Page 5 of Night in a Waste Land

I’m sorry, he wanted to say.I’m sorry about Becket. I’m sorry you’re still so angry about it. But he knew he couldn’t say that, not in front of witnesses, not when she was this guarded.

But he had to saysomething. “Listen, about–”

“No.” One word, but he saw the flash of intense hurt, and intense anger in her eyes. A momentary spark of hate and fury and loss.

He hesitated, skin prickling beneath his clothes, wondering how one girl could hold so much threat.

The chair beside him scraped out, and the sound snapped the moment. Rose glanced, once, toward Tris, as he settled in beside Lance, and then dropped her gaze to her plate.

Lance chose not to label the dropping sensation in his gut as regret.

“The new kids,” Tris said, his voice flat, glancing between the two recruits. It was a hard gaze, though in a way different from Rose’s; it hinted at too many years seeing too much ugly shit. A disinterest. It wasn’t possible to impress Tristan Mayweather.

Rose didn’t lift her head; ate her food neatly, efficiently, without expression.

But Gallo dropped his plastic fork onto his tray and went comically goggle-eyed. “You’re.” He swallowed with a gulp. “You’re – you’re–”

Tris leaned into Lance’s shoulder. “Is he having a stroke?”

“Tristan Mayweather,” Gallo choked out, finally, expression one of unmasked awe. “I mean. Sir. Sir Mayweather.”

Tris stared at the kid a moment, then frowned and shook his head; stabbed his “meatloaf” with his fork. “It’s just Tris. No ‘sir.’”

Lance found himself biting back a mean smile. “Are you a fan of Sir Mayweather, Gallo?”

“Yes,” he said, right away, and then his cheeks turned pink. Hero worship shone like a beacon on his young face. “I mean. I’ve been studying the Knights for a long time. I always wanted to join up. And I always wanted to be Golden Company. I wanted…” He bit his lip, and trailed off, adoring, disbelieving gaze pinned on Tris – who stared down at his tray, lip curled faintly in disgust.

“Frank,” Rose said, quietly, without lifting her head. “Cool it.”

“Right.” He took a big breath and dug into his food.

Lance regarded his own meatloaf with a queasy feeling in his gut. They were just kids, and tomorrow he’d lead them out into the apocalypse. He wondered if either of them would come back alive.

For Rose’s part, he wasn’t sure she’d care.

~*~

The Knight Companies of the Rift Walkers had been created during the First Atmospheric Rift. Formed in crisis, and maintained ever since; the military had known all along that the conduits hadn’tgone. The Knights hadn’t been disbanded, but reassigned. Lance had started as Air Force, and then been recommended to the Walkers. He’d been embedded with Castor’s people, and his mission, at the end, had been a successful one: the conduit dead, Castor out