“The other party,” Koda answers slowly, “gets into position behind them before they arrive. We squeeze them between the two forces and the river. Dr. King can monitor the androids’ communications. Manny and Tacoma and I can relay the information without worrying about interception.”
“Classic pincer,” observes Grueneman.
“Not quite,” Manny counters. “When do we blow the bridge?”
“On my order, Lieutenant,” says Hart. He gives Allen a nod and a complacent smile. “It’s a good plan, Colonel, assuming we can get by without committing our air superiority.”
An awkward silence falls in the room. Kirsten breaks it. “You mean to command the operation personally, General?”
‘Why, yes.”
“After your brilliant success at Minot?” she spits. “General, your leadership is what got us where we are now.”
It seems to Koda that the temperature in the room drops a good ten degrees. The silence that follows is glacial. The muscles around Tacoma’s mouth twitch almost imperceptibly; Lorena Tilbury-Laduque coughs sharply and covers the lower half of her face with a well-faded bandana. Without sound, Manny’s lips form the words, “Holy Ina Maka, Mother of God.”
The quiet stretches out interminably. Finally, Hart draws a long breath and says quietly. “Very well, Dr. King. Allow me to recommend Lt. Colonel Frank Maiewski.”
Maiewski, Koda notes, is the one pilot. He turns an unattractive shade of fuschia, bright pink scalp showing through thinning hair. “General, thank you, but I don’t believe—“
“Colonel Allen has rank,” Kirsten observes quietly.
“And experience,” adds Manny. “We spent the first week after the uprising fighting these things out in the countryside.”
The General’s mouth curves upward in an expression that stiffens Koda’s spine and sets off alarms all along her nerves. That’s how a snake would look if it could smile. Beside her, Tacoma has picked up on it, too; he turns to stare straight at Hart. His fingers, spread flat on the table, twitch as if trying to form themselves into fists. But Hart says only, “Colonel? Are you up to the job?”
Maggie’s own face has gone grey. But her voice is steady when she answers. “I will be happy to accept whatever assignment you or Dr. King gives me , Sir.”
“All right. You’re in command of this operation. Just be sure of your targets this time.” Hart pushes out his chair and rises. “Half hour break.”
The Colonel remains standing by the holo screen as the other officers and civilians file out. Koda is the last to go; just short of the door, though, Maggie calls her back. “Dakota.”
Koda stops and shuts the door. Her voice is soft. “What’s wrong?”
“Hart.” Maggie lays down her pointer, making an oddly pleading gesture toward the General’s now empty seat. “There’s something you need to know.”
Be sure of your targets. It had been a threat. Missed targets. With a sudden sense of conviction, Koda knows what Maggie is about to say. Damn the bastard.
Aloud she says, “No. There’s nothing I need to know.”
“Yes, there is. Dr. King needs to know, too.”
Koda speaks levelly, acknowledging what she knows is coming, denying nothing. “You hit the wrong target once.”
“Oh, not just the wrong target.” Maggie crosses the room and opens a pair of the grey-on-grey curtains. Thin grey light shines in, muted by cloud cover and dirty snow. “I hit the wrongest target there is.”
”Civilians?”
“A village in the Panjir. Farmers and goatherders. Old women. Kids.” Her voice hardens. “Half a dozen five-hundred pounders right on top of them. No goddamned excuse at all.”
Koda says very carefully. “It’s not the first time such a thing has happened. It won’t be the last.”
“No, it’s not. But those other times I wasn’t responsible. This time I was.” Maggie turns to meet her eyes. “I should have left the service after that, but I didn’t. I still loved it too much—the flying, the feeling of power.”
And you’ve demanded perfection of yourself ever since. “Maggie?”
“Yes?”
“I’ve seen you in the field. I trust you, and so do the troops.”
“Thanks.” A small smile twitches at Maggie’s mouth. “You have the talent to be one of the best fighters I’ve ever met. If I’ve taught you anything, I can be proud of that.”
Koda opens the door. “Not just that. Would you like me to tell Kirsten you’d like to speak to her?”
”Please.”
Koda nods, steps into the corridor and, very softly, closes the door.
*
Koda slips quietly out of her sleeping bag, careful not to disturb Maggie or Kirsten, still stretched out on the floor of the troop carrier on either side of her. Kirsten does not wake, but murmurs in her sleep, reaching out toward the now-empty space where Koda had been a moment ago. She misses Asi. With the thought a twinge of—what? Not guilt, exactly, not quite regret either—passes through Koda. The dog had howled and flung himself against the gate of the clinic kennel when they had turned to leave him not quite day ago. Hidden behind her darkened lenses, Kirsten’s eyes had been red and swollen for the next twelve hours. “Allergies,” she had claimed, but even with a warming breeze from the south, it is still too early for the spring miseries of blowing pollen.
In the light of the small ceramic heater, Koda begins to pull on her battle dress over her thermals. Because she and Kirsten will be stationed with the com unit back in the woods that crown a rise behind the intended battle line, her Arctic white camo is streaked in the grey-brown of bare branches, the spider tracery of dead grass. She is not sure, exactly, of the time, but even here in the enclosed warmth of the truck, she can smell the changes that come with the wind that rises before dawn, bearing with it the hint of far places where the snow has loosed its grip on the land. Places, even, where ice never clamps down upon the earth at all, and winter means relief of pounding heat.
Heraklion.
The thought comes to her with the vivid urgency of a child’s wish. If I live through this—if any of us live; if there is anything human left at all—someday I want to go back to Crete and lie on the beach in Heraklion.
She can see it still, the white sand and the thousand-year-old Byzantine domes whitewashed to perfect brightness under the white glare of the sun; the white wings of gulls dipping and wheeling above the impossible deep blue of the water that stretches on and on to the horizon.
For an instant it seems to her that time slips, and she is looking out over the curling breakers at strong brown arms and legs flashing in the surf as a dolphin arcs above the water’s surface and the spray off its sleek form catches the light like a shower of falling stars. The angle of the sun shifts, and the swimmer is no longer Tali, but a fair-haired woman whose face she cannot see. The ancient monastery that broods down from the sea-cliff has acquired fluted columns and a marble altar that smokes with incense, the sharp smell of myrrh sliding along the salt air. And the sun dips again, and there is nothing but the white beach and the woman whose hair gleams like cornsilk, calling to her from the water where the dolphins leap under the endless sky.
Koda shakes her head to clear it, reaching for her sidearm and cinching down the straps that hold the shoulder holster in place against her side. The images carry the feel of truth, but she cannot spare the attention now to sort past from future, desire from fate.
Carefully she steps between the two women and lets herself out the insulated flap at the back of the truck. The plastic sheeting clacks softly behind her as she steps onto the rear bumper, then jumps lightly onto the snow beneath. The night is clear. The moon rides high above the bare limbs of beech and sycamore, its reflection on the snow casting ghost light about her feet. The light wind creaks among the branches, unfurls the frost of her breath in streamers.