Soldier of Fortune

“Hallo!”

The greeting, as brittle as it was chipper, had Gideon groaning as it shredded through the fog of his concussed dream.

“Still feeling poorly, are we?”

Gideon cracked an eye open to see Rory, crouched at his right side. “Poorly is how a guy feels when he’s hung over,” he said. “What I’m feeling is an order of magnitude past that.”

“Good!” Rory said, giving Gideon a vigorous slap on the shoulder before setting a cold pack, somewhat less vigorously, against the back of his head until Gideon’s right hand rose to hold it in place. “That means you’ll think twice before trying a cocked-up move like that again.”

Gideon wasn’t so sure of that, but at the moment he had other concerns, first among them not being able to recall precisely what those concerns were.

Then another man crouched down on the wet tarmac to Gideon’s left, and he remembered one of them. “I saw you die.”

“You saw me fall,” Eitan Fehr corrected, his dark hair falling forward, a wavier echo of Dani’s. “A bad fall, but into the river, so not fatal.”

Gideon held the other man’s gaze, then looked down to where Eitan’s left hand used to be. He looked up again.

“That happened later, in Adia.”

“Adia,” Gideon echoed, then muttered a curse because the state of Adia had resurrected some of Ancient Earth’s less savory practices when it came to dealing with prisoners of war. “I’m sorry.”

Eitan looked down at the hand that wasn’t there. “You could not have known.” He paused. “I learned others of our company were not so fortunate. Mulowa, Walsingham, Carver, Duvagne . . . Siska.”

The hesitation reminded Gideon that Cadet Siska and Lieutenant Fehr had shared a tent from time to time. “Their trees were planted in the Epsilon forest,” he said. “Along with Hamish. He fell at Asgard, a couple years back, covering his company’s retreat.”

Eitan’s expression tightened, then he let out a soft huff. “He was a good cook.”

“And a terrible singer,” Gideon recalled, forcing himself to a sitting position and immediately regretting it.

Eitan laid a steadying hand on his shoulder, then both men looked at Rory, who cleared his throat. “I’ll just get back to yon engine pod, shall I?” The young man sprang to his feet.

“Wait,” Gideon said, as moving had jostled a few other concerns to the front of his brain. “Where’s Mia, and Elvis? And Jinna?”

“The lasses are aboard, having a cuppa,” Rory said. “And who’s Elvis?”

A croon and a flapping of wings on high had all three men looking up to the top of the gondola, where Elvis had perched. His eyes, fixed on Gideon, gleamed in the Errant’s running lights. “That’s Elvis,” Gideon said. “It’s okay,” he added to the restless draco. “I mean, I was an idiot, but it’s okay now.” He paused, looked at Rory. “It is okay, isn’t it?”

Rory turned from his contemplation of the draco to meet Gideon’s questioning gaze. “I suppose that’ll be up to John to decide. Be sure to keep that cold pack in place,” he added before walking away.

Eitan waited for Rory to move out of earshot before speaking again. “You have questions,” he said to Gideon.

“A few,” Gideon replied, wincing as he pressed the ice to the knot in his head.

Eitan nodded, looked away, then back. “I won’t speak of Adia.”

“Understood,” Gideon replied. “So let’s move on to how it is you’re now working for the man who shot you off a cliff?”

“John did not fire those cannons.”

“Fired, ordered fired.” Gideon waved that off, “It’s all the same thing.”

“Except Captain Pitte was not the one giving those orders,” Eitan explained. “The orders came from General Rand. John refused to comply, so Rand had him forcibly removed from command, court-martialed, and dishonorably discharged.”

“Is that what Pitte told you?” Gideon asked.

“No,” the voice Gideon had last heard ordering him to release Pitte broke in. “That’s what I told him.”

Gideon looked up to see the woman who’d arrived, crate propped against one hip and a shooter holstered on the other.

“She explained it all, just in time to prevent me killing John,” Eitan confirmed.

“And you believed her?”

