Angles of Attack (Frontlines #3)(98)
“Tastes bad, too,” she says, and makes a face.
“Lousy honeymoon,” I say. “Terrible wedding night. Worst bed-and-breakfast ever.”
“An auspicious start,” she says, and we both smile at each other like idiots.
Thirty minutes after I finish my coffee, there’s a knock on the door.
I look at Halley and raise an eyebrow.
“Come in?” she says toward the door.
There’s the mechanical snap of a heavy-duty lock, and the door opens. Outside in the hallway, I can see two militia troopers standing guard, sidearms on their belts. A tall black man steps into the room. He wears the same fatigues, unflattering and baggy OD green, and the rank insignia on his collar tabs are that of a one-star general—the old-school general’s star with five points, not the new post-reorganization rank with a gold wreath and a four-pointed star in it. His bearing carries authority more so than the stars on his collar. He wears his hair in a very short military-regulation buzz cut, and there’s quite a bit of gray flecking his temples, but he looks lean. A warrior, not a pencil pusher. There are no insignia or badges on his fatigues, only a name tape that says “LAZARUS.”
“Good morning,” he says. “I hope you’re at least a little rested. Last night was pretty eventful.”
“Good morning,” Halley replies. I merely nod.
“I’m General Lazarus,” he says. “I’m in charge of what the men have come to call the Lazarus Brigade.” He smiles curtly. “I was against that because of the personality-cult aspect and because it limits our growth by definition, but I have to admit that it has a nice ring to it. May I sit down?”
“Your place,” I say, and gesture at the chair. Lazarus isn’t armed, at least not visibly, but something tells me that it wouldn’t be wise to offer him violence, even disregarding the armed men standing in front of the door. He has the bearing of a veteran. There’s an efficiency to his movements, the sense of a tightly coiled spring underneath a deceptively smooth surface, that tells me this man used to do dangerous things for a living when he wore the uniform.
“Let me start by expressing my thanks for your defense of our PRC last night,” Lazarus says when he is sitting down. “You took a great deal of personal risk, and you bought us the time to muster our own forces and get the situation under control.”
“Then why are you detaining us?” Halley asks. “Stripping us of our weapons and gear. We couldn’t tell the rest of the fleet where we are even if we wanted to.”
“That is standard procedure, unfortunately. We need the weapons for our own use, and we can’t let you communicate with the fleet or the HD and give away our location. But you are not prisoners, just guests.”
“So we can leave?” I ask. “Right now?”
“You can,” Lazarus says. “We’d have to blindfold you and take you to a safe pickup spot, but yes, you can leave. I would, however, ask that you consider hearing me out before I let you go.”
“If this is an interrogation, it’s the weirdest one ever,” Halley says.
“It’s not an interrogation,” Lazarus replies. “It’s a job offer. A chance to switch career paths.”
I laugh and fold my arms in front of my chest. “Oh, man. And here I thought this week couldn’t possibly get any weirder.”
“We’ve had a complicated relationship with the government of the PRC,” Lazarus says. “At first, they clamped down on us with the Territorial Army. Then, when we got too big to get stepped on, they backed off, let us run our own affairs. As long as we kept things quiet and orderly, you see.”
“Didn’t look so quiet and orderly from orbit last night,” I say.
“The PRCs are in full rebellion,” he says. “The ones without a Lazarus Brigade or its equivalent are eating themselves and each other. What was left of the fleet after Mars just disappeared from orbit a few days ago without warning or explanation. Homeworld Defense—well, I think we know what they’ve turned into in the last few years. They never worked to defend us anyway. The NAC government has all but abandoned us to our fate. You could stay with your respective services and get used up to feed what’s left of the machine, or you could serve the Commonwealth here, at home, directly and without a self-interested bureaucracy. I can’t promise you a retirement bonus, but I can promise you food, a place to hang your hats, freedom of movement, and a purpose.”
Halley and I look at each other. She looks as bewildered as I feel right now.
“Lazarus Brigade is made up of veterans,” the general says. “Not exclusively—there aren’t that many of us around—but most of the leadership positions. Almost all our officers are veterans, and about half our senior enlisted. The rest are recruited and trained locally from the PRCs. We do the job the Homeworld Defense battalions have ceased to do a long time ago. We perform police duties and external defense. We run the infrastructure and network with other PRCs. But we are never enough people for the job, and we always need experienced veterans with desirable skills.”
Lazarus gets up from his chair and walks over to the window. Outside, the PRC has come to life with its day-to-day business, millions of people surviving by the slimmest of margins every day and week, living from ration day to ration day.