The sound of mortars peppered the air. The bird men were relentless. General Williams had ordered them into the streets in an attempt to protect the civilians, but they didn't seem to be doing much good. He'd never believed in aliens before they found the ruins on Mars, but now the bird men were here in ships larger than any nation on Earth had ever thought of building. But it was their alienness in another, more terrible sense that horrified Oleg. These creatures knew nothing of the laws or customs of war. He had seen them bombard hospitals to take out the fire team posted across the street and destroy food and water meant for school children.
The radio crackled. "Outpost Charlie, be advised that we have lost contact with Outpost Foxtrot. Last reports are that the birds took them out and are making for your position. We have confirmation that they are carrying incendiaries. You are authorized to surrender at your discretion."
Oleg kept his breath even by sheer force of will. Catherine and Nikolai had taken refuge in a schoolhouse not far from Foxtrot's position. He wanted nothing more than to ask if they were safe, but he had to be Corporal Petrovsky, acting platoon commander, not Oleg the husband and father. "Negative on that. We will remain at our posts." The bird men didn't respect civilian status, why should they respect a surrender?
He spent the next thirty-six hours trying not to get burned to death. By the time the First Fleet showed up to relieve him, he was dead on his feet and half-dehydrated. He brushed off the praise and the orders that he eat something and used the last scrap of his strength to head over to the makeshift refugee camp in the center of New Macau.
He rushed toward what looked like a reception desk. The woman manning it looks like she hasn't slept any better than he has. "I'm looking for a woman and a child. Catherine and Nikolai Petrovsky.
She looked at the computer screen. Her face crumpled and then he knew. "I'm so sorry. We had two patients by that name. The woman didn't make it."
The world stopped. Catherine was dead. But Catherine couldn't be dead. They finally had enough money to afford the vacation to Paris. She was so excited to be starting work at the new community college. They had forced the bird men into a stalemate. He had done everything the garrison had asked and more.
"And Nikolai?" There was still hope. If Nikolai was still alive, then maybe Catherine would be too. She wouldn't leave her son alone for anything.
"He's in critical condition. The doctors say his chances aren't good." She reached over and the desk and squeezed his hand. "But there's always hope."
"Of course," he repeated. The words sounded as if they came from a different man, a man for whom life still made some sense. "Take me to him."
The little body lying on the bed couldn't be his son. He was too still. Nikolai loved to climb and swing from the monkey bars. Oleg had to bribe him to get him to go to bed. He was swathed in bandages, unrecognizable except for his thatch of dark hair on his head. Tubes stuck out from his body, and monitors beeped.
Oleg sunk to his knees beside the bed. Oh God, this was real. This was happening to him. "You have to wake up, Nick."
But Nick didn't wake up. Oleg went through the motions of identifying Catherine's body and enduring whatever plans her family decided to make. His world had narrowed to a hospital room. He brought Nikolai's stuffed bear from home. He read him his favorite stories.
On the third day with no change, the sound of loud cheering interrupted his vigil. He rose from Nikolai's bedside, half furious and half bewildered. Why would anyone cheer? Didn't they know what he had lost, that the world was on the brink of ending?
An orderly filled him in. The bird men had a name—turians—and they had offered peace at the behest of something called the Council. There were more aliens out there, and they already ruled the stars.
Oleg was still digesting all this when Nikolai's monitors began beeping frantically. Oleg screamed for a doctor and rushed back into the room. Nikolai's breathing was shallow and rapid. The doctors and nurses swarmed around Nikolai like worker ants, and Oleg was reduced to whispering prayers to every saint he could think of. Saint Nicholas, pray for him.
The monitor stopped beeping and became a flat monotone. Oleg pushed his way back to Nikolai's bedside. His breath was no longer shallow and rapid. His chest was utterly still. "Do something," he pleaded, not sure himself whether he was addressing the doctors or God.
The doctors shook their heads. Hot tears sprang from his face. His son was dead.
Outside, the cheering continued.
Oleg took a long drink of water and tried to read. He and all but the essential staff were off duty on account of the holiday. Most had gone to the officers' or enlisted men's lounge to get drunk before the supply of alcohol ran out. Oleg had learned the hard way that it was better to stay sober. Every other day of the year, he was a man who got on with the business of living and defending the galaxy. On Armistice Day, the ghosts came for him.
No… ghost, singular. He had loved Catherine, but she had chosen to be the wife of a military man and chosen to follow him to Shanxi. Nikolai hadn't chosen anything. He hadn't even learned to read yet, still depending on Oleg's stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Oleg looked down at the datapad.