“I did, once John allowed me to sense the truth.”

Gideon chewed on that for a second, then looked up at the glaring Jagati. “Thanks for stopping me,” he said, at the same time wondering how many times she’d been forced to step between her captain and vengeance-minded corpsman.

Her eyes narrowed, then she gave an ill-humored shrug and turned her attention to Eitan. “I got some dirt on the granddaddy, Killian Del, from Alonso in the mail office.”

“Alonso knows everyone,” Eitan murmured.

“And their second cousin,” she affirmed. “But between what he says about Del and the smog-fest our job has turned into, we need to get aloft, ASAP.”

“Understood.”

She gave Gideon one last fulminating glare, then stomped up the gangplank and into the ’ship.

“She’s impressive,” Gideon said, after a beat. He moved the cold pack long enough to gently knead the contusion and winced. For certain, she’d made an impression on him.

“She is at that,” Eitan agreed. “Jagati is also a good friend.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it, seeing how she pretty much hates me.” Then he looked more closely at Eitan, still in that animal-like crouch. “I bet you have some questions of your own.”

Eitan nodded. “When I returned to the Colonies, I did not only learn who of our company died,” he said. “I learned you were in prison, for treason. That you confessed.” His eyes were too dark to read as he looked at Gideon.

“Because I did,” Gideon said.

Eitan’s breath hissed in, then out. “Why?”

“It’s kind of a long story,” Gideon said.

Eitan studied Gideon a moment, then he looked up, and Gideon followed his gaze to where Elvis was still watching. “Will you, or your friend, object to a sensing? It would go much faster and likely be less confusing.”

Gideon’s breath caught, and he just prevented the wince because his last experience with a sensitive hadn’t ended well. Not through any fault of hers, or his, for that matter, but still . . .

But this was Eitan, the first of Gideon’s company to fall, and a man who, by all appearances, had had a worse time of it than Gideon. “Go for it,” he said.

Eitan gave a short nod, then laid his hand against the side of Gideon’s head. “Remember,” he murmured softly.

Gideon wanted to say he’d never forgotten, but even as the word echoed through his thoughts, he felt the sear of plasma burns, the ache of concussion.

The next breath he took smelled of allusteel and sweat, and when his hand clutched at his side, he felt the rough nap of a blanket.

Gideon’s eyes opened to a dull gray ceiling, and he knew he was once again in the brig of the UCAS Kodiak, the day after half his company had died.

Nbo, he thought, his throat closing with rage. Eitan, Estelle . . .

Breathe, he heard/felt Eitan’s voice. This is only a memory.

Memory, Gideon echoed the gentle remonstrance. Right.

You are not alone this time, Eitan reminded him, and bolstered by the other man’s unseen presence, Gideon rose from the bunk just as he had in life when a door creaked open, followed by the uneven steps of General Rand.

Gideon continued to follow the path of his memory by walking over to the bars of his cell, where he waited for Rand to come to a stop in front of him.

Rand was leaning on a cane, and his leg had been immobilized in a brace.

Probably made getting up and down ladder a bitch, Gideon thought. “Nice cane,” he said.

He couldn’t be certain, but it felt as if Eitan found that funny.

Rand did not. “You are going to plead guilty to treason, desertion, and assaulting a superior officer.”

Gideon stared. “I really don’t see that happening.” He considered. “Well, except that last.”

“I rather think you will,” Rand told him. “Particularly given the overwhelming evidence against you.”

“The manufactured evidence,” Gideon countered. “You planted that intel in my pack.”

“Why would I do that?” Rand asked. “By the way, we’ve contacted Special Operations, and General Satsuke assures me her division issued no orders to your company. Your supposed witnesses are either dead or accused with you, and you already have a history of ignoring orders, breaking regulations . . . murdering enemy officers.” A thin smile accompanied that last. “Beyond all that, the civilian airship you claim transported you to Nasa has yet to answer any of our hails.”

Gideon’s jaw, already clenched to the point of pain, twitched. “Dead or paid off?”

