Hero (8 page)

Either the local medical teams understood triage, or Zucker had managed to have Metzadans run the evacuation, Peled decided with satisfaction.

Accompanied by the whine of the engine, the slowly turning rotor picked up speed. Peled snapped down his faceplate and turned away as the helo lifted into the air.

There were only two helos left, and it was getting to be time to clear out.

But first, there were the Casas to deal with. And the fucking Commerce Department observer.

He—well, it could be a she, but most of them were male—looked silly, standing off to the side in the red, bulky, all-over body armor that the Thousand Worlds Commerce Department provided for wear in the field. It was important to the CD that their representatives be both visible—and the bright, day-glo crimson was that—and protected. The armor, a product of offworld technology that even Metzada couldn't duplicate, and certainly wouldn't be permitted to import, could protect the TW observer from a stray round or even burst, or a near miss of a grenade. Additional protection for the observer was provided by an overhead CD helo and a squad of Peacemakers, each in shiny black reticulated armor, looking for all the worlds like a half dozen oversized insects.

The armor and bodyguards wouldn't do any good, not outside the fringes of a real battle, and it was a certainty that the observer knew that. The TW might be run by a bunch of assholes, but that didn't make them cowards.

Under the eye of the silent observer, Shimon Bar-El squared off against the fedeltists.

II Distacamento de la Fedeltà, the Casalingpaesesercito Loyalty Detachment, dressed its officers and enlisted differently than the plain olive drab or speckled camo of the Casa regulars: their uniforms were black tunics over scarlet trousers, the three officers' tunics trimmed in gold and silver, their six enlisted bodyguards' in yellow and white. They were all in garrison uniforms, not field gear, despite the businesslike rifles the bodyguards were carrying. Each of the officers had a shiny chromed pistol in an open holster. Ridiculous, for a combat zone.

Peled never liked garritroopers. Standing next to rumpled, dirty Colonello Sergio Chiabrera, who held a borrowed Barak in two clenched fists, they looked like toy soldiers.

But if an apparently harmless writing stylo could kill—and Peled knew that it could; he had done it—so could a shiny chromed pistol, completely unsuited for a combat zone.

Chiabrera pursed his lips and nodded a greeting at Peled.

Shimon, Dov looming next to him, had squared off with the Casas. That put them squarely between where the Casas and Sergio eyed the captives—

No. Peled caught himself. Shimon and Dov stood
between
the Casas,
including
Sergio Chiabrera, and the Freiheimer captives, each hand-and leg-cuffed, each controlled by two husky Metzadan PFCs, rifles and knives rigged properly, well out of the prisoners' reach.

"—you really must turn the prisoners over to us. We'll find out the truth, never fear, General," said the senior fedeltist, a major. He was a short, stocky man with a too-easy grin, his cheeks and chin covered in a manifestly affected combat soldier's three-day beard. "We'll find out the truth." He spoke Basic with the fluid melody of a native speaker of Italiano.

Shimon shook his head. "Negative on that, Maggiore Zuchelli. Once I turn them over to you, they're saboteurs. Caught out of uniform, local rules apply. We caught them in
your
uniforms. If they're Casalingpaesan—"

"Please."

"—if they're Casas, dammit, then you're in violation of our contract: deliberate assault on friendly forces."

"And our helo? What was that?"

Bar-El's lips whitened. "My men, dammit, came under fire from the Casa helo,
after
it was warned off. You want to make something of it?"

"Three of his men were killed by that helo, Maggiore," Chiabrera said quietly.

"
No.
That's not the way I play the game, Colonel Chiabrera. Irrelevant," Shimon Bar-El said. "We didn't down the helo because it killed some of my men; I ordered it down because it posed a threat to my regiment.
Claro?
"

Next to him, Dov stiffened, desisting at Bar-El's microscopic headshake.

The fedeltist didn't catch it. "These sorts of things happen, Generale, as well you know. 'Friendly fire is not,' eh?"

Bar-El looked the DF officer over long and hard. Then he shrugged. "Fine. And as to these, if they're not Casas, then they've dressed as Casas in order to provoke an apparent violation, and that puts them outside the rules. They stay under my control. Your local rules are more restrictive, but at the moment they're captives of war—no rights."