"The knights in my order will ride all over the world, still dressed in steel and whacking away with their swords— that will give an outlet for wanting to whack, you understand, an outlet for what Merlyn calls the foxhunting spirit— but they will be bound to strike only on behalf of what is good, to defend virgins against Sir Bruce and to restore what has been done wrong in the past and to help the oppressed and so forth. Do you see the idea? It will be using the Might instead of fighting against it, and turning a bad thing into a good."
Nikolai gave him a questioning look. "What's a virgin, Daddy?"
Oleg bit back a curse. "Er, I'll tell you when you're older."
Nikolai nodded, accepting this.
Oleg turned the datapad off and shoved it into a drawer. He had told Miranda once that he tried not to hate the turians, but some days were more difficult than others.
There was a knock at the door. "It's me."
Oleg jumped, straightened his clothes, and rushed to the door. Like him, she was off duty for the day and out of uniform. Her eyes were bright, and she didn't seem to be leaning on her cane quite so heavily. One of her good mornings, then. Well, at least someone was having one. His gaze traveled to the wooden box under her free arm. "Do you need help with that?"
"It's for you. I thought you could use the distraction."
He took it from her. It was surprisingly heavy in his hands. He went to the desk and opened it. A chess set. Black's pieces were exquisitely carved, not the mass-produced junk he would find in the Omega markets, but the work of a genuine craftsman. He palmed the king, turning it over in his hand for examination. Chess was the perfect game, teaching the lessons of war in microcosm, where intellect and skill carried the day instead of brute force. His personal set was at home on Bekenstein. The mission to free Omega from the adjutants was only supposed to last few a days. He had accepted his expanded orders, but there was so much he was forced to do without. And Miranda had brought one of them back.
"I—this is marvelous. Thank you." He squinted as he realized what was missing. "But I see only one set of pieces."
Miranda smiled the same smile she wore when she was about to bend the laws of nature as she sat down opposite him. "They were carved by a local. But there are only a handful of us on this station who match you in skill, and it doesn't seem right for you to have to depend on my busy schedule to enjoy yourself. So I made a little addition." She tapped a button on the side of the board, and sixteen semisolid holograms sprang to White's defense. "Controllable either by a human player or a VI. But the wooden pieces are for you, you Luddite."
He smiled at the old insult. "I'm a traditionalist. Completely different."
"Of course it is." She pursed her lips and studied the board. "Would you care to play a game to break it in?"
Oleg stilled. There were things that even they never spoke of. The Illusive Man had been distraught at the loss of Henry Lawson's support and uncertain of Miranda's value. He had asked Oleg if it would be possible to reconcile father and daughter. Miranda had been evasive when asked what life with Henry had been like. So he had paid the Shadow Broker to tell him what had happened. The thirty-six hour training session after Miranda had lost a chess game had made a particular impression. He had reported that the differences were irreconcilable. A few weeks later, Miranda had achieved her first of many victories by rescuing him from the Blue Suns, and Henry Lawson had been all but forgotten.
"If you're sure. You don't have to do anything on my account."
"I'm offering a chess game, not an organ transplant. I promised you a distraction, remember?" Her voice softened. "And I still owe you for the chocolate."
Miranda never had been able to accept the gifts. Always bargains, potential debts that had to be repaid lest she be left weaker than when she started. Damn Henry and his manipulations. "No you don't." He smiled at her. "But I would like to play."
He set up his pieces and waited for her to make the first move. You could take a person's measure when you played against them, and he found himself unexpectedly excited at the prospect of playing against Miranda. Would she be as deliberate here as she was in the lab or would she be daring and impulsive? What gambits would she try? How would she react to him forcing her to sacrifice the piece on which her whole strategy depended?
As it turned out, Miranda was a cautious player. She left few openings, and those she did would require him to sacrifice far more than he would gain. But she also made no great offenses, never forced him to change his strategy on the fly. This was no battle; it was a siege. Victory would go to whoever had the most patience. And he was nothing if not a patient man.
Miranda moved her king's rook to threaten his king's bishop. Oleg studied the board. He could allow her to take it and then take the rook with his queen. But that would leave his other bishop vulnerable if she was aware of the vulnerability herself. And when was Miranda not aware of vulnerabilities? He retreated.
Miranda smiled, and he saw too late what he had allowed. She moved her knight. "Check."
"You clever, clever woman," he murmured.
"I thought for a moment you'd forgotten the point is to protect the king."
He stiffened and memory overtook him again.
"So you went to all that trouble to protect the little man with the cross on his hat? But the horse is way cooler. It jumps!"
Oleg smiled. "But without the king the whole thing falls apart. Someday I'll teach you all about it."
Miranda peered at him. "Are you all right?"
He shook his head to clear it and force himself back into the present. "I'm fine. Did you know that Armistice Day is called Remembrance Day in Britain? Sometimes I think that that's a more apt description."
