Orphan's Triumph

FIFTY-FIVE

IN THE LONG DUSK OF ARCTIC AUTUMN, our accidental army redistributed ammunition, cannibalized rifles and clothing from the guards’ corpses, and moved out toward the garrison’s barracks with Aud Planck on the lead, as always. Or, as his troops had said of Erwin Rommel, an der Spitze.

The flat buildings’ smoking chimneys and yellow-lit windows, promising warmth and life, drew not only our minutes-old veterans, but the rest of the prisoners who could walk or crawl. A ragged human wave rolled toward the barracks, its only sound the creak of thousands of numb hands and feet against dry snow.

Aud’s point group reached the gate that led outside the twelve-foot-tall barbed-wire fence, to the barracks complex fifty yards beyond, before a clang like iron against a hung iron triangle alarmed the garrison.

The gate, untended and unlocked, was swung aside as soldiers, pulling up suspenders and fumbling with rifles, tumbled out of barracks doors. The lucky ones were cut down by bullets poorly aimed but as numerous as hornets.

The second engagement of the Battle of the Northern Terminus was no more a fair fight and no less a massacre than the first. In all, fourteen prisoners died of wounds sustained in the fighting, but mercy was an uncommon commodity among their peers. None of the five-hundred-man Interior Guard garrison survived.

An hour later, Jude, Celline, and I walked the plain in the darkness beyond the barracks. The oil tanks that fueled the sledge trains and the barracks stoves, set alight in the fighting, painted the snow flickering orange. We plowed the drifts with shuffling feet. My foot struck an object that gave way easily, and I grunted.

Jude said, “Another ration can?”

I bent, felt for my boot toe, then grasped the object and stood. “Gotcha!”

I turned the apple-sized meteorite in my hand, lit by the oil tanks’ flame. The rock felt as light as cork. “Doesn’t glow like a Stone Hills nugget. But it isn’t supposed to.”

Celline said, “I know the next step is vital. But these people are half dead.”

I said, “Some of them will bounce back by the morning. We should have plenty of hands to harvest in a couple days.”

Jude said, “We’re ahead of schedule.”

So far, the plan, horrible and bloody as it was, had exceeded even optimistic expectations.

We had neutralized the hostile force that had sat atop Tressel’s weapons-grade Cavorite. We had moved a motivated workforce of nearly a thousand people above the Arctic Circle of Tressel by the only transport that existed to move them there. We had a week left before the Duck’s deadline, during which we would gather the meteorites together, then call down pickup.

The call itself would be as easy as sending out for pizza on my wrist ’Puter.

Cruisers that had visited Tressel over the years had quietly left behind geosynchronous-orbiting surveillance and communications satellites. CommSats were, as Howard put it, surprisingly affordable if you didn’t have to ground-launch them or opt for encryption. Since the Tressens had barely invented the telegraph, encryption for eavesdropping protection seemed a safe option to cheap out on.

We weren’t allowed to ring up the Spooks from my ’Puter until we were ready to have the Cavorite picked up. But by the week from now when the Ferrents would first notice that the return train from the Northern Terminus was overdue, the Cavorite would be long gone.

Jude and Celline continued to scuff meteorites from the snow while I stared at a group that dragged stiff bodies to the tank farm fire to be cremated.

I could tell myself that the broad-nosed guard whom I had killed had himself brutally, unnecessarily, and without remorse killed an innocent man. I could tell myself that, if the man I had killed had in fact left behind a widow and children, the greater good produced by his death would save their lives and all mankind. I could tell myself that he, as a soldier, had accepted the risk.

But, finally, I would have to tell myself that I had arrogated to myself the right to take the life of another.

“Jason!”

I ran toward the sound of Aud’s shout, Jude alongside me.