“That is a question,” Rand said, then changed the subject. “Then, of course, there is all this.” He held up the cane, gestured to the livid bruise on the right side of his face. “You’d be amazed how much weight aggravated assault can add to a case of treason. So much weight,” he added, “I am within my mandate to order a battlefield execution. Not for you. Your rank guarantees you the right to trial, but I can, and will, have every surviving member of the Twelfth Company shot at dawn.”

Gideon felt Eitan’s rage twining with his own and had to grip the bars to steady himself.

“A terrible fate for those six soldiers,” Rand continued, as he had at the time. “Especially if they were only following their traitorous colonel’s orders. And,” he added, stepping closer to the bars, “in case the lives of your enlisteds aren’t sufficient motivation, I’m given to understand you have a certain fondness for one Lieutenant Indani Solis, currently stationed on the Phalanx, currently assigned to the Stolichnayan front.”

“Wait,” Gideon said.

“So easy for a jump to go wrong in the middle of a firefight,” Rand continued. “Lines fail, weapons misfire . . . accidents happen.” He paused, studying Gideon. “I see I have your attention.”

“Yes.”

“And you understand just how many lives are at stake, here.”

“Are they alive? Is Dani—are they all still alive?”

“You doubt me?”

“What do you think?” Gideon’s hands slammed against the bars, and it was the most minute satisfaction to see Rand flinch. “Are. They. Alive?”

“For now.” Rand’s response came out more as a hiss than as words. “But unless you take responsibility for the crimes of which you have been accused, what remains of your company will be witnessing their last sunsrise in the next two hours, and it won’t be another full day before Lieutenant Solis makes her final jump.”

Gideon’s heart sped. His breath hitched.

Easy, Eitan reminded him. “And what happens when I’m in prison and Odile keeps selling our secrets to the enemy?” Not that he expected an answer, but it appeared Jessup Rand was full of surprises.

“If this Odile is even half competent, they’ll have changed their code name the second you discovered it at Fort Molina. Besides, given how many spies are operating on both sides of the conflict, one more or less won’t signify.”

Gideon stepped closer to the bars. “It will if it turns out you’re the real Odile, using my confession for cover.”

“You dare suggest I’d betray the colonies? The Corps?”

Which was beyond enough. “You didn’t have any problem betraying my company,” he began, but then stepped back as Rand’s expression shifted, changing in a blink from triumph to a self-loathing so ravenous it had the spit drying in Gideon’s mouth.

“Do you have the least idea,” Rand asked as Gideon stared, shocked, “the least idea what I’ve done because of you?”

“I know exactly what you’ve done,” Gideon replied. “What I don’t know is why.”

“Don’t you?” Rand asked as the loathing of self gave way to a livid, living hatred of the man imprisoned before him, then he reached into his pocket and withdrew a thin piece of fabric in vivid red which, unfurling, released a subtle, spicy scent. “You should never have touched her,” he said before crumpling the silk in one hand and turning to make his halting way out of the brig, leaving Gideon alone with the lingering odor of Celia Rand’s perfume and the memory of her body pressed close against his.

The door to the brig clanged shut, closing on the memory as Gideon’s eyes opened.

Eitan dropped his hand from Gideon’s head to rest on his shoulder.

“I’m good,” Gideon lied to the backs of his eyelids.

“As you say,” Eitan murmured, but he released his grip on Gideon.

Gideon sighed and opened his eyes.

“Did anyone actually believe you were Odile?” Eitan asked.

“Some,” Gideon said, then added without thinking, “Dani never believed it.”

“Lieutenant Solis is wise,” Eitan murmured.

“But the brass accepted my confession of treason,” Gideon continued. “Why wouldn’t they? Rand was right about one thing; my jacket was stuffed with evidence of me disobeying orders, going rogue, murdering enemy officers—”

“That wasn’t murder,” Eitan cut in. “It was retribution.”

