Frays In The Weave 57 Retribution: 1

"Should we go back?" Elisabeth asked.

Heinrich didn't answer. He had no answer. Erwin had told him to continue his mission and babysit Arthur Wallman.

Now, he didn't have to like it, but that was not an order he was going to disobey. The question was if they could do the babysitting where they could also help Erwin and the TADAT left behind.

Would Arthur agree to return north? Probably. He wasn't as callous as Heinrich had first thought, just too sure of himself.

"Elisabeth, I don't know," Heinrich admitted. "This is way, way over our heads."

She looked at him. Her eyes were red from crying. She'd clung to him like a child during the night.

Their own government guilty of an open act of war. Five hundred years of peace and it was the federation that broke it.

Heinrich doubted if the government had ever been directly involved in giving those orders, but he didn't need to be a political genius to understand that they would be blamed anyway. After all, someone must have given the explicit orders to send Goodard here.

"I think it won't matter. We're too far away to get there in time to stop whatever Goodard is up to."

"He murdered them!"

"Elisabeth I know. I think everyone knows. Red News, remember. Three stayed with Erwin, well with that Martian goon anyway."

She nestled under his arm.

For the first time during their journey they'd set up field perimeter defences Not because they were needed but because he had seen their need to do something. Everyone helped, even the news team set up a few sensors.

They'd done a surprisingly good job of it, Heinrich recalled. By now he suspected he knew how they managed to get those covert holos.

From the other side of their camp the steady drone of a conversation reached him. Arthur and Ken. Talking, possibly comparing notes from seven hundred years apart. Anything that would banish what had happened yesterday.

The only one who got no respite was himself, but he was in command. That was to be expected. If the need became bad enough he could cry on Erwin's shoulders when they returned. For now though, he had to be their rock of confidence.

"Liz," he had earned the right to call her that now, "today we rest. I'll tell the others."

She crept closer. The toughest soldier he'd ever served with, but a frontal a.s.sault into a pirate base was not the same as watching how your own shot unarmed and uns.h.i.+elded shuttles over a population centre Sometimes he wished they'd been forced to destroy their holo receivers, or at least that the last decade hadn't seen them built into body walker helmets.

He was worried, more than he wanted to admit. The TADAT back at Verd were effectively unarmed now. Vastly better armoured than anything Goodard could put his hands on, but unarmed.

Gatling guns and needle grenades shredded whatever unpowered armour a soldier could carry, well, maybe with the exception of Gring and her kind, but Goodard had brought a few armoured vehicles with him. From what Heinrich had seen the unit in Verd had nothing left that could penetrate that kind of armour, and that, as far as he was concerned, was an invitation to disaster.

What would eventually force the brigadier's hand did work in his favour for the time. The launch port had a holo cube so whatever Red News had been casting was available for the officers there to a.n.a.lyse

They might be trigger happy lunatics, but they should be able to realize the change in firing pattern of all body walkers when they ran out of missiles.

Heinrich ground his teeth but held his thoughts to himself. Whatever happened there was nothing he could do, and if the madman in command at the launch port was prepared to start a war then he would certainly not balk at the thought of killing the man Keen valued so highly.