Phil blinks several times. Finally manages to squeak, “You mean you’re the president’s personal Bolo?”
“In effect, yes.”
“And you do whatever the president orders?”
“Yes. Unless it violates my mission or involves excessive collateral damage.”
“What’s, uh, ‘excessive collateral damage?’ ”
“There is an algorithm that determines the relative target worth versus the likelihood of collateral damage. One example is using a nuclear weapon to destroy a city from which I am taking ineffective fire. I cannot fire nuclear weapons at a city unless there is effective fire directed at my position.”
“What if the fire is effective? Like, damaging your track.”
“Then I can fire at will, as I did in combat against Anish Balin’s forces. In that engagement, no civilians lost their lives. Had that battle occurred in a city, rather than a military outpost, there would have been civilian deaths. It is unfortunate and I do my best to avoid this, but collateral damage happens. I am not proud of having crushed to death civilians in my attempt to reach Gifre Zeloc. Given the parameters of that engagement, with the constraints of not being able to fire my main weapons systems, I killed as few as possible while carrying out the immediate mission.”
Phil does not speak. His jaw muscles clench. I detect an expression in his eyes that I have not seen there, before. Then he turns on his heel and stalks over to his groundcar. He slams the door and drives away, moving in a rapid and reckless manner. I am alone again.
I do not like that feeling.
III
Three days later, Simon received an incoming call from The Star of Mali. Simon hadn’t seen his wife’s cousin since the wedding, but he knew Stefano Soteris at once.
“Colonel Khrustinov?” Stefano asked, brow furrowed as he stared uncertainly into Simon’s ravaged face.
“Hello, Stefano. Sorry about the alterations to my face. I didn’t have much of one left, after the aircrash. The surgeons did a damned fine job, sculpting a new one.”
“I’m so sorry, Colonel—”
“Simon,” he said gently.
“Yes, sir,” Kafari’s cousin said, working to control his shock. “Very well, sir. We’ve just docked at Bombay Station. Can you meet us at eleven hundred hours, Gate Seventeen?”
“I’ll be there.”
Stefano just nodded and ended the transmission. Simon stepped through the shower, then dragged on a good dress shirt and slacks, even a jacket. He looked bad enough, as it was. He didn’t need to compound it with sloppy clothes, particularly not today, when he’d be meeting Yalena. He hadn’t seen his daughter in two years. He wouldn’t know her and she wouldn’t know him. They’d never really known one another at all. Trying to adjust to one another’s company, particularly since Yalena did not see eye-to-eye with him, was going to be difficult for both of them.
He had to move slowly, even with the servo-motors of his leg braces, which allowed him to walk faster than he could with only the crutch canes. Time was, he’d feared that he would never walk again. It had taken two years of on-going treatments and hard work just to get this far. He wanted to call Sheila Brisbane and ask her to go with him, but decided against it. Yalena had enough to adjust to, without throwing in the company of a woman whose presence could be misconstrued as evidence of an affair.
No, he wouldn’t do that to Yalena or himself. Or Captain Brisbane.
By the time he reached the spaceport and parked his groundcar, he had a serious case of jitters. He didn’t know which was worse: dreading the reunion with his daughter — and the lie he must tell her, about Kafari — or the difficulties he would face during Yalena’s adjustment, which would be tough on them both. He stopped at a small gift shop and bought a bouquet of flowers, following the old Russian custom handed down through his family generation after generation. The Khrustinovs who’d left Terra had carried that tradition from one star system to another as they spread out and made homes for themselves on distant, scattered worlds.
He hoped the custom would earn a smile, at least. He wanted to see a smile, even a half smile, on his daughter’s face before he told her about her mother’s death. He reached Gate Seventeen with scant minutes to spare. He had barely settled into a chair when the shuttle landed, sliding gracefully into the docking bay he could see through the tall glass windows. The engines cut off. Simon rose to his feet, clutching the flowers in one hand, and waited, not quite sure what to expect.
Then he caught sight of her. The teen-aged girl who stepped off the Star of Mali’s shuttle was no longer a child. She looked up at him through eyes that had seen too much horror. He knew that look, had seen it in the eyes of soldiers fresh from combat, had faced it in his bathroom mirror all too many times since Etaine.
Yalena had grown, during the past two years. Tall and willowy, she had her mother’s face, something he’d never noticed before. Her footsteps slowed when she saw him. The look in her eyes hurt. He moved forward to greet her, holding out the flowers. She took them, not even speaking, and buried her nose in their fragrance.
“Mom wouldn’t come,” she whispered, the words muffled against the flower petals.
“I know,” Simon told her, dreading what he was about to do. He had to force himself to say it. “I received a SWIFT transmission. Before you got here.”
“From Mom?” Her voice wavered.
“No,” he lied. “Your mother… didn’t make it. She was shot by a P-Squad dragoon, trying to slip out of the spaceport. They’re shooting looters on sight and they don’t bother to ask for credentials first.” That last part was true, at least. They were shooting looters on sight.
Blood drained from her face so fast, she swayed. “No…”
He tried to steady her. She jerked away, rigid. “It’s my fault!” she cried. “Mine! She came into town just to get me out. We walked all night through the sewers. She put me in that cargo box to save my life! And some stinking P-Squad—” She dissolved into hysterical weeping. Simon caught her, held her close. The sound of her grief, knife-edged and raw, made him want to take the words back, to reassure her. But he couldn’t — just couldn’t — trust her yet.
Not when she had spent her whole life believing in POPPA.
Simon wrapped an arm very gently around his distraught daughter and guided her out of the terminal. She said nothing as they climbed into his ground car. She said nothing as he drove them home. From what he could tell, she wasn’t even paying attention to the city. They were nearly to the apartment before she broke her long silence.
“Daddy?” Her voice was a mere whisper.
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t expect you to believe that. I wouldn’t, if I were you. But I am.” A single tear rolled down her cheek. “And I’ll try to prove it.”
He reached across and squeezed her hand. “I love you, Yalena.”
Another tear appeared, trembled on the edge for a moment, then slid down her face. “I don’t know why.”
“Try to take it on faith for a bit.”
She nodded. “Okay.” Then she touched the flowers she still carried. “These are beautiful.”
“I’m glad you like them.” He managed a smile. “It’s an old custom, from Terra. A Russian custom. Always greet people you love with flowers, when they’ve been gone for a long time.”