John Ringo: Against the Tide

“And in wyvern wings.” Megan nodded, zipping up the back. “That’s why they’re impenetrable.”

Bast folded up her hair in a quick bun and slipped a cover over her head. Like the rest of the suit it was nearly invisible.

“What do you think?” she asked, posing again and then turning in place.

The suit was essentially transparent except in carefully selected… mildly opaque spots.

“Put your eyes back in your head, Herzer,” Megan said, dryly. “Besides, you’ve seen it.”

“But this is… different,” Herzer said, wonderingly. The suit glittered faintly in the lamplight and he remembered what Bast had said about diamonds. That was, essentially, what the suit was, a flexible covering of solid diamond.

“Third floor,” Megan said, chuckling, “combat lingerie…”

The elf ignored the byplay and picked up her bow and saber.

“Ready?” she asked Herzer.

“Sure,” Herzer replied, bemusedly. “Why don’t you always wear that?”

“Doesn’t breathe very well,” Bast said, frowning. “Gets hot. Hard to take off in case want fun.” Her eyes grew distant and she frowned, then looked at Megan and reached out to stroke her face. “Say no goodbyes, yet.”

“Why?” Megan asked, tilting her face to the side.

“Is not time,” Bast replied, frowning. “ Gaslan is… -shifting…”

“Message from station one-three-seven, Mr. J,” the messenger said, handing over a sealed envelope.

“Thank you,” Joel said as the messenger left. He slit the -envelope open and frowned at the contents. One cheek twitched for a moment and then he stepped quickly into his secretary’s anteroom and opened up a speaking tube.

“Communications,” a voice said when he whistled into it.

“Operational Immediate to all stations…” he said.

Brice Cruz had been a Blood Lord when most of the pussies going through the chow line hadn’t heard the name.

Sure, he’d had his problems. Been up the ranks, been down the ranks. But kicking him out of the corps over a few miserable bandits had really pissed him off. At first. Herzer had been the one to bring him the news. He’d known Herzer since right after the Fall, when they were both apprentices in Raven’s Mill. And he knew that Herzer would go to bat for him.

So when Herzer had told him that Herzer’s recommendation had been a full court-martial, well, he had to think.

He’d spent a good bit of the next year thinking. Besides starving there wasn’t much else to do. Gunny Rutherford had recited a poem one time, something about Black Sheep. One of the lines was about “slipping down the ladder, rung by rung.” That was his life in a nutshell. When you’re too dangerous to be a soldier, and too honorable to be a bandit and a lousy farmer, there wasn’t much going but “slipping down the ladder, rung by rung.” The only thing that kept him from thinking about it was what wine and beer he could afford working as a wandering laborer.

They’d found him in a miserable slop of a tavern, drunk as an owl on bad wine and near half dead. They’d sobered him up and then started asking questions. After a while, he realized that if the answers were wrong, he wasn’t walking out of the hut they’d taken him to. But the answers were right. And so he’d been given a new job. It wasn’t as good as being a Blood Lord and really getting it stuck in. But, and this was the key point, they’d promised him that if he was a good boy and played by the rules, he’d occasionally get to kill people. The flip side being that if he fisked with them, even once, he’d be visited by unpleasant gentlemen with similar abilities and then there would be no more Brice Cruz.

He’d thought they were crazy when they put him back in Raven’s Mill. But it was remarkable what a change of hair and skin color along with a few things you could do with a face could do. Nobody had twigged. And, after all, he knew the town and the Blood Lord Academy inside and out. He’d been there before half the buildings were built. Had built a third of them.

He’d taken a job in the kitchens and done a professionally middling job. Never so good that he could get promoted, never so bad that he got fired. And he kept his ears open. From time to time he passed on bits of information that he’d picked up. Nothing much, Raven’s Mill in a lot of ways was a backwater.

This morning was unusual, though. The commandant had called for a surprise inspection. And he’d heard one of the headquarters guards that was coming off duty saying that Councilwoman Sill and some undersecretary from the War Department were in the building. Just a surprise inspection wasn’t too odd; the commandant was a right bastard about them. But put it together with the visit, though, and something was happening.

He glanced at the clock and looked out the window. Right on time.

“Spell me,” he grunted to one of the assistant cooks. “I had too much coffee.”

He stepped out back to the latrines and opened up the door to the third stall.

“Clearly we need better facilities,” he said to no one in particular.

“It’s clear,” a voice answered from the next stall.

“Councilwoman Sill and an undersecretary from the War Department are at headquarters,” Cruz said, conversationally. “And there’s a surprise inspection. Maybe dog and pony show for them. Lots of tenseness going around.”

“I heard half of that already,” his control said in a hard voice. “And we have a problem.”

“What’s that?” Cruz asked, buttoning up his pants.

“You’ve got a mission,” the control said. “One that you have to take right now. Can you get in the headquarters?”

“Yeah,” Cruz replied. “If I really have to.”

“You really have to,” the control said, tightly. “It’s game time.”

“In the headquarters ?” Cruz said, trying to keep his voice down.

“In the headquarters,” the control replied. “Now. There is exactly no time.”

“I can’t get out ,” Cruz said, quietly but angrily.

“Let us handle that,” the control replied. “Just do it.”

“Fine one to talk!” Cruz snarled. “You won’t be looking down a platoon of swords!”

“It doesn’t matter,” the control replied. “This is game time. You took the salt. There is one way out of this organization and that is feet first. You can do it of old age or… other ways. But if you try to run, you’ll just die tired.”

“Son of a bitch,” Cruz said, quietly. “Fisk it. Everybody dies sometime. Who’s the target?”

“Do you understand your orders, General?” Edmund asked, watching First Legion file out of its fortified camp. They were leaving a half cohort to hold the walls; if everything went to hell, they could always fall back on it. The rest of them were marching silently to the south, towards the battle.

“Yes, sir,” General Lepheimer said. The legion commander was another political appointee but one that Edmund would have chosen himself. The UFS, the world, had precisely no military officers at the Fall. They were still trying to train a professional corps. But Lepheimer was a long term student of military history and his tactics, in simulated battles, map exercises and the few small skirmishes he had engaged in, had been sound.

Lepheimer chuckled dryly in the darkness and looked over at the duke.

“When I told my boys it was going to be a battle to tell their grandchildren about, I didn’t realize how right I was.”

“Well, if we have grandchildren to tell, it will be because of what they do today,” Edmund said.