Miranda softened and squeezed his hand. There was no pity in her eyes, no harsh insistence that he "just get over it already." No clicking her tongue and shaking her head as she waxed rhapsodic about what a poor broken man he must be. But then, if he were broken, then she was broken the same way. He preferred to think of them as scarred: the damage would always be present and visible, but the organ still worked. But sometimes when it was cold and damp or on a particular day, the scar still hurt like hell.
"May I ask you a personal question?"
Miranda frowned and turned a shade paler as if she knew what he was going to ask, but she nodded.
"How do you cope when the memories haunt you?" He sat back and waited. She was within her rights to castigate him for presuming such intimacy, but right now he wanted the reminder that he wasn't alone.
"You've had more practice than I have."
"Please, I want to know."
"All right." She exhaled. "I worked. I filled myself with so many facts, figures, and reports that I didn't have room to think of what I'd lost. When that didn't work, I tried not to think at all." She swallowed, and her voice trembled. "Just after… just after it happened, I got high on Hallex. Once was enough to convince me I never wanted to do it again. And there are other ways to flood yourself with endorphins and drive out the grief for a little while. Most of them are even good for their own sake."
She looked at him. Her eyes were dark like space, promising a thousand things that he wasn't sure he wanted to know about. "I can make you forget for a little while. Your body likes sex no matter what the mind thinks, and this is better than with strangers."
"Are you suggesting pity sex?"
"I'm suggesting that I can help you for a little while. It beats getting drunk, I assure you"
He cursed. It was one thing to indulge their mutual lust for the fun of it. It was another thing entirely to use her to blot out the memories of his son. But it would be so nice to feel pleasure instead of these echoes of grief. "Are you up to it?"
"It's been a good morning."
"That's not what I asked."
"I like doing this with you. And in our particular line of work that's not always a luxury I get." Her voice dropped to a low, sibilant whisper. "Let me repay a few of those favors I owe you."
He was going to hell for this. "Do as you please with me, my dear."
There was none of her usual playfulness or teasing as she ordered him to lean against the wall. She closed her eyes, and a biotic glow enveloped her hand. Ever since their first night together, this had always been foreplay, priming him to readiness before he took her. The first stroke was a light caress that made him twitch. Gradually, she picked up the pace, her phantom fingers insistent in a way those of flesh could never be. Sparks raced through him, up from his cock all the way to his brain. His mind fractured. Not broken, not yet. He could still force himself to look at her dark eyes intent on his own and watch as her mouth parted slightly, but he could feel his control slipping away.
"Stop," he croaked.
She didn't.
"If you don't, I won't be able to control myself. I'll be useless for you."
She laughed, and the sound sent a shiver up his spine. "Don't you get it? This is about you, not me. Just relax and enjoy yourself."
She resumed her ministrations. The powers of speech left him, and he was helpless to resist her. She brought him to the brink again and again. His breathing came in harsh gasps. And still she looked at him with that calculating gaze. He didn't know what to make of this strange mixture of wild abandon and cool precision. In the end, all he could do was grunt as his climax finally overtook him.
And there were no more ghosts.
He slumped against the wall. His limbs were pleasantly heavy, and he was too tired and satisfied to care about how ridiculous he must look with his fly undone. Miranda was still immaculate and smiling as if she had re-created the Lazarus Project all by herself. "Feeling any better?"
"Much." At last some sense of responsibility penetrated his lust-addled mind. "I should have done something for you."
"You can make it up to me later. This was for you."
"No." He crossed to her on unsteady legs and pressed his mouth to hers. Her lips were warm and soft. He grabbed the nearest pillow and Miranda ran her hands over his chest and acquiescence. "If it's all the same to you, I think I'll make it up to you now. I might be a bit spent at the moment but…" He couldn't hide a satisfied smile of his own. "…a good officer makes do with what he has."
Miranda wasn't the only one who couldn't accept a gift.
He held her afterwards. He wondered when the novelty of a warm and happy Miranda curled up next to him would wear off. He had seen to his needs discreetly in the years after Catherine's death with fellow operatives or by making arrangements through one of the extranet sites designed for such a purpose. Sometimes it was simply two people satisfying a physical urge and sometimes, as now, sex was sweetened by friendship and affection. But Miranda was… different. Not in the stupid ways poets talked about when they blathered about soulmates and other nonsense. There was always some new facet to explore, a new way to make her sigh or some detail he hadn't noticed. Her scars being a little paler and more ragged on the left end, for instance. His fingers played across the rough edges of her scars. Miranda no longer flinched when did. He chose to take that as a small victory.
"Sometimes, I think you really do have a scar fetish," she murmured. "I really should get them looked at by a proper plastic surgeon."
