Gifre Zeloc sputters for seven point eight-three seconds, then snaps, “Fine, have it your way. This time. Just make damned sure those rioters don’t come sneaking back to finish what they started.”
I cannot see how that would be possible, since the rioters completely failed to achieve their primary goal of demonstrating in the first place. The likelihood that the Tax Parity Package will be defeated is now vanishingly small, particularly since Granger activists will doubtless be blamed for the widespread property damage done today, not to mention the deaths. The Grangers have dealt themselves and their political cause a deathblow. It will doubtless be many hours, if not weeks, before they and their leadership in the agrarian activist movement realize that fact. I do not look forward to the events likely to transpire when that unpalatable truth is realized.
What makes me feel very lonely and confused is the sad realization that after today, no Granger or agrarian activist anywhere on Jefferson will think of me as a rescuer sent here to protect them. I have become the mailed fist by which Gifre Zeloc makes his displeasure widely and bruisingly felt. By extension, I have become the weapon by which POPPA, itself, decrees what will and will not be tolerated.
I miss my Commander bitterly. And I cannot help but wonder what Kafari Khrustinova thinks of me, this afternoon. I do not know if she was in this crowd or if she is safely busy at her job in Port Abraham. Wherever she is, she has doubtless set aside her good opinion of me, which registers unexpectedly as pain in the privacy of my personality gestalt center. I sit in the midst of the ruination I have inflicted in Darconi Street and watch the crowd disperse in a panicked and chaotic exodus and wonder if getting out of this disaster will be any easier than getting into it was.
Somehow, I doubt it.
III
The last person Simon expected to walk into his hospital room was Sheila Brisbane. Tall and trim, she was every inch the Brigade officer, despite the civilian clothes she wore. He hadn’t seen Captain Brisbane since the Navy cutter had dropped her and her Bolo off on Vishnu, before making planet-fall at Jefferson. Her short, pixie-cut hair had a sprinkling of grey mixed in with the copper highlights, reminding Simon how long it had been since they had last met.
“Hello, Simon,” she said with a warm smile. “I must say, you look ruddy awful.”
He tried to smile and winced. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.” Then her smile faded. “The doctors tell me you’ll be here a while. Was it really sabotage?”
“I don’t know. Sonny thinks so. So does Dr. Zarek.”
“The surgeon who asked for permission to emigrate?”
“Yes.”
Sheila frowned. “What’s going on, Simon? On Jefferson?”
“Got half a day you can spare?”
One coppery eyebrow rose. “That bad?”
“Worse.”
She dragged up a chair. “I’ve nothing better to do.”
It took Simon the better part of the afternoon to tell her everything, particularly since she stopped him time and again, clarifying points and asking for more information. When he finally finished, she sat motionless for several moments, eyes narrowed against whatever thoughts were occurring to her. When she finally roused herself from reverie, she gave Simon a long, measuring look.
“I’m thinking we must get you back on your feet, the sooner the better. They may have won the first battle, but that nasty little war’s far from over. You need to be in condition to fight it.”
Simon couldn’t help the bitter, exhausted sound in his voice. “There’s not a lot a cripple can do about it.”
“Certainly not if you limit yourself with a label that stupid.” She leaned forward in her chair and rested one hand on his arm, gently avoiding the tubes that had been taped down. “If you want to look forward to anything other than misery, you’ll need to change that way of thinking, the faster the better. You’re a fine officer—”
“Retired,” he bit out.
“—and fine officers go on being soldiers, even after they retire. Your body’s been smashed up a bit, but there’s nothing wrong here.” She tapped his head. “And it’s what’s up here that makes you a fine officer. Whether or not you see an actual battlefield again is irrelevant, because you know how to think like a battlefield commander. You even know how to think like a Bolo Mark XX and there aren’t many officers in the entire Brigade who can make that claim, let alone dirty politicians who’ve taken temporary control of a backwater planet while nobody’s looking. While they think nobody’s looking. That’s an edge, Simon, maybe enough to turn the tables on the people who’ve done this,” she gestured toward his body, immobilized and festooned with medical equipment.
He met and held her gaze for a moment. That moment stretched into two and then three. At length, he nodded, able to move his head only a fraction of a centimeter, but determined to move it, nonetheless. “All right,” he said quietly. “Do your worst. And I’ll give it my best.”
She gave him a brilliant smile. “That’s what I want to hear. Now then, tell me about Jefferson’s military capabilities…”
IV
I return to depot, covered with misery and cables I cannot remove, to find an unauthorized person standing in the maintenance bay. I bring antipersonnel gun mounts to bear, but do not fire. A single, clearly unarmed human offers no appreciable threat to me or my mission and I have contributed to the crushing deaths of too many unarmed humans, today, to relish the thought of adding another. I halt just shy of the entrance and study the individual who is staring, openmouthed, at my warhull and guns.
I address him in stern tones. “You are trespassing in a restricted military zone. Give me your personal identity code and state your reason for being here.”
The man inside my maintenance bay is a short and stocky individual with protruberant musculature on arms and legs. He sports an intricate facial nano-tatt, whose subepidural pattern shifts colors with a kaleidoscopic opalescence as its owner blinks several times. The intruder says, “I’m Phil Fabrizio. They told me to come out here. Jeezus H. Crap, you’re fuckin’ huge! They never said nuthin’ about how huge you was. You’re like as big as a fuckin’ city.”
I find little useful information in this narrative. I try again. “Why are you in a restricted military zone?”
He blinks again, apparently mesmerized by the sway of dangling traffic signals and power lines festooning my forward turret. “You musta’ took out half the traffic lights in Madison.”
“State your purpose in trespassing or I will fire.”
I lock and load gun systems. I suspect that Phil Fabrizio does not comprehend either the danger he is in or the extraordinary patience I am striving to show an unauthorized intruder.
“Huh? Oh. OH! Hey, shit, machine, don’t shoot me, I’m your mechanic!”
“I have not been notified of any personnel assignments relating to my maintenance status.”
“Huh?”
I realize I am speaking to the product of fifteen years of POPPA-run public education. I rephrase. “Nobody told me to expect a mechanic. I will request confirmation before shooting you.”
Phil Fabrizio blinks again. “Nobody told you I was comin’? Well, don’t that just goddamn figure? Musta’ been too busy tryin’ to turn the power back on in town, t’remember to tell you I was comin’ today.”