Sebastian saluted again, stiffly, and slowly walked out of the tent, aware of the eyes on his back. It was a long, long walk back to the entrance, through the heavy and oppressive air, and an even longer one down the rows of tents, dodging the people who walked past, through the too-loud whispers and unconcealed smirks.
It was getting dark again, the last flowering of light already wilting, ashen shadows growing and lengthening. Sebastian stuck to the shadows, kept his head down, kept walking.
He found his bubble tent and ducked inside.
There was his folding cot, on which he’d unrolled his sleeping bag, his duffel bag parked on the ground. The stock of the Silver Talon shotgun poked from the half-open zipper. A folding table, a chair that was more wireframe than actual furniture. And that was it.
He ran his hands through his hair, and stopped them there, a claw on either side of his skull. He dug his fingers into his scalp, gritted his teeth and fought down the urge to scream.
Melanie. He had to talk to Melanie. No way he could sit and wait here. No way.
He turned, stepped outside again, got his bearings, and began to march towards her tent. If she was confined to quarters, there would be a guard, but he’d bully or bluff his way past, or, or he’d do something, he didn’t know what. But he had to talk with her. No way he could leave this, like an open wound. No way.
There was no guard outside.
Sebastian slowed his walk. He craned his neck, looking around. But no, the guard hadn’t just wandered off a little or sat down or gone for a smoke. There was no sign of a guard at all. Soldiers walked past him in either direction, nobody taking any notice. No alarms. Like nothing had happened.
Sebastian walked slowly to the tent, twitched open the flap, took one more look around to make sure nobody was looking, and went inside. The interior was much like his own tent, only without the desk and chair. Cot, sleeping bag and blanket, duffel bag. Sebastian crouched by the bag, guilt over his nosiness in full retreat before his growing concern. But there was nothing, only clothing and a few personal effects in the bag, a few mementoes of their time together and her family. No signs of violence or a struggle.
Only, a torn-open message pouch and a small strip of paper on the pillow. With a single line of text.
His guilt was utterly routed, curled up into a tiny corner of his psyche, telling him not to mind it, to pick up the paper and read it. A starkly short, simple message.
’Mech park warehouse C / 2200 / Bhandari
Sebastian held the paper by either edge in his hands. Well, if she’d gone there, the guard would have gone with her, so, two absences explained. But. Odd. Bhandari, his Chief Tech. Had some mechanical problem happened with the Griffin? But then, he wasn’t Melanie’s Tech, so why would he send a message about it? He had to know she was under investigation, so why even ask her to come down in person anyway.
Bhandari. Who’d been happy to let his men lynch someone for being rude about Duke Anton.
And then. Sebastian had gotten a message, just like this. The day a man tried to assassinate him at the spaceport. He’d assumed the familia had arranged the message, but, what if.
Sebastian shot to his feet, paper falling from sightless fingers, and he plunged headfirst out of the tent, and sprinted back to his own. A weapon, he needed a weapon. There, the Silver Talon. He yanked it from the duffel bag, fumbled for a box of shells, cracked the receiver open and loaded the shotgun, clicked it shut.
The ’Mech park. He ran, shotgun clutched crosswise against his chest, breath coming in harsh rasps against the ache in his side. Cursing himself, cursing his slow, sluggish legs. Faster, faster. If anything had happened, he’d. He’d. He’d kill them, kill every last one of them, he’d kill himself, he’d burn this world to a cinder. Please, let her be okay. Let nothing have happened to her.
Figures loomed in the dusk, and he dodged aside, ignored a protesting shout, a sarcastic ‘Where’s the fire?’, kept running.
The BattleMech gantries loomed larger, ancient dark statues against the blue-black sky. Sebastian slowed, listened. The park was mostly empty, still. There was only a small crew working on Demir’s Orion, trying to straighten an armor plate with a power hammer. The steady, echoing crump was the only sound.
The prefab warehouses were to the side. Where was C? It was the biofuel depot, for the ground vehicles. Lower priority, further from the ’Mechs. Isolated, where few people would go. Sebastian dashed down the line of buildings, spotted a line of light under a door. One last spurt.
He crashed a shoulder against the door and rebounded back, drawing a hiss of pain. Damn thing was locked. He leveled the shotgun at the mechanism, waited for the crump of the power hammer against the Orion, and fired, the echoing thud masking the sound. He kicked the door open.
There was a short corridor, ending in another door. A woman screamed from the other side.
Sebastian charged, burst through the door.
It was a small, claustrophobic office. Tyler Kobayashi, Melanie’s Tech, lay sprawled in a heap on the floor, as though asleep, but his overalls were stained black and red. Melanie was tied to a chair in the center of the room, black plastic ties around her wrists and ankles. Bhandari stood in front of her. His face looked bruised and puffy on one side. He held a square metal can in both hands and was using it to slosh a thick, sweet-smelling liquid onto the floor at her feet.
‘What the—’ said a voice at Sebastian’s ear.