"You could have done that months ago." He kissed her forehead.
"Waste medical supplies and take myself out of action for weeks for an elective surgery when the Reapers could be at our door and any moment? I'm not that vain or that selfish."
The damned Reapers colored everything and they weren't even here yet. He stroked her shoulders. "Rationing every scrap of medigel and waiting for a war to begin. It can't be the life you imagined."
"And somehow I doubt trying to impose law and order on Omega was what you had in mind when you enlisted." She ran her fingers over his chest. "Maybe you should have stayed in the Alliance. You'd be running things by now. Or insane from having to deal with all the petty bickering."
"Insane. I would definitely be insane. I wouldn't trade this for anything. A chance to finally do some good on Omega. Though sometimes I do wonder what would have happened if I had only been disgusted enough to resign my commission instead of joining Cerberus."
"And what would have happened?"
He supposed there was no harm in telling her. "I would have gone to the colonies. Horizon or Ferris Fields. The militias are in terrible shape: either a few men who were mostly hunters and old mechs or private security companies who only defend the wealthy. They deserve good defense without the bureaucracy of the Alliance." Perhaps he could even persuade the colonial government to do something about the poor infrastructure. And he could stay somewhere for more than a few weeks at a time. Perhaps he would even have a dog again. It would be a good way to spend his rapidly-approaching retirement. To preserve instead of destroy. "And I would like to see Jake more than once a year."
"Does Michael still think you run a mercenary company?"
"And then I'm dishonoring everyone that died in New Macau? Yes." Some sacrifices stung more than others. "But I can gladly stand him despising me if it means he survives this war." He wondered which of them had the worse hand: a brother that despised him or a sister who didn't even know she existed. It was impolite to ask, so he did what he always did when the conversation was in danger of entering rocky ground: he changed the subject. "So tell me, what would you be during if you hadn't joined Cerberus?"
"You know the answer. And I'd probably be dead trying to get Oriana out by myself."
"No, none of that. Let's stipulate that Henry choked on an oyster the day before you left home. What would the brilliant and fascinating Ms. Lawson be doing with her life?"
"I—I never really thought about it. I've spent my whole life in Cerberus." She burrowed against him. "I hope I'd still use these bloody genes for something useful. No working with the Alliance, though. I couldn't possibly stand all the red tape. Let's see. I think I'd steal Lawson Biomedical from whoever Father decided was a decent heir. My God, he probably would have left it to Dr. Llewellyn. She'd run the place into the ground. I'd definitely have to steal it. For the good of humanity."
"And just like that, you'd become the richest woman in the galaxy," he said with a smile. "Well played, my dear. Much better than trying to herd cats in the colonies."
She made a scoffing noise in the back of her throat. "You think I'd go to all that trouble just for money? Father has facilities that rival anything I've had working for Cerberus. And he doesn't have to worry about a squad of marines kicking down his door and ruining all his samples. With resources like that, I might even be able to mass-produce some of the Lazarus work. Not the whole thing, but even a fraction of what we discovered could have done for medicine what the relays did for space travel."
"So you'd be doing exactly what you are now except you'd be able to make better copies. I suppose some people really do have callings."
"It's a foolish idea, anyway. I'll always be what I am: an operative working in the shadows." A hint of bitterness crept into her voice.
"You want recognition?"
"No. I can go without credit. I just… I'd like something permanent and to stop sleeping with a gun under my pillow."
I'm permanent, he wanted to say but didn't. Because the truth was that he wasn't. Another of the sacrifices he and Miranda made in service to humanity.
His comm rang. Oleg jumped from bed, instantly alert. No one would dare call him on the holiday for anything except the direst emergency. His anxiety was mirrored on Miranda's face. He mentally ran through possible scenarios, each worse than the last. A riot in one of the wards. The Talons striking a major checkpoint. Another adjutant escape. He picked up the comm.
North's voice was grim. "They bombed the purification plant. The whole thing's been leveled."
"Leveled?" He felt as if he were standing in an airlock with only the flimsiest kinetic barrier preventing him from being sucked into space. "How many casualties?"
"Three civilians that we know about. Who knows how many people trapped in the debris."
"I want all available units assisting with rescue and containment. All the sober ones, in any case. Inform Walker, Barrington and the rest of the medically-qualified staff that they are being recalled to provide emergency care as needed. I'll be on site as soon as I can to assist."
He turned off the comm. Miranda was already awkwardly throwing on her clothes as quickly as she could. "I'll head to the med center."
"No." He forced himself to keep his voice even, forced himself to think only in terms of the most effective response. He could feel later. "I want you assisting the codebreaking and surveillance team. I don't know who's responsible, but I'm betting that the Talon comm channels are going to be busier than they have been in some time."