“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.
“The Lankies will be back sooner or later. I can’t count on the Homeworld Defense troops to defend us. They were absolutely no help last night, even though they have three bases within thirty flight minutes from here. When—not if—the enemy comes back, we are all that we have. I need people who can train others how to fight these things.”
He looks at Halley.
“Lieutenant Halley, you are a drop-ship pilot and a senior flight instructor. We have a small drop-ship fleet and very few pilots. If I could persuade you to stay with us and become head of our combat-aviation school, you could build your own program from scratch.”
Then he looks at me.
“You, Staff Sergeant Grayson, are a combat infantryman, and we always have a need for those. You are also a trained combat controller, and we have nobody in our ranks who’s qualified for that job. You would both be officers, if that sort of thing holds any importance to you. Lieutenant Halley, you would be a major in the brigade. Staff Sergeant Grayson, you would be a lieutenant. Or a master sergeant, if you would prefer to remain an NCO. Some do.”
“Where did you serve?” I ask. “You were a combat grunt, weren’t you? Marines?” I wager a guess.
“Marines,” Lazarus confirms with a smile. “2080 to 2106. I was a lieutenant colonel of infantry.”
“Who made you a general in this outfit?” Halley asks.
“The men did,” Lazarus says. “I was more honored by that than by those silver oak leaves the corps bestowed on me.”
Halley and I look at each other again. She gives me the tiniest of smiles and then shrugs. Hell if I know, the shrug says.
“Can we think about it?” I ask.
“Of course you may think about it,” Lazarus says. “My offer is good until you ask us for a ride back to the safe pickup point.”
Lazarus straightens out the front of his tunic with a sharp and short tug.
“Are you hungry? Maybe you can discuss this better over breakfast.”
“I’m starving,” Halley says. “Yes, please. I’d like something to eat.”