Deathwatch (The Faded Earth Book 1)(14)

Unbidden, the sight of Eshton entering her home to end her family jumped to the front of her mind. She wasn’t afraid of any kind of sudden betrayal, not for asking questions. Yet the hard and inescapable truth was that the Deathwatch served as the fulcrum on which the entire Protectorate balanced. Any organization with such a wide and vital scope of responsibilities would necessarily have secrets. Given the lengths they were required to go to in order to maintain stability, Beck couldn’t help feeling a sense of dread at the idea of pushing too hard.

Their centrality to every aspect of society within the Protectorate had never really sunk home to her before the last week. Losing her parents as deeply personal, but it was a one-on-one event. No swarm of armored men and women moved in as one. Only Eshton.

Yet now, in this place, the wider truth gained clarity. Brighton was relatively new and small. It was a frontier town at heart. A backwater. The Watch could keep a light hand because there were few reasons not to.

It created an illusion of distance. A trick of perspective only.

She went along with the team for an hour, checking for signs of trouble around the array and making sure no damage had been done to its systems. She spoke only with Eshton and 2447, and tried to stay clear of subjects that caused any sort of tension. Whatever they didn’t want to talk about, she didn’t want to hear. It struck her as the safest way to live.

The ride along ended abruptly just as the perimeter check on the array was finished. They returned to the ascent slope in time to see a cluster of Pales begin climbing it.

“Ah,” 2447 said, unlimbering an expandable blade from a magnetic holder on her back. “This is where we part ways. Can’t risk you getting in the way.”

The signal cut off a moment later, the headset going blank. Beck pulled the complicated gear off her head and wiped strands of damp hair back from her face. A Watchman stepped forward to help her out of the modified training sim, pulling a wiring harness from the neck of the suit studded with sensors. Controlling the armor remotely was interesting. She hadn’t known they could operate without a pilot inside, but only because she had never bothered to consider the possibility. Obvious when you thought about it.

“Well, did you have fun?” asked the Sentinel assigned to help her.

“It was educational,” Beck said. Which was true, if just partially.





7


Eshton was not afraid. This was less a function of bravery than experience. His armor was designed with Pales in mind. The targeting system in his helmet outlined the bodies in red and gave him a count.

“Eleven,” Warden Stein said. “Four of us. Anyone else think that’s weird? I know it’s been a while since I went on regular patrols, but last I heard they always try to outnumber us at least four to one.”

“No, that’s still true,” Eshton confirmed. “They have to be up to something.”

Perkins and Green, the other two armored figures, began to move down the hill. Stein raised a gauntlet to stop them. “No. You two hang back with me. Eshton, go give them a poke. See if you can get them to spring whatever trap or plan they’ve got in mind.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, never hesitating.

Even at eleven to one odds, no fear rose up. He knew Pales were stronger than the humans they used to be, and far more durable. But it would take several of them reaching into the joints of his armor to peel away even one section, and Eshton had no intention of letting that happen. He strode down the hill at a steady pace, reaching a hand to his right thigh only when he was ten yards away.

The Pales stood back, watching him with dark intelligence. That was the curse of the Fade, and part of what made the infected so dangerous. Everything they had been, every memory of self, was scoured clean by the disease. The function of their brains remained untouched. Rudimentary things like walking and even manipulating tools stayed with them, and their intact capacity for learning made any Pale a dangerous enemy for the people of a Rez. Scraping away their attempts to climb the walls was an endless job for any Watchman in Defense.

Eshton pulled the dense, compact cylinder from its place on his thigh. With a subvocalized command, it expanded from a foot long, three inch wide chunk of metal into a staff almost as tall as his armor. The Pales watched this development with interest, spreading out into an even line across the flattened part of the hill.

The nearest of them flicked its eyes to Eshton’s other main weapon, a blade identical to Stein’s still folded tightly with only its hilt extending over his shoulder.

“Interesting,” he muttered.

“What’s that?” Stein asked.

Eshton brought the metal staff into a guard position and let himself drift one heavy footfall at a time to the right edge of the line of Pales. “This group knows the difference between weapons. I swear the one that just studied me looked relieved I didn’t pull the blade.”

“They’ve dealt with us before, then,” Stein said. “Go ahead and clear them out. I want to see how they react to an aggressive enemy they vastly outnumber.”

“Roger,” Eshton said. In his younger years the idea of being used as bait and an experimental test subject would have grated on him. Hell, in those years the Watch itself had done the same. The idea of any group existing outside the law while having ultimate authority over it infuriated him. Those early days of training hadn’t done much to change that outlook. Yet time began to show him that the dogma—survival of the many even if at the expense of the few—proved worthwhile again and again. Imperfect? Sure. Any system run by imperfect beings must be, by definition. But it worked.