Each morning it was becoming harder to look in a mirror.
And that made little sense. He’d originated the frightful idea of blowing the deep-core mines and blaming the Highborn for it. He’d sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers to their doom. This political infighting, though, it felt different. Maybe it was the striving to stay on top, and the brutal killing to do it, that hammered at him. Maybe years at the top had worn him down. A colonel or general could only last so long in combat. Then he had to be rotated out of the field and into a quiet place to recuperate.
Yezhov lay limply on the gurney. The doctors began to move the mind-scanning equipment into position.
Hawthorne’s chest began to thump. He put his hand over his heart. It raced. His mouth was dry.
“Wait,” he croaked.
“Sir?” asked Mune.
Hawthorne strode to the one-way mirror. He pressed a call button and said in a dry voice, “Wait.”
The three doctors looked up.
“Don’t operate,” Hawthorne said.
“No mind-scan?” asked a doctor.
“I gave him my word,” Hawthorne said.
“His death isn’t certain,” a doctor said. “If you wish, we can perform a third level interrogation.” The doctor’s head twitched as if he saw something. Then he sharply turned toward one of the other doctors. “What are you doing?” he asked.
The questioned doctor never answered, but pressed a hypo against Yezhov’s arm.
“I asked you what you’re doing?” the first doctor said.
The questioned doctor yanked down his mask. He grinned wildly, with drool leaking from his lips. Then he exploded. Pieces of flesh and blood, and plastic, smacked against the ballistic glass of the one-way mirror. Smoke drifted in the chamber, and from somewhere, a klaxon began to wail. The other two doctors and Yezhov, their bodies were torn and bleeding.
Hawthorne stared at the wreckage. Then he felt Mune’s hands on him, turning him, propelling him toward the exit. Two things kept drumming in Hawthorne’s mind. He’d tried to keep his word. He would have let Yezhov live. The other thing beating in his brain was that there was a hidden enemy among them.
-12-
Yezhov’s death leaked out, and that infuriated Hawthorne.
“It’s possible there’s a traitor among the bionic soldiers?” he told Mune, a week after the incident.
They walked in a botanical garden in New Baghdad, on the Fifth Level. The lamps overhead shined brightly and with heat. It caused Hawthorne’s shirt underneath his uniform to stick to his sweaty skin. A glance at Mune showed an undisturbed captain.
Hawthorne wondered if Mune resented what the surgeons had done to him. The captain had artificial muscles, his bones were laced with titanium reinforcements and his nerves ran through plastic tubes instead of their natural sheathes. Added glands secreted various drugs, giving him heightened reflexes, strength and the ability to heal more quickly than a normal man could. It surprised Hawthorne that he’d never questioned Mune about it. He’d taken so much for granted with the captain. Did Mune feel sympathy for the cyborgs or a connection to the Highborn? If Mune did not, might not some of the other bionic soldiers question why they continued to fight for the losing side?
“I’ve considered the possibility of traitors, sir,” Mune said.
Hawthorne frowned, noticing movement in the distance. Moving a frond, he spied a gleam of metal several hundred meters away.
Mune turned that way. “It’s a cybertank, sir.”
“I’m aware of what a cybertank looks like, Captain. Why is it here?”
“Security, sir.”
“Is this your doing?” asked Hawthorne.
Mune inclined his head. “I approved Specialist Cone’s suggestion, sir. You said she had first-rate clearance and that I had full authority concerning your security.”
“You’re correct on both counts,” Hawthorne said. “But a cybertank—this is the garden level. It’s almost seems obscene to have the cybertank’s treads clanking among the experimental plants.”
Mune glanced toward the cybertank, but kept any opinions to himself.
“Hmm,” said Hawthorne. “Cone’s right. I must maintain tighter security. I just hope all these extra guards doesn’t smack of cowardice on my part.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but I wish you would show cowardice sometimes.”
“Captain?”
“It would make my task much easier, sir. You’re far too likely to enter a combat zone. Level Fifty-Three would be a good example of that, and your insertion into the assault on PHC Headquarters.”
“I must keep my hand on the pulse, and sometimes that entails risk.”
“If you say so, sir.”
Hawthorne opened the top button and pulled at his uniform, trying to let some of his body-heat escape. “Have you taken any measures among your men?”
“Loyalty tests, sir?”
“We’re not PHC,” Hawthorne said.
“I’ve made discrete inquires,” Mune said. “And I’m handpicking a group for you, sir.”
“What kind of group?”
“You need a guard team, sir.”
“I already have that.”
“When you enter a combat zone you have such a team, or usually when you enter one. My suggestion is that you maintain such a team at all times, giving them license to shot down anyone suspicious.”
“Hmm. Such a team can quickly turn into my jailors. I prefer you around me, Captain, and leave it at that.”
“I’m honored, sir. But the truth is that I might not be enough now. The ongoing campaign against PHC has turned ugly and desperate.”
Hawthorne turned away from Mune. Craning his neck, he looked up at the sunlamps. The heat felt good, even if it did cause his clothes to stick to him. He had acted too precipitously, he saw that now.
“We’re being squeezed,” Hawthorne said, as he let the sunlamp’s heat beat against his face. “Years of losing ground, as the Highborn tighten a noose around our collective throats—”
Hawthorne faced Mune. “I’m out of ideas.”
“I’m not sure I believe that, sir.”
Hawthorne looked back up at the sunlamp. “I’m not talking about tactical battlefield surprises, but original ideas that approach this from a new angle. Yezhov had ideas. He killed Highborn in a degenerate fashion, but it was new and frankly, inventive. As for me—we fought the Highborn to a standstill at Mars. It changed nothing. Earlier, we struck at the Sun-Works Factory, to little effect. My grand plans have delayed the enemy, but I’ve done nothing to reverse the direction of the war.”
“The Highborn have problems, too, sir,” Mune said. “We just don’t know what they are.”
“Don’t use my own words against me. That’s too depressing today.”
“You’ve implemented plans that have contested every inch of ground,” Mune said. “The emergency construction of more proton beams and the mass merculite missile sites were entirely your ideas, sir. Without you—”
“We must beat them
“I’ve thought about the attack on Yezhov, sir. Why would PHC personnel kill their chief?”
