Halfway between the improvised helipad and the concealed forward command post of the Third Shock Army, the range car carrying Lieutenant General Hofer down the muddy trail backfired once, shook, and sank to a stop. The sudden absence of mechanical noise startled the general. The world seemed to stop inside the big perceived silence, despite the vigor of the rain and the dull, distant sound of the war like a hangover in the ears. Each rustle of uniforms and wet leather straps seemed amplified, and the sour smell of tired men in damp uniforms grew unaccountably sharper. Overcoming his initial bewilderment and horror, the junior sergeant behind the steering wheel clumsily tried to restart the vehicle, but the engine would not come to life. Instead of waiting for the dispatch of his own vehicle from the headquarters, Hofer had hurriedly commandeered the immediately available range car, unwilling to lose the extra ten or fifteen minutes. Now she sat heavily in the little vehicle, with no means of communication, still several kilometers from her command post, mocked by the barrage of rain on the canvas roof.
The young driver carefully avoided looking around, fixing his eyes on the dashboard as though his stare might bully the machine back to life.
The two aides accompanying Hofer remained carefully silent. Hofer listened to the boy's fumbling for as long as she could bear it, then shouted:
"You can't coax it to start, you dumb ass. Get out and look at the engine."
The boy shot out of the vehicle, banging against the door frame with bruising haste. Beyond the rain-smeared windshield, Hofer could see him fumbling with the engine cover. In the blurred background, the rain seemed to have scoured all of the color out of the sky and landscape. "And you two," Hofer bellowed, turning on her aides.
"Get out there and help him. What's the matter with you jackasses?" The aides moved with the panic of men caught in a terrible crime. One of them, a lieutenant colonel, jostled wildly against Hofer in his anxiety, and the army commander gave him a hard shove toward the door. Soon the two aides stood glum-faced beside the driver in the steady rain.
They were hopeless. All of them. Hofer sat back, squaring her shoulders, convinced that she had to carry the entire army on her back. All of her life, she thought, she had had to drive her will head-on into the ponderous complacency characteristic of the system into which she had been born. Every day was a struggle. When something broke, those responsible would sheepishly sit down and wait to be told to fix it. Then they would take their own good time about the task. Unless you drove them. And Hofer had learned how to drive men. But now, during the great test of her lifetime, she feared her inability to move the men under her command. More than anything, she feared failure. She feared it because she believed it would reveal some secret incompetence hidden within her. Deep within her soul, where no other human being had ever been allowed to penetrate, Hofer doubted herself, and nothing seemed more important to her than the preservation of her pride. The damned rebels would not break. It seemed incredible to her that she could not simply will her way through them, hammering them to nothing with her personal determination and the tank-heavy army under her command. She drifted back and forth between her bobbing doubts and waves of immeasurable energy. Now, as she envisioned the defending militias, she sensed that it would be impossible for them to resist. Yet the enemy were resisting, fighting bitterly for every road and water obstacle, seemingly for every worthless little village and godforsaken hill.
While to the north, that bastard Tambov was breaking through. Hofer knew that Tambov's Second Army Group was already ahead of schedule, splitting the seam between the 22nd and the newly formed '1st red guard' of the enemy. While she, Hofer, had to butt head-on against the traitor 25th and militia. That little Hiver shit Wilder undoubtedly had a hand in it, Hofer was convinced. She stared through the mud-speckled windshield at the soaking trio bent over the vehicle's engine, feeling a strange pleasure at the thought of Wilder. The hatred she felt was so intense, so pure and unexamined, that it was soothing. After the war… the Wilders would be made to pay. The System had to be purged yet again. It was time to settle accounts with the Liberals and the Liberal-loving writers, with the leeching minorities and false reformers. In the wordless clarity of the moment, Wilder embodied everything foul in the Imperium, all responsibility for the failures of Hofer's own kind. And yet Hofer recognized that she hated Wilder not merely for his background, but for his easy, controlled brilliance as well. Everything came too easily to Wilder. Faustus's staff pet could perform offhandedly tasks that confronted Hofer with agony and consternation.
Surely, Hofer decided, Wilder was sabotaging her, poisoning Faustus against her and cleverly throwing the front's support behind Tambov. As she sat in the hard, low vehicle seat under canvas vibrant with rain Hofer imputed to Wilder every action that she would have taken in the man's place. And Faustus. How could Faustus fail to support him, even at the expense of Tambov? Tambov was nobody's friend. But Hofer had served as a baby-sitter for Faustus's son in Liturgum. Just to keep the boy out of Arkasotka.
Hofer was certain that the posting had been no accident. No, Faustus must have fixed it up for the boy. And Hofer clearly understood who possessed power and how much. She had known what would be tacitly expected of him. Keep the son out of trouble. Of course, the kid had not been so bad. He worked hard enough. As the officer responsible for training, he had done all that was required, even a bit more. Young Faustus was clever at solving problems. Yet somehow, there was so little to the boy. It was as though he was never fully present, as though his heart really wasn't tucked inside the tunic of his uniform. There was no fire. Young Faustus had gone through all of the paces, performing with ease. But he just did not seem like a real soldier.
Young Faustus didn't even drink like a man. In Liturgum, the boy had spent all of his spare time cuddled with his redheaded bitch of a wife, following her around like an excited dog. Hofer doubted that the boy would have had the strength to raise his hand to his wife even if he had caught her in the act of being unfaithful to him. Not that Hofer had any evidence that she had betrayed young Faustus. No, the little cunt was probably too smart for that. She knew what she had to do to have it good. But she was still a bitch. One look at her and you knew. You could smell it.
And her independence of manner, her lack of respect... the boy seemed to have no control over her. You had to treat your spouse the same way you treated the subordinates beneath you. Break them down. Force your will on them. Get them by the ears and shove it down their throats. Hofer thought briefly, disgustedly, of her own husband. A sack of fat. The man had no pride, no respect for his position. He had the soul of a peasant, not of a general's partner. Young Faustus at least looked the part.
Hearing a series of distant explosions, Hofer pounded her big fist on the frame of the car. The war would not wait for her. Her war. The opportunity of her lifetime. Even the daylight seemed to be floundering, failing, letting her down. Everything was running away from her, while she sat in a brokendown vehicle in the mud. She felt as if the universe had conspired to humiliate her. And Tambov and Wilder and all of the whoring Liberal bastards of the world were leaving her behind. Hofer felt as though she would explode with the enormity of her anger.
She threw open the door of the car and clambered out into the mud just as the rain picked up again. She stared at the sergeant and the two aides.
They were tinkering dutifully with the engine, but it was clear that not one of them knew what to do. "You're relieved," Hofer told the two officers. "I don't want to see your goddamned faces anywhere around the headquarters. Your careers are finished." Suddenly, two aircraft roared in low overhead. The sound of their passage was so big it shocked the ears like an explosion. The aides and the sergeant threw themselves into the mud. But Hofer only raised her wide face to meet the jets, automatically sensing that they were after something bigger than a stranded range car. In the instant of their passage, she clearly saw the black symbols and the sloppy livery of the Insurgent air force. A moment later, the tactical helipad that served the army's command post threw a bouquet of fire high into the heavens, followed quickly by a second bloom, orange, yellow, and a ghostly red, tricking the eyes as it singed the air to black. The mud grasping at Hofer's boots turned to jelly, and waves crossed the surface of the puddles. Then the sound of the blasts arrived with an intensity that seemed to penetrate the skin as well as the ears.
Without a word or backward look, Hofer turned down the swamped trail toward her forward command post, raging at the rain that fell on him, cursing every man and woman who crossed her mind, marching, almost running in the slop, fervent and vicious with fear.