'I hear you've been conversing with our Private Martin,' Stake said to the young man, who had to be less than twenty. He wanted this information straight from the source. If the youth wouldn't talk as readily to him as he had to an attractive young Earth woman, then he'd get the story from her instead. 'You said something to her about your partner, the Earth Killer?'
'Earth Killer.' A grin spread open in his face; it seemed to flash back the light itself. 'How could that traitor ever be known as Earth Killer again?'
His English was very good; this was the most Stake had heard him say. He stepped closer. 'Why do you call her a traitor?'
'She let us be caught, with no fight. There are not many of you now. Maybe in here we could have beat you, or pushed you back.'
Henderson couldn't stop himself from speaking up. 'I seriously doubt that, partner.'
'You did the right thing, surrendering,' Stake told him. 'Now maybe you'll make it out of this war alive. A smart choice doesn't make you a traitor.'
'She is a traitor. Letting you take us-that is not her true crime.' Now he turned his smile to Henderson. 'You were one of the soldiers in the clearing. Reading your friends' letters. I remember your face.'
Stake looked to Henderson. 'What's he talking about?'
Henderson dropped his eyes. 'It was a few hours before we came to the monastery, the day after Lindy and Lieutenant Babouris were killed by the sniper. Me and Privates LeDuc and Devereux were. well, we were all on the move, sir, but it was when the unit stopped to take a rest. The three of us crept aside into a tiny clearing. We had the personal belongings we'd taken off Lindy, and Privates Nguyen and Howland. We found some mail they'd printed out. We began to read the messages to each other, quietly. I don't know why. Maybe to pay tribute to them. LeDuc began it, by reading a letter Lindy's wife sent him. There were pictures in there of his children. And then I read a letter Howland's mother sent him, and there were even a few cookies in a little bag. I don't know if she shipped them to him or if he brought them with him. It looked like maybe he was just saving them, to have them. We each ate one of the cookies. And LeDuc was the first to start crying.'
Stake glanced down at the Ha Jiin boy. His grin appeared wider.
'We all three of us were crying, very quietly so no one would hear us. Not the enemy. And not our friends.'
'But we did hear you,' the Ha Jiin broke in. 'And we were watching you. And the woman had you in her sights all that time. Her finger on the trigger.'
Stake turned to him, not daring to believe it. 'She could have killed them?'
'More easily than she killed your two officers, and the two other men you were weeping for.' He tipped his chin at Henderson. 'But she waited. And waited. I looked at her. She let her gun down. I motioned to her-shoot them,
'Why?'
'I had to obey her. She is higher in rank.'
'No, I mean, why didn't she kill my men when she had the chance?'
'Why? Because she is a woman.' He snorted. 'She was strong when she was killing you from a distance, but she became soft when she was close enough to smell your tears.'
Stake looked away then, as if he could see the Earth Killer through the walls that separated them. 'She showed my men mercy, because they were defenseless just then. And because their loss touched her,' he said. 'That makes her human, not weak.'
'Human, like you? She is fighting to keep our nation whole! She is fighting against demons that step into our world out of the air, from some hell we can not see! She kills your officers and soldiers, and then spares the men who weep over those same dead men? She is a traitor. And someday I will be back with my own people, whether it takes me a year or ten years. And I will report her to my superiors as the traitor she is!'
Stake lunged forward then, and stood over the boy, and pointed the sidearm he had ripped out of its holster. Pointed it down at the surprised hole where those bright teeth had been gleaming seconds earlier. 'Who's soft now, huh? You'll be smelling your own tears in a minute. Probably your piss, too.'
'Sir,' Henderson said.
'Don't,' the young man blubbered, shielding his face ineffectively with one hand.
Stake backed off slowly, and returned his jungle-blue pistol to its holster. 'You owe that woman your ass, punk, whether you want to admit it or not.' He turned to leave the room. 'Come on, Henderson.'
Returning to the Earth Killer's cell, Stake found its door standing wide open. The room was empty. For a moment, his eyes went wild, but one of his men close by told him that Privates Martin and Devereux had taken the woman to clean herself up. Stake himself had given his people orders to allow her this. He headed toward the single large room where the monks cared for themselves. There, he found the two Colonial soldiers posted outside the open door. He heard water splashing against a body inside, but didn't see her from this angle.
'I was talking to the male prisoner,' Stake said to the unit's only female. 'Good job using your womanly wiles, Martin.'
Private Martin nodded. 'I'll try to find out anything else significant. He hates our guts, but it looks like he wouldn't mind bedding down with an Earth woman if he had a chance.'
'Speaking of womanly wiles, sir,' Devereux spoke up, 'some of us are getting concerned about you and this woman. The past couple of days you've been in there with her more than out here with us.'
'Don't worry about what I do, private.'
'I worry because you're our commanding officer now-corporal. And you're our commanding officer because that woman in there killed Babouris and Lindy. Is that so easy to forget, just because she's beautiful?'
'I haven't forgotten that. But did you know that woman spared your life a few days ago?'
'Martin told me. I don't believe it. Yes, we were reading letters in the clearing. Looking at pictures of Lindy's kids: a boy, five; a girl, two. Who'll never see their dad again, because that woman shot his face off. If you ask me, she didn't kill us just then because she thought it would draw too much fire, and her partner was already wounded. Not because she felt
'Believe what you want to believe.'
'I will. And I believe you're fraternizing with the enemy. Or is that sodomizing the enemy?'
'You will show me respect, private!' Stake roared. He thought he could hear the Earth Killer tense her body motionless, just then, as she listened to them in the next room.
'When we get out of here, you may find yourself reported, corporal.'
'If you do get out of here, you'll have that woman to thank for it.'
'Yeah?' He smirked. 'Like I say, it isn't just me who isn't too happy about how chummy you are with her. You know, you can't be with her every minute, as much as you might like that. And who knows; she might just try to escape. One of us might just have to shoot her in the back.'
Stake stepped closer, until his face was inches from the other man's face. So close, that his features were starting to mold themselves into Devereux's angry reflection. 'If someone makes that serious mistake, they might find themselves shot, too. In the front.'
Martin put a hand on Devereux's shoulder. 'You better do as the corporal says. No one has witnessed any improper behavior. We have to stick together, here. The Ha Jiin could move on this position at any time.'
Stake's compack beeped just then. It was affixed to his belt, and he glanced down at it. 'I'm going to take this call. See that woman safely back to her quarters when she's done, and get her some food.' He then stalked off with Henderson in tow.
Stake detached the little computer and thumbed it on in front of his face. Another man's visage appeared on its little screen. That visage was covered in a camouflage of blue patches, ranging from pastel to indigo. But the camouflage was not makeup, Stake knew, nor was it even tattooing. It was the man's natural coloration, if natural were the right word. Stake understood straight away that he was looking at a clone. Many of the Colonial Forces infantrymen were copies cloned from belf masters-soldiers bio-engineered to be better fighters. Stronger, hardier, with enhanced hearing and vision, and in this case better equipped to blend into their surroundings. Since the Earth Colonies had only been involved in the so-called Blue War for three years at this point, the man's blue-based camouflage meant that this clone was probably only a year or two old. And yet, a moment later Stake realized that this being outranked him.