The fedeltist opened his mouth as though to say something, but closed it. He smiled broadly, then spread his arms, wordlessly announcing that he wouldn't be bothered by issues of rights in his questioning of the prisoners.

It was half-clever, and Zuchelli almost strutted his pleasure. The TW observer was behind him, and wouldn't have been able to see the smile. From the point of view of the Thousand Worlder, the fedeltist had thrown up his hands in frustration at the Metzadan's intransigence. On Shimon's head be it.

Bureaucrat.
Peled turned his back to the fedeltist and puffed for his private line to Bar-El. "He's just playing for the observer, Shimon," Peled whispered into his microphone. "I don't think he really wants them; he just wants to make it clear that he's not responsible for what we do to them."

He turned back in time to see Shimon Bar-El shake his head, as though to say, "Don't bother me with the obvious."

The elder of the two Freiheimers straightened fractionally; a Metzadan hand whipped out and clutched the back of his head. "I am Horst Fleiss, stabsunter-offizier, Der Freiheimdemokratischrepublik. Upon proper request, I will give you my vater's name and my service number; I will tell you nothing more." He squinted hard against the daylight, and didn't appear to be focusing properly. Metzadan doctrine for controlling prisoners in the field called for a few drops of carbachol sprayed into each eye.

Shimon didn't seem to hear him. He looked at the other Freiheimer. This one was younger, probably about eighteen standard years, wide-eyed. There was a trickle of fresh blood at the right side of his mouth.

Shimon looked at Dov and raised an eyebrow.

"Not me, Uncle Shimon."

"I didn't like the looks of one of his molars," Sergeant David Elon said, brandishing his medician's scanner.

"Poison pill?"

Elon grinned, then shook his head. "Just a lousy crown," he said, digging two fingers into a chest pocket, pulling out a bloodied white tooth. "I guessed wrong." He shrugged. "Not all that elite, eh? Exit-pill was in his pocket," he said, rattling a small glassine vial.

"Name?" Shimon asked.

The younger Freiheimer didn't answer.

"You will not make him talk, either." Fleiss drew himself up proudly.

Bar-El puffed out his cheeks and sighed in irritation. "I don't have a lot of time for this, but let's give it a try, anyway. You were caught in Casa uniforms; by local rules, that makes you saboteurs. Death sentence, but the Geneva protections apply.

"But we're not under Casa authority, not at the moment. We're technically allied, not subordinate. That means that you've attacked us in allied uniforms. By my reading of the codes, that puts you outside the rules, and makes you captives of war. No rights. I can't turn you over to the Casas, 'cause all they can do is kill you or interrogate you under Geneva rules. And if they don't execute you as saboteurs, they'll prisoner-trade you.

"I'm not going to have that. Once we're out of my area of operations—and, shit, this is only technically my AO because you jumped us in it—they'll have the authority to ask for you, and they will, unless I've got some results out of you.

"I can't turn you over to my interrogation team for a sharp needle and a quick chat, because they're still skyside." Bar-El shrugged. "Comments?"

"It sounds like you have a problem, Herr General Bar-El." The stabsunteroffizier's voice dripped with sarcasm.

"Dov.
No
."

The big man had shifted marginally; he froze in place.

Shimon Bar-El sighed as he looked over at Peled. "You've got your battalion staff put together?"

"Not really. Not yet."
Dammit, Shimon, you know I'm not an organizer.

"Fine. I'll take care of it," the general said, turning back to the prisoners. "Well, then, we'd better end this now," he said, more to himself than to anybody. "Observer," he called out. "Over here, if you please."

Stiff-legged in his armor, the Thousand Worlder walked over, a brace of Peacemakers at each elbow.

Peled's boys, their weapons held almost mechanically at port arms, looked over the Peacemakers carefully.

"That is a
red
light on the assholes in the black armor, people," Peled whispered on All Hands One. "Big red light."

Without even trying, Peled could remember a dozen times he would have liked to have blown away one of the Thousand of alone Worlders, but the TW assholes controlled the Gate system, and without the Gate system, Metzada would be isolated from the rest of the universe, and you couldn't have that.

"Can we get a ruling on the status of the Freiheimers?" Shimon asked.

"No." The observer's voice was mechanically distorted; Peled couldn't guess the observer's age, or even gender. "I am here to observe and report, not to judge."

"Then observe this." Shimon jerked his head; guards dragged the two Freiheimers over to the side of the road and secured them, neck, wrist and ankles, to two trees.

The guards moved away.

"Dov. Aim."

Dov slowly brought his shotgun out and lined it up on one of the Casas. The younger one, the silent one.

"Start with the feet, Dov. Time's up, Fleiss. Last chance. I want some truth, and I want it now."

Peled puffed for All Hands One. "Tel Aviv Ten. Shotgun, firing many."

Behind him there was a hoarse whisper. "Nobody flinches. Nobody."

"Dov," Shimon Bar-El said. "Now."

Dov fired into the scream.

He fired again, into the screams and the whimpers, and a third time, into the whimpers and the silence.

And again, until the seven-shot clip was empty.

"Somebody reload for Dov," Shimon said.

They cleared out in an hour, taking with them a babbling Freiheimer stabsunteroffizier, leaving behind the Distacamento Fedeltà to deal with the bloody mess that had been a tree with a war captive tied to it, and the Peacemakers to see to the security of a gagging Thousand Worlds observer who was now out of the protection suit that couldn't get rid of a few ounces of sour vomitus.

That was the first time that Mordecai Peled laughed all morning.

CHAPTER 6

Questions

Ari slammed the helo's door shut and then quickly backed away, ducking reflexively as the whirring blades sped up. The rush of air pushed him down, the dust raised by the wind beat hard against his faceplate as he stepped back, half bent over, a peasant leaving the presence of a king.

At best.

He wiped his hands on his khakis. He stank of blood and piss and shit, but none of the blood was his; you could get awfully dirty loading injured men and pieces of men into helos for the trip to the nearest hospital.

The Casa helo lifted off its skids, rising only a couple of meters before it dropped its nose and moved off, building speed quickly, gaining altitude only slowly.

Ari reslung his rifle patrol-style, then squatted and wiped his hands on his knees. They were about the cleanest part of his khakis. There was blood on his hands, and he couldn't get it off.

What would Miriam say if she saw him now? What would his mothers say? And his—

"Easy, easy, with the hands." Benyamin said from behind him. Ari hadn't heard him move up. "That's the last one."

"Good." Ari kept wiping his hands.

"Stop fidgeting," Benyamin said. He pulled an envelope out of his breast pocket and tore it open, handing Ari the stericloth. The cloth was wet and cool against his skin, and it cleaned the grime and gore from Ari's hands, but it didn't make him feel clean.

There was always something special, if strained, about Ari's relationship with Benyamin. It wasn't that they shared a birth mother. Both of their father's wives had always treated all the boys the same, as far as Ari could tell, except that Yael—Tetsuo and Shlomo's mother—seemed to go out of her way a bit more for Benyamin than anyone else, watching out for him, just as Benyamin watched over Ari.

"Just take it easy," Benyamin said. "It'll all be over in a while. For a while. It's true what they try to teach you in school: relax while you can." He beckoned Ari over to the side of a road and leaned against a tree, loosening his own pack straps. Benyamin had had the squad reclaim their gear from the wreckage of the bus; their bus hadn't burned, so while the packs had been scattered, it was all intact.

Benyamin muttered something into his mike, then dug into his buttpack, coming out with a dull black canteen. He took a short drink, then passed it to Ari. "Take a swig."

The water was warm and brackish, but it was good.

"Look," Benyamin said, his face grim as death. "There's no point in pretending. You're in deep shit. You and Slepak. You both froze, first time out. I'll see what I can do, but this isn't good. Just remember that you caught the fringe of a blast. You don't remember much after that."

"Benyamin, I—"

"You shut up." Benyamin's grip on his sleeve was numbing. "You just shut up, shithead. Your way didn't work out, so you do it my way. There's no other options. The big three don't count. You can't claim battle shock," he said, extending a finger, "not on your first time out. You can't claim that you weren't ready—" another finger "—because Kelev was operational. You can't claim a gross physical injury, because you don't have one. You don't have a defense, so you just do it my way. Understood?"

"Yes."

"Very good." Benyamin smiled. It was a report. "So, I'll fix it, best as I can. Zucker owes me—he'll remember that you had a dilated pupil when he examined you. You don't remember much—just that you're a bit confused about what happened. Tetsuo'll be down later today, and I'll talk to him first thing tomorrow, have him square things with Galil."