I blurted it out, unable to keep the words inside anymore.
“Lt. Sandoval and Private Delp were with me. Did you see where….”
“They’re over here.”
I didn’t like the way she said that.
Her Vigilante walked at a slow pace, short, shuffling steps, yet I still had to jog to keep up with her and every impact of my boot soles on the uneven, rock-strewn ground sent lances of pain stabbing upward through my legs. It wasn’t far, maybe fifty meters further down the street, where they were stretched out one beside the other, their suits as scorched as mine and Top’s, and I couldn’t tell one from the other.
“Are…,” I stuttered, unable to finish the sentence. “Are they…?”
“Their suits are offline,” she said. “I called an SAR bird in and it’s SOP to not open the suits until they arrive….”
She trailed off and a burst of static was the mic’s interpretation of her sigh.
“Fuck it.”
She went down on one knee beside the closest of them, grabbing at a particular spot on the suit’s left shoulder with the claws of her Vigilante’s left hand and twisting. The chest plastron fell open and I gagged at the scent of burning flesh. The burn-through must have been in the backside of the suit since I hadn’t seen a hole through the Vigilante’s chest. I could see the one through Vince Delp, though. His face was, miraculously, untouched, but there wasn’t much left between his shoulders and his sternum.
His eyes were closed and he seemed, for once, at peace.
“Goddammit, Vince,” I whispered. We could’ve gotten him help. He could have lived a normal life. He could have been happy.
“He was a good Marine,” Top said, the words akin to a prayer for the dead. Her feet shuffled and the massive suit of armor turned toward me, looking down like a parent at a child. “Are you sure you want to see…?”
I swallowed hard and nodded.
She moved toward Vicky’s suit, bent over, then hesitated.
“What?” I asked her.
“I just got a transmission from the palace,” she told me. “The Emperor is dead. They’ve captured the Tahni military leadership and they’re going to bring them in to witness the body.” There was something in the words, some bitter amusement that I wouldn’t have been able to understand without living her life. “The war’s over.”
I didn’t respond. It meant nothing to me. My war had ended minutes ago.
Top reached down, grabbing the catch on Vicky’s left shoulder, and twisting it. The chest plate fell open and the helmet swung backward and I didn’t want to look at what was inside, but I had to.
EPILOGUE
The utility rover pinged and ticked and clacked plaintively behind me, the metal cooling rapidly from the long drive out from the spaceport on the brisk, autumn morning. Brigantia never got that cold, but I zipped my light jacket up just the same, too used to the intemperate climes of Inferno these last three months.
Two months on Tahn-Skyyiah helping to set up the peacekeeping operations, another month at Port Harcourt putting down a nascent insurgency, then finally three interminably long, miserable summer months of outprocessing and waiting for transport on Inferno.
There hadn’t been any thought of staying in, not after what had happened in Tahn-Khandranda. All General McCauley’s talk of sitting in his chair and being Commandant of the Marine Corps had blown away on a hot, bitter wind. The Corps might have been my home, but it was a home with too many bad memories, and every time I opened my eyes in the morning, I’d be facing them. Besides, I’d made that call the second I’d disobeyed orders to try to save Vicky. That I’d accomplished the mission was beside the point, though no one else seemed to understand that.
Certainly, McCauley hadn’t. He’d offered to put me in for a Commonwealth Medal of Valor, the highest military award, for my part in the battle if I stayed in. Since Major Geiger had died in the explosion, there wouldn’t have been anyone to gainsay it, even if she would have. She probably wouldn’t have cared. Yeah, I’d disobeyed her, but Geiger wasn’t close enough to colonel to think she was God. I’d heard they’d promoted her posthumously, though.
I shook off the memories and considered the house. I hadn’t seen it the first time I’d been here. The opportunity hadn’t come up, what with the Tahni and the battle and all. When I thought of Dak’s home, my mind always pictured the camouflaged trailer towed into the high-desert draw to hide it from the enemy. Of course, that had been an expedience. Dak Shepherd was one of the founders of the colony, the man who’d named its capital city, Gennich. His house was large and, if not opulent, at least comfortable.
Three stories tall, constructed of local wood and brick, cradled in the nook of century-old oak trees, it looked like something I could have seen in history videos from the Nineteenth Century on Earth. A barn loomed behind it, pragmatic sheet metal, and a garage beside that with an autoharvester peeking out the open doors, a flatbed cargo truck parked beside it. In the dirt driveway beside the house was a utility rover not too different from the one I’d rented and driven here.
No one was outside, which I thought odd. Surely on a place this size, he’d have hired workers. But I didn’t know shit about farming so maybe this was the wrong time of year and there would be nothing for them to do.
The steps to the front porch squeaked under my weight, the sanded plank flooring giving just slightly beneath the soles of my boots. They were military boots, though I’d had basic, utilitarian outdoor clothes fabricated before I’d left Inferno. I had a good-sized