Melanie’s tent guard was right by the door. Sebastian whirled, smashing the butt of the shotgun into the man’s face with a satisfying crunch, throwing the man back against the wall as he screamed, blood spurting from his nose.
Bhandari looked up, eyes wide in shock. He dropped the can, reached for a knife at his belt.
Sebastian fired from the hip.
Bhandari’s face and neck dissolved in a hundred violent, red detonations. He toppled backwards, into the spreading pool at Melanie’s feet, twitched once and was still.
The guard was still slumped against the wall, moaning, holding his face in both hands, blood running from between his fingers. Sebastian dropped the shotgun, reached down and pulled the man’s service pistol from its holster. Pressed it against the side of the man’s head.
‘No wait—’ the man bubbled.
Sebastian fired. Felt something spatter against his face.
‘Seb, Unity. Seb, what the frack is going on?’ Melanie’s voice quavered, hoarse from screaming.
Sebastian tucked the pistol into the back of his waistband, bent beside Bhandari’s body, drew the man’s knife and sawed through the ties around Melanie’s wrists. ‘Streicher thinks you’re a traitor,’ he explained, working the blade back and forth furiously. ‘I think Bhandari took the opportunity to—’
Her hands freed, Melanie grabbed Sebastian’s head in both hands, pulled him towards her and kissed him fiercely, desperately. He was aware of nothing else, only the shape of her pressed against him, the feel of her, the only thing real that existed in the entire galaxy. Alive, she was alive, he was alive, he could go on living, knowing she was alive.
Sometimes it seemed so hard to know what was real, what mattered, what should matter, but here, now, everything was simple.
And it wasn’t. Sebastian pulled reluctantly away. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘Let me get your legs free.’ He bent down, just as he heard a voice behind him.
‘Bhandari?’
Melanie’s head jerked up. Sebastian spun, drawing the guard’s pistol even as the door flew open, and Rafael Moreno crashed into the room.
Sebastian brought the gun up, but Moreno’s foot lashed out, catching his wrist, throwing the pistol to one side so his shot impacted against the prefab wall and punched a ragged hole in it.
Moreno charged into Sebastian, making him gasp in pain, and they both grabbed for the pistol, grunting and wrestling, faces inches apart. Moreno shoved Sebastian, and his foot slid out from under him, slick with oil. He went down on one knee. The pistol was twisting, twisting around.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Melanie had the knife, was frantically slashing at the ties about her ankles. Just had to buy her time to get free.
Sebastian rocked his head back then smashed it forward, headbutting Moreno in the nose, and then man screamed but held onto the gun. The pressure loosened though, letting Sebastian surge back to his feet. He had the pistol almost free, hammered a chop down on Moreno’s forearm, got one hand off the gun. One more second.
Moreno laughed.
‘Ahm glad you came, chief,’ he hissed. ‘Means she gets to watch you die first.’ He suddenly let go his grip on the pistol, danced back a step.
Before Sebastian could aim, Moreno spun in a roundhouse kick. Right into Sebastian’s bruised ribs. The air whooshed out of him, and he fell, tripped over the body of Kobayashi, and crashed gasping to the floor. Blinded by tears. The pistol knocked from his grasp, thumping to the floor at Moreno’s feet.
‘Think you can order me around, academy boy?’ Moreno chuckled, crouched and picked up the pistol. Sebastian couldn’t answer, couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything by curl around the black hole of pain that had opened in his side.
Stupid hurt, wounded pride. He was going to die, because one man didn’t like taking orders from someone younger than himself. They were fighting a war to decide the future of a fifth of humanity, but this is what it came down to. Not noble principles. Not lofty goals. Revenge. Pride. Prejudice and hate. Liberty, freedom, good government, strong leadership, they were just paper-thin excuses. Not real.
No, what was real was Moreno’s resentment. And the gun now in his hand.
Moreno smiled. ‘Good-bye, chief.’
Moreno’s head was jerked back, Melanie’s hand wrapped around a handful of his carefully gelled hair. Bhandari’s knife was in her hand, and she plunged it into Moreno’s neck, and twisted. His eyes bulged and rolled up, blood bubbled and trickled from between his teeth. His hand flapped weakly, trying to find the hole in his neck, trying to stop the flow of blood gushing around the knife hilt. Moreno tried to swing the gun around, but his arm just flopped loosely, vaguely. He vomited another bright gush of blood and went slack.
Melanie let go Moreno’s hair and the knife, let the both slide to the ground. She spat on his dead face. Then knelt beside Sebastian, and gently levered him up from the floor into a sitting position, his head cradled against her chest.
It was one of those moments he wished would never end, that he could stretch into infinity. Eternally here, eternally in her arms, knowing she was safe.
But of course, she wasn’t. Not with Streicher sure of her treachery, especially not with Bhandari and Moreno dead, without witnesses. No, regardless of what they’d done, what they’d prevented from being done, she was very definitely not safe.
Sebastian was in pain, unimaginable pain. And the thing was, he was about to do something that would hurt much worse.