weaponry. Additionally, he placed a holstered pistol on each thigh, the magazines full of tightly controlled explosive rounds.
Jordan regarded him dubiously. Nanobullets, needle rounds, hard plastic cartridges—those were all reasonable options for use inside the walls of the world. Explosives—
But Tristen smiled at her, showing teeth the color of skimmed milk behind the cat blue lips. “I won’t miss.”
“All right, then,” she said, and loaded an extra oxygen canister anyway. Just in case.
They crossed gazes, and Tristen sealed his helm. “Let’s go find our army.”
In the shadowed doorway leading to the lectern, Tristen took a moment to pause and scan the crowd before entering the room. If what he saw pleased or satisfied him, his armor hid all sign.
Still, he drew a deep breath before he said, “We’re on.”
He led the way out into the front of the room, conversation stilling as they entered, and turned and paused, Jordan at heel. She had the uneasy sense of being something less than actually present; invisible, an accessory, Tristen Conn’s aide rather than her own person. It was as reassuring as it was irritating. Whatever happened today, responsibility would not rest on her.
Tristen smoothed his helm back, revealing his face. Now a true silence swept the lingering murmurs from the room, and every eye fastened on him. Engineers in armor creaked, hardly breathing; drones bobbled on their wheels or armatures. Tristen gazed back, seeming to catch each person’s attention in turn, saying nothing. And then he did nod, visibly, as if his assessment of what he noticed pleased him.
“Right,” he said. “Let’s give them hell.”
When he sealed his helm and turned, Jordan
* * *
She was both right—and wrong.
The army of Engine lay in wait for the invaders at the mouth of the River, and through the Broken Holdes, which were not so broken as they had once been. Slowly, as materials and resources became available, Nova was repairing the world. Jordan stayed by Tristen, observing how he orchestrated the defense—layered positions designed to collapse into one another; flanks supported by mobile task forces; bulwarks of drones before the human resources. It was like watching a juggler at work, weaving an infinitely flexible and stunning but ephemeral pattern in midair, and Jordan despaired of understanding half of it. Each individual piece of the pattern was simple, like a chip in a mosaic, but she had a sense that if you could get far enough back you could see the whole thing as a kind of pattern, a sort of art.
The whole made her brain itch as if it were stretching.
She saw its effectiveness in action, however, though she never saw combat herself. However girded for war he went, Tristen stayed well back from the action, trusting his troops to interpret their orders and handle their parts of the fight without undue interference. He and Jordan set up a command center in a ruined garden, nothing now but frozen soil open to space and the shattered stems of flowers, ice crystals grown about them in sparkling, angry collars and halos of spikes from within. Jordan watched on her helmet feeds as the opposing group—larger by three or four than the Engineers—pushed through defense after defense, accelerating and gaining confidence, until they suddenly found themselves bottlenecked, sniped upon, surrounded, and disarmed. Jordan held her breath over the feed when the drones stood up over the attackers, looming at them from every direction, armed and armored Engineers among them. There was a long moment when she was sure the lightly armed and spacesuited attackers would stand on their superior numbers and fight to the miserable, inevitable end.
But then Tristen gave a soft command into his armor pickups, and around the circle fifteen men and women died. The drones and toolkits massed their fire on selected targets, and those targets jerked and geysered blood and fell.
Jordan jerked much as the bodies had, shocked, but Tristen’s face showed nothing when she glanced over. Expressionless, and so he remained as the leaders of the insurrection—or their chief field agents—laid down their weapons and put up their hands.
It had been quick and nearly bloodless—and from all Jordan could see, positively elegant. She could not understand why it was that Tristen sighed and frowned and had to straighten his shoulders and pull his head up so selfconsciously when he finally went down to take their surrender.
She could not understand why it was that she herself felt so cold at her heart, and why her hands shook inside the armor as she accompanied him into the anchore where they would meet the rebel leaders.
The enemy had brought war. Tristen had done what he had done to save as many lives as he could save.
It was an act of mercy. What about this should seem terrible?
She remembered that now, however, as he summoned her to his offices, and it filled her with fresh unease. He had never behaved to her with the least impropriety, and she had no hesitation in going because of any worries that he might enforce a sexual advantage. Besides, she suspected he had some quiet and unadvertised relationship with Mallory, though it had never seemed proper to investigate.
No, her discomfort was not on her own behalf.
But nor was it for any other reason easy to identify, until she considered that when Tristen summoned her, inevitably, a way of life seemed to come to an end.
That he waited for her standing by the small real window—not a screen—that pierced one bulkhead of his office was no reassurance. For a routine meeting, he would sit at ease, and ask her to sit as well. Now he turned, his hair drifting like frost-feathers in the wind of his movement, and forced a smile. “Jordan.”
“You wanted me, First Mate?”
The silence dragged.
When she widened her eyes to meet his gaze, he let his shoulders settle and said, “You are Chief Engineer of the world now. By order of the Captain—”
“But—” she interrupted, or would have interrupted if he had not silenced her with an upraised palm.
“Benedick Conn recommended you,” he said. “And I seconded it. Do you argue with his judgment, or mine?”
“Chief Engineer,” she said, tasting it. Then she shook her head and smiled ruefully. “For the next thirty days.”
“The last Engineer of the world,” he said, and held out a closed hand. She raised hers under his; gently he laid something on her palm. She closed her fingers over it.
When she uncurled them, she saw what she had expected—and never before, honestly, expected to hold. The sunburst of Engine, with a real, dark, flawed ruby—mined on Earth—set in hammered gold.
“Oh,” she said.
“I hope,” he said, “you do not wear it long. But if you do—this may not be a favor I have conferred upon you.”
“I’ve fought a war beside you before, First Officer.” Jordan closed her hand around the badge. “I would not hesitate to so serve again.”
10
this fragment
Beyond the limit of their bond, are these,
