The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker #2)(76)

He’d learned from Sayle that you needed a clear head. Sayle didn’t booze at all, straightedge warboy, but Ocho suspected that what got him high wasn’t any booze or drug or girl. It was the hurting. Sayle liked people hurt.

Sayle was the one who came up with the new way to deal with war prisoners. Chop off their hands and feet and dump them where their army could find them. Let them decide if they wanted the burden of taking care of someone who couldn’t walk or eat or crap without someone helping them.

That was Sayle.

Ocho had watched Sayle do it the first time and then Sayle had straightened and looked at the platoon and said, “That’s how we do, from now on.” And Ocho had looked at the dying boy with his bloody stumps and he’d seen the future, right there.

That was him.

Not that day, and maybe not the next, but eventually, it would all come boomeranging back at him. Fates coming howling in like a banshee. And sure enough, now everyone did it. Now you always made sure your new recruits killed their own when they got tossed back.

It taught you a lesson, Sayle said: Don’t let them catch your maggot ass.

Ocho pushed past the other troops and the girls, past the smell of coywolv roasting and headed down to the canals.

He didn’t have any place to go. Wasn’t even sure what he wanted, but he needed to think and with the R & R, he was going to take the time.

There was something that he’d been thinking about a lot, ever since the run-in with the 999.

The gun was banging away on them all the time, now.

They’d tightened security to keep spotters from getting deep in again like that. But it meant they needed to worry about more than a company of soldiers actually pushing the territory. Now a couple cross-kissers could sneak in and find a barracks tower and start raining death in on them. And that made Ocho start thinking about the endgame.

A pair of patrol soldiers called out to him. He held up his hands, careful not to make any moves while they came over. For a second he was afraid that he’d forgotten the call signs—but then they came to mind.

“Charlie Sweet Bogey.”

Tomorrow it would be something else. The call signs were coming down from above, changing fast and furious. They needed to keep switching up to keep out any more infiltrators. The order came straight from the Colonel.

Ocho doubted it would last. The Colonel would need something better to identify his own. Ocho couldn’t even get out to his own boys without almost getting his ass shot off.

It made it almost impossible, really. How were they supposed to let farmers in if they were looking for someone with a tiny little radio? They were used to looking for guns, but if it was just spotters now…

He made it to the company HQ, and checked in on the soldiers. He had downtime, but still, he couldn’t help checking in.

“About time,” someone said.

Ocho looked over at the boys. “Why?”

“Got something.”

“Another spotter?”

“You mean forward observer.”

“Right.” FO was the new term. Forward observers. Handed down from the Colonel, also. Stern had gone to war college. He knew about forward observers. Just no one expected to have to actually fight them.

“You got to see this.” One of the boys handed Ocho the squad’s binoculars.

“What am I looking at?” Ocho asked as he peered one-eyed through the single good lens.

“You’ll see. Just watch the water down there.”

And so they sat, taking turns.

Nothing moved for a long time, and then suddenly the water moved and a girl surfaced…

What the…?

Ocho squinted, looking at her.

At first, he thought she was just taking a bath, getting the sweat off, but he’d been watching that spot, and she hadn’t gone in. There was something about her…

Were the cross-kissers sneaking girls in as spotters?

Something was off. It wasn’t that she was a girl in a war zone. They were around. Here and there. If she had the kill instinct, she was in, just like any boy.

He’d commanded a killer of a girl with curly brown hair that she kept cropped real short. Pale skin and freckles, and crazy as any warboy he’d ever known. She’d gotten blown up working point for a patrol when the Army of God mined a building they’d taken and were trying to clear. Walked right into a wall of nails. But she’d been good. Smart…

Ocho froze. This girl didn’t have a hand. That was it. She was missing a hand.

You’re sliding, he thought. That’s all. Just a bad slide on the crystal ride. There’s no way. She couldn’t be here. She can’t. There’s no way.

The girl came out again, checking both ways.

Fates. It was the girl. He was sure of it. The one-handed castoff who’d stitched him up. Dark skin and Chinese eyes, and that look of a survivor. On her cheek, he could just make out the triple hash of Glenn Stern’s chosen. He had to give her credit. She was almost as sneaky as Army of God.

The girl made a motion toward the water. Ocho stopped breathing.

“Oh shit.”

“What is it?” his boys asked. “What you see?”

A huge shape was emerging from the still waters of the canal. Graceful despite its mass. The monster came out of the water and climbed onto the floating walkway. Whole and healthy. Not a sign of a war wound on it.