“Tenjin didn’t think so,” Gideon said, recalling the officer who had led the inquiry of a mission gone swarm. “But it didn’t help my case that I’d been tortured in that Ducati cell.”

“The court believed you’d been turned,” Eitan surmised.

“And I let them,” Gideon said.

Eitan sat back on his heels, considering. “Do you think Rand was, or is, Odile?”

“I considered it,” Gideon said. “But you saw his face when I asked him.” He shook his head. “No. I think he was telling the truth about that, at least. Espionage was a convenient lie to hang me with. I just don’t know why.”

“‘You should never have touched her’,” Eitan recalled Rand’s last words. “Does he mean Msr Rand?”

“I don’t know,” Gideon said.

Eitan said nothing.

“Maybe,” Gideon admitted, then cursed. “Probably. But it wasn’t touching, touching, per se,” he said. “It was more a heat-of-battle-we’re-gonna-die touching. It . . . it felt like it might have been more,” he continued, thinking back to that day in Fort Molina—the wet snow splatting over them as they hid, the burning wound in his arm, the pressure of the dispatch tube he’d liberated from an enemy officer digging into his ribs. Footsteps closing in and her eyes, so dark, so promising that he’d come damn close to forgetting where they were and why . . .

Gideon shook his head. “It was pretty intense,” he said. “But nothing actually happened, and even if it had—”

“Even if it had,” Eitan cut in, “could Rand truly be so Earth-bound he’d murder half a company and frame a man?”

“Believe me, I mean to ask,” Gideon said. “But more, I mean to clear my name. The Twelfth Company’s name.”

Eitan, still crouched easily, nodded his understanding.

Gideon knew a sensitive reading took less time than talking, but still . . . “Don’t your legs start to cramp up, sitting like that?”

“No,” Eitan said, but then he rose and held his hand out.

Gideon accepted the lift, wavering only slightly on reaching his feet.

At the same time, the Errant’s engines sputtered to life and Mia, John, and Jinna came down the gangplank.

“Pratchett is one of my favorite classical writers.” Pitte gestured at a book Mia clutched to her chest. “Next time we’re in Nike, you can tell me what you think.” Then he glanced at Jinna. “Though it may be a while before we drop anchor in Nike.”

“I really don’t want to be any trouble,” Jinna said with the air of someone continuing a previous discussion.

“So you’ve said,” Pitte replied, confirming Gideon’s supposition. “But lately, trouble is pretty much the Errant’s stock in trade.”

As if on cue, the port aft engine sputtered, whined, and ground to silence.

“I’m on it!” Rory shouted from within.

“Really,” Pitte said, “it always works out. Eventually.”

“It’ll be fine,” Mia promised, giving Jinna a bolstering nudge.

“Sure,” Jinna said.

“I’ll take care of Del,” Gideon heard himself say, then wondered where on toxic Earth that had come from.

“Oh, but—”

“It’ll work out,” he said, almost echoing Pitte’s earlier promise, which made him look at Pitte, himself. “So, you’re okay?”

“I’ve had worse,” Pitte replied with a glance at Eitan before he added, “I should have taken care of Rand. If I was going down for insubordination anyway, I should have taken care of him.”

“Not to worry,” Gideon told him. “I will.”

“Del and Rand?” Pitte’s eyes narrowed. “That seems a tall order.”

“Not for the commander of the Dirty Dozen,” Eitan said.

Gideon’s lips quirked, and he turned to his former second-in-command. “Do you want in on this?”

Eitan’s eyes flickered with something cold and hard. “I wish I could,” he said. “But I have obligations here.” He glanced up at the Errant, then back to Gideon. “But please, feel free to give General Rand my regards.”

“You can take that to the apiary,” Gideon promised.

Then the port engine sparked to life, causing Elvis to jump from his perch on the gondola and land on Gideon’s shoulder, where the need to soothe the draco’s hissing displeasure prohibited any further discussion.

Soon after the Errant lifted off, Mia and Gideon were back in the borrowed Edsel, heading back to the city.