch the side of my skull—“I see that he’s finished the healing I started on Ithiss-Tor. Those dark, disconnected places are whole again.”

“It’s remarkable what perfect trust can do. He thinks I’ll never fail him.”

“Because you never have. And you never will.”

He exhales a soft breath. “Your faith in me is terrifying.”

“Welcome to my world.” I curl into his side, unwilling to sleep even though I’m tired, but I resent the need. Each time I close my eyes, I lose six or seven hours with him, and they are too few. The ache threatens to overwhelm me.

March wraps his arms around me and rubs his cheek against my hair, which is not silky or smooth. The curls are coarse and wild, as they ever have been, and he tangles his fingers in them possessively. I kiss the column of his throat.

“Can we really do this?” he asks, sotto voce.

“What?” It’s cowardly, but I pretend I don’t know where his mind has gone because I don’t want to talk about it.

“How many turns will we be apart, Jax? One was…endless.”

That parting came on the heels of a longer separation, where he didn’t know if I was alive or dead. I feel guilty doing
this to him, but it’s not better on my end. I could lie. I could say any number of things, but that’s not my style. So I choose brutal honesty instead. If he wants to end this, I won’t try to talk him out of it, no matter how much it hurts, no matter that it’s his voice I hear in silent moments.

“It will get worse,” I reply. “Once we force the Conglomerate to limit space travel, and La’heng becomes a red port, you won’t be able to visit.”

By his flinch, he hasn’t let himself think of that. “They’ll probably lock down the comm, too.”

I nod. “No messages in or out until it’s over, once we begin.”

His arms tighten on me. “Mary, I hate feeling like this.”

“Like what?” As if I don’t know.

March can’t bring himself to say the words aloud, but he doesn’t have to.
That despite how much we’ve been through, this is it.
This
is what we can’t surmount. You can’t leave Loras…he needs you here. And I can’t stay with Sasha. It’s too dangerous.

I share his foreboding.
I wish I had a solution or a magic pill. But I don’t. So just know this—I love you. And I always will.

“No more of this,” he says hoarsely.

“We have time yet. Let’s make the most of it.”

And we do.

The next day, I work with March to coordinate assaults that will do the most damage. I hand him the datapad with the intel the resistance has collected and he skims it, brow furrowed as he analyzes the probability of victory. “No. No. Too much ground resistance. But here, they’ve reduced sentries because of budgetary considerations, and the damage to the infrastructure would be considerable if you pulled off a successful strike.”

I make a note of where, and we move on. The morning passes in that fashion, and, in the afternoon, we meet with the rest of the team to talk strategy and resources. March works with Zeeka on explosives while Vel puts in a word or two to clarify. The Mareq soaks it in all in, learning fast, while Constance logs everything. She will be our hub, making sure the left hand knows what the right is doing.

March and I spend our nights loving as if there’s no tomorrow, yet the time goes too damn fast. I resent each sunrise because it draws me nearer to the day when he returns to the spaceport to take ship away from here. The Imperial bastards have grown complacent since the ruling. By the increased centurion presence, I think they expected some form of peaceful protests, mobs in need of dispersing. But lulling them is only the beginning of the plan. Once they stop expecting an attack—and after March and Sasha are safely away—then we strike.

On the eleventh day, Sasha talks March into taking him for a ride in the shuttle Vel has finished modding. Vel has taken him out before, but the kid wants some time with his uncle. He’s not whiny; it was a casual request, or rather, more of a challenge to “show his stuff.” I wonder if March has ever piloted for Sasha. All his adventures must seem far removed from their normal life.

Vel finds me surrounded by maps with targets marked. I’ve prioritized with color codes, so I won’t forget which facilities need to go first.

But he doesn’t want to talk about the coming war. “Are you well, Sirantha?”

No doubt he’s referring to the imminent departure. “I’ll be fine.”

“Will you?”

I’d tolerate that kind of prying from nobody else. “In time. You forget…this is what I do. I lock it down and move on. I was made to be broken.”

“I do not forget.” A layered statement.

“Does it bother you to have him here?” That’s a silly, human question, and I know his answer before he voices it.

His mandible flares in honest denial. “Of course not. March makes you happy. That is all I require. If that ever changed, if he
hurt
you, then I would kill him.”

That’s not an empty promise, and it makes me smile, though maybe it shouldn’t. But it would take a better woman than I not to be pleased he cares enough to kill for me. Vel’s devotion is precious and rare; I’m lucky to have him. Lucky to have them both.

Unfortunately, I’m not the sort of person whose luck runs hot long.