John Barnes - Daybreak Zero

“A big juicy steak, a long hot bath, and sleeping next to Beth,” Jason said.

“Yeah, but… what would we tell Heather about Castle Earthstone? That it’s roughly a battalion-strength fort equipped to fight at about a Roman or medieval level. Nothing behind it, really, just this one big fort in what used to be north central Indiana. But wouldn’t that be what Daybreak wanted us to say? While it prepared for something really big?”

“Like how big?” Jason asked.

“That’s its pattern. Big blows from unexpected directions. In the past six weeks there’ve been massive attacks at Castle Castro, Mota Elliptica, and Pullman; and Grayson’s Youghiogheny campaign won, but it took a fifth of the existing army to go a hundred miles into the Lost Quarter, and they took a beating going in and out. Apparently even in sparse, resource-poor areas, Daybreak can put together regiment- or even brigade-sized attacks. And the Lost Quarter has far more resources, and probably people, than any area we’ve been attacked from so far.”

Larry’s head bobbed emphatically. “That’s got to be it. Oh, shit, you’re right. We aren’t the brilliant scouts we thought. We sure as hell didn’t walk up the Tippecanoe Valley without being spotted; they stayed hidden from us, not vice versa. We have been fed , gentlemen.”

“Fed?” Jason asked.

“Intel slang. Sometimes when you identify a spy, you leave him in place and use him to feed disinformation to the enemy,” Chris said. “Yeah. If we got away, we were supposed to report that the Lost Quarter is empty, to help hide whatever they’re brewing for next spring.”

Larry leaned back, chewed on his jerky, thought some more, took a sip of water, and finally said, “Well, hunh.”

“Larry, from you ‘well, hunh’ means what other people mean when they scream, ‘We’re all gonna die!’” Chris observed. “Could you maybe share a thought or two with us?”

“Sorry, yeah, look, check me out on this. Suppose we do what they’ll expect and go south or west. We see nothing that we haven’t already seen, and go home and tell people there’s nothing big here. Or since Daybreak knows we’re coming, we get caught. Daybreak wins either way.

“So I’m thinking, not back the way we came. Head east, then north, right through the Lost Quarter, then out through the Provi bases on Lake Erie. Daybreak won’t know where to look for us, and whatever we’re not supposed to see is going to be up that way.”

“And we’ll run into way more trouble and walk a couple hundred extra miles,” Chris observed.

“Yep,” Larry said. “And we can put at least three miles, maybe five, into it before dark.”

Still someone else’s turn, Heather thought. She looked over her big chart and thought, Four days of talking and I’ve added about two cards to this, and haven’t moved a line. Abundant noise and heat and not one trace of light or motion.

Well, maybe that would change tomorrow. Maybe both sides would realize that Harrison Castro’s little theft of their thunder was a way to show them all how irrelevant they were— and irrelevant is the one thing that none of them can stand to be. I hope.

She saw Graham Weisbrod coming across the courthouse lawn; good, it looked like Allie wouldn’t be along tonight, either. The big chart, still unchanged, slid back into place, and she picked up Leo, locked the office door behind herself, and went downstairs to meet Graham at her living quarters. A night of old times’ conversation, baby-inspecting, and nostalgic laughter was probably what was really needed, right now, anyway.

Pat O’Grainne had lived a long time, and it kept feeling longer, especially with this silly ceremony to get through. The one thing you can say for being in a wheelchair, it’s easy on your feet and the small of your back. All I have to do is not fall asleep. Though I wish I could. Heather is so gonna not like this, and I ain’t wild about it myself.

The crowd stirred down below. A horn group that sounded like an underrehearsed high school band played something or other. Guys in capes and plumed hats ( what’s he doing, swearing in the Castle Castro Musketeers? ) went clumping down the aisle to the silly music, followed by Harrison Castro and a bunch of his officers.

At least their uniforms were plain black, with red berets; they merely looked like ninja Boy Scouts.

Please, God, let this be short.

No such luck. A bunch of guys stood up and talked about how Harrison Castro was the cat’s pajamas, the bee’s knees, the man, and the shit; how historic this, that, and the other was; and the long and short of it was that everyone thought Castro was a good guy and this was a big fucking day.

Oh, for a tall glass of cold beer. This is only the introduction.

The main event was four more drummy, stompy, horn-infested parades to bring the freeholders of Irvine, Laguna, Newport, and Castle Rand down the aisle. They lined them up in front of the dais where Castro stood, dressed up like he was going to a science fiction convention as a space mercenary.

Finally the four freeholders were sworn in as Knights Deputies, which was what Castro was calling his feudal branch office managers. He was also declaring himself the Earl of San Diego and Leader of the League of Southern California Castles.

The first time Pat had heard the term, he’d thought, Leading the League in what, balls or errors? No matter how many funny suits Castro put on, what he was, was a cross between an old-fashioned asshat contractor and a high-income biker. The old-style contractors Pat had worked for too often in his younger days had shouted constantly about how nobody was going to tell them what to do and that they were free and independent men, while mostly living off government contracts and lecturing actual shovel-jockeys about hard work. The alpha bikers had been dentists, lawyers, or accountants with enough money to buy the really awesome toys; they had been generous with drinks and advice, the gist of which was that if you were as smart as they were, you’d be them, so obviously what you needed was a stiff drink and some bracing advice.

Heather had asked Pat to send her everything he could remember about this ceremony, so he did his best to concentrate on Harrison Castro’s speech, the longest explanation Pat had ever heard for why smart rich people deserved to be rich because they were so smart, and were obviously smart because they were so rich. That night in his room, he used up half his candle ration for the week, and there were nine handwritten coded pages. It was cold, so he burned his scratchwork, and as the room warmed up, finally fell asleep, thinking about how all the movies had lied about what the life of a spy was like.

Roger put in his next-to-last magazine. Counting the one in the chamber he was down to nine rounds—eight, saving one for himself.

More than twenty tribals on the ground floor below him.

They could come up two staircases, one at each end of the concrete hallway, but he could cover both of those from his improvised fort at the central desk on the floor. They could set the building on fire and make him come down one staircase, but on his way down he’d have another chance to take one or two with him. When it comes to getting shot at the end of the game, everybody wants to be in the back row.

Angry shouting: “All right, follow me!”