“That’s pretty fucking upset.”
“You have no idea,” he says. “I’ve been here about a year and a quarter now, and I’ve got upcoming negotiations with the tribal leaders to try and get them to stop killing one another. Not to mention us. My hopes are not high. Good choice wearing your fatigues, by the way. Don’t distinguish yourself as an officer at all, if you can help it. Thinadeshi seems secure, but it’s still a combat outpost. There are lots of hidden people in the hills all too happy to reward your decorum with a bullet.”
“So that’s how you came to be here? The previous commander got shot, so they came to you?”
Biswal deflates a little. “No. Not quite. I was teaching. Military history, at Abhishek Academy. The shelf, in other words.”
Mulaghesh nods. “The shelf” is the military term for a state of disuse, when a soldier, operative, or officer is not dismissed but set aside and, likely, forgotten. One can get on the shelf for any reason: some fall out of favor politically, some screw up an operation or make some fatal career flaw….Still others just get old. Very few go to the shelf voluntarily—yet this is precisely what Mulaghesh herself attempted to do. And I couldn’t even get that right….
“No one else wanted the job, so they gave me another look,” says Biswal. “I should have known that if they were willing to give it to me, I shouldn’t take it. This is a daunting task, and the number of souls on my shoulder weighs heavily.”
Mulaghesh glances at a map on the wall detailing the installations throughout Voortyashtan. “How many?”
“Seven thousand here in Thinadeshi. Four thousand in Fort Hadji, where the rails see a lot of action—just north of the highlands, you see. Thirty-five hundred at Fort Lok. More at the border with Jukoshtan. All in all, I find myself commander of twenty-three thousand soldiers here in Voortyashtan, Turyin. A lot, but not as many as we need.”
“No?”
“No. We’re spread too thin. My predecessor tried to disrupt the insurgents’ bastions in the mountains, and that was a miserable failure. Cost him his life. For now, the military council’s orders are strictly to hold on. Fortify. Protect the harbor. As if it needs it. The Dreylings practically have their own army down there. They’ve even got a damned minigun.”
“Really.” Mulaghesh makes a note of this.
“And somehow all the shtanis manage to have firearms, too.” He gives the carousel in her holster the briefest of glances. “I hate them, Turyin. I hate these damned new guns, which suddenly seem to be everywhere.”
“I never figured you for a technophobe,” says Mulaghesh.
“I’m not,” he growls. “But these things make it damned easy to kill a man. With bolts, ammunition is so much more of a hassle. Too much wind and you can’t use them at all. Short-ranged, too. With riflings…Overnight, we’ve gone from bolt-action to fully automatic and beyond. Dying has gotten a whole lot easier all over the world.”
“We’ve always been able to make them,” says Mulaghesh. “We were just never able to scale up production before.”
“Then perhaps we should have left them on the factory floor,” says Biswal. “Are you a convert, Turyin?”
“If you can’t fight the future, you might as well learn the ropes quick as you can. Especially if you’ve got to climb them with a handicap.” She holds up her prosthetic left hand.
“Ah.” His eyes sadden. “I’d heard about that. I’m so sorry for what you went through.”
“And both of us know it wasn’t much. I’m alive. That’s more than most get.”
“Yes. That is true. You always did have a head for priorities, Turyin. It surprised me when I heard you’d walked out on the job. Why did you leave?”
She gives a neutral shrug. “They wanted me to be something I wasn’t.”
“Ah. A politician, then?”
“Something like that.”
“And now you’re here on the shuffle,” says Biswal. “I don’t think anyone’s ever done the touring shuffle in Voortyashtan. Why did they send you here?”
“I pissed on a lot of important shoes when I left,” says Mulaghesh. “They could’ve just waved the discrepancy off, but they didn’t. I don’t think they even wanted to give me the opportunity to get it taken care of, really. I think maybe they sent me up hoping I’d get buried here.”
Biswal’s eyes dim and crinkle. “Yes. I…I wonder that, too. Perhaps they’re just trying to mop us up. Me and you, still being alive—we inconvenience them, don’t we?”
She hesitates. She feels nauseous. She hasn’t discussed this with anyone in over ten years, and she never wanted to break the subject open like this, with the very man who led them all way back when.
She wanted to forget. She did a good job of it. It’s downright obnoxious of the world to remind her that the Yellow March actually happened.
To her relief, they’re interrupted by the sound of steps behind them. Mulaghesh turns to see a Saypuri soldier of about forty mounting the stairs, and from the chevrons on her uniform she’s a captain, first class. But there is an unmistakable air of lethality about this woman that Mulaghesh finds striking: everything about her posture and bearing—jaw set forward, shoulders square, legs spread wide—seems intended to either take or deal damage. Her hair is tied back so tightly it seems to stretch the skin on her forehead, which has a curious whitish streak in the middle. It’s a large scar, like she’s had almost all of her scalp peeled off in some injury. This does nothing to affect her stony, still gaze, though: Mulaghesh only has to glance at her to see that this is a soldier who’s seen a great deal of combat, probably the messy kind.
Once she’s at the top of the steps, the captain swivels on her heel and smartly salutes. “General Mulaghesh. It’s an honor to have you here at Thinadeshi.”
“Ah, you found me, Nadar,” says Biswal.
“When you’re at Thinadeshi, General, you’re almost always in the nest.” She glances around disapprovingly. “Against my advice.”
“Turyin, this is Captain Kiran Nadar, commander of Fort Thinadeshi. Nadar doesn’t admire my makeshift office here. She thinks the shtanis are dangerous and could take advantage of it. But on the contrary, the reason I’m up here is because I know they’re dangerous.” He gazes east, at the ragged, pink peaks of the Tarsil Mountains. “Where else can I get a better look at what we have to deal with?”
“I’m guessing this is something of an artifact,” says Mulaghesh, standing and looking around at the little room. “Built before artillery and small arms had quite the reach they do now.”
“Correct,” says Nadar. “And since we lost our last commander to a sharpshooter—may he find peace in his slumber—it makes me nervous that General Biswal chooses to take his tea up here.”
“Perhaps I enjoy spending time in the portions of this fortress,” says Biswal, “which were built when we had clearer aims about what we wished to accomplish here.”
Nadar lowers her gaze. There’s an awkward beat.