Eight days until the convoy arrived.
Court-martial.
Running out of supplies.
Toni Steffens. Belok^.
Eight days…
“Sir?” said the private on duty outside the command post. Jason hadn’t even heard the door open. “Dr. Ross asks to see you.”
“Dr. Ross?”
“Yes, sir.” The private peered at him; did Jason look that bad? Probably.
“Let her enter.”
“I’m already in,” Lindy said, pushing past the guard.
Jason said, “Dismissed.”
Lindy closed the door. There were still bruises on her face, but unless she wore some sort of brace or bandages under her clothes, she didn’t seem to be suffering from her reinflated lung. She wore her determined look. Jason straightened for the blow. “What is it? Have v-comas died?”
“No. And nobody else has revived, either.”
“Dr. Steffens?”
“I haven’t been to the lab—Claire Patel is there, examining her yet again. Or trying to, since Toni won’t stop working long enough for much examination. She’s got everybody over there doing things and she’s barking orders like General Patton.”
“Working on what?”
“I don’t know, I’m not a virologist. I’m also not there, I’m here.”
Jason snapped, “Why are you here? I didn’t send for you.” The snappiness, he dimly realized, was cover for a barrage of emotions fired by just seeing her.
“No. I’m here to examine you. Jason—Colonel, sorry—you’re showing disturbing signs of sleep deprivation. Two different people have told me so. And—”
“Who? Who told you that?”
“—as your physician—”
“You’re not. Major Holbrook is. Where—”
“With the v-comas. They’re not waking but they’re stirring. I’m it, Colonel, and I’m going to examine you. Now.” She pulled out a portalab and moved toward him.
Jason submitted. She could give him drugs to keep him going, maybe something that would last until the court-martial was over. Even at West Point, where designer pharmaceuticals had been ubiquitous to ward off sleep, to keep the body going through the physical punishment of training and the mental fog of studying while exhausted, Jason had avoided drugs. He hadn’t wanted to surrender control of his faculties, not even to something that was supposed to enhance them. He’d kept to the same puritanical policy while in combat in Congo. But this was not West Point and the combat here couldn’t be worked out in physical activity, and Jason could see the end of his strength rolling toward him as inexorable as the convoy coming up from Fort Hood.
“Dr. Ross—”
“Be quiet, I’m not done. I’m taking a quick blood sample.”
Could she see how much her nearness disturbed him? She moved close to lift one of his eyelids and he could smell her, that spicy female odor… How long had it been for him? Masturbation was not the same…. He felt his cock rise and how could that be when everything else on him was barely functional? Christ, let her not notice….
“Jason,” she said quietly, “you have to sleep. Your reflexes are off, your skin is sallow and your eyes puffy. You have way too much cortisol in your blood. Soon you’re going to have tremors, impaired concentration, and forgetfulness, if you haven’t already. I’m going to give you something that won’t put you out so completely that you can’t be roused in case of emergency, but will nonetheless let you sleep. And Major Duncan is perfectly capable of taking over for a few hours.”
“Okay,” he said, and watched her eyes widen with surprise.
“Okay? Well, good. You should take two of these at—”
“Sir!”
Hillson, flinging open the door with no announcement, no ceremony. The master sergeant’s face wore the wooden expression that meant extreme rage. His shoulders looked carved from granite. Jason said, “What is it?”
“A homicide, sir. Corporal Winfield is dead. Private Dolin is under arrest.”
Winfield? A member of J Squad, he’d been on the raid at Sierra Depot, he’d parachuted down to extract the Sugiyama kids…. Jason’s mind fumbled at trying to place Private Dolin, and failed. He said, “What happened?”
“Corporal Kandiss—”
“Kandiss was involved? Did he kill Winfield?” A sour stickiness formed in Jason’s throat.
Lindy said, “Is a doctor needed?”
Hillson ignored her; perhaps he didn’t even hear her. “Sir, what happened was that Dolin drew his sidearm on Kandiss, who wasn’t armed, but Dolin didn’t know that Winfield was there, too. Winfield tried to disarm Dolin and Dolin shot him. Then Kandiss disarmed Dolin.”
“Where did all this happen?”
“At the brothel, sir.”
The brothel, where Settler women tried to spread indoctrination of Colin’s nature philosophy. A weird arrangement, but you couldn’t lock soldiers, most of them male, into two domes without a brothel developing, however informally. Colin had found out about it within days of arriving at the base. Jason hadn’t asked its location.
“Where’s Dolin?”
“In the stockade.”
Where Strople thought Jason was. Or maybe not. Did Strople have suspicions that more was going on at Monterey Base than he’d been told? Of course, Jason thought, more was also going on at Fort Hood than Jason had been told. Unless… Christ, he was so tired.
“Sir…” Hillson said, looking suddenly uncertain.
“I’m fine, Sergeant. Begin a formal investigation immediately. Report to me no later than this evening. Dismissed.”
“Yes, sir.” Hillson left.
Lindy said, “An investigation? Are you going to… will there be a court-martial?”
She didn’t understand. Jason passed his hand over his eyes, even as a detached part of his mind thought: That, that thing I’ll have to do—I have never done that before in my life.
“Jason? Will there be a court-martial?”
“No. We are at war. Dolin shot a fellow soldier. The investigation will find out why, but it doesn’t really matter why. He did it.”
“And you…”
Jason opened his lips to order her out, to stop her questions, to remove the scent of her that brought back so many memories, but no words came out. He felt his knees give way. He staggered, caught himself, sagged against the desk.
“Jason—”
“Go… away.”
She didn’t. She took another step forward. He stumbled again—how could he stumble when the floor was supporting him?—and she caught him.
Her touch undid him. All of it undid him: the long months, years, of trying to hold together a base of military and scientists who were needed—both groups—to save the world but did not trust each other. The murder of Winfield, which Jason should have somehow prevented. The murder by torture of Sugiyama’s little son and Jason’s failure to rescue Sugiyama in time. His looming court-martial, into which he had dragged six good soldiers. The fruitless work of the scientists in stopping RSA, the mission to which Jason had sacrificed his military honor by defying orders. The wreck of the Return, the wreck of the United States he’d sworn to serve, what he was going to have to do to Dolin, all of it all of it all of it…
Then he was in Lindy’s arms, the sobs shaking his whole body but nonetheless silent because a colonel in the United States Army did not cry.
“Shhh,” Lindy said, “shhhh, it’s all right….”
The stupid statement sobered him. It was not all right. He pushed her away, but she caught at him, her small hands surprisingly strong. He remembered that.
“Listen to me, Jason,” she said, but without a trace of either command or plea. Maybe she still remembered that the best way to deal with him had always been with calm facts. “You are under enormous, even superhuman strain. You’ve done an incredible job, but no one can control everything, especially not in such an insane situation as this. If you keep blaming yourself for every single thing that does not go perfectly, you will drive yourself mad. And you can’t do that, because the base needs you. And I need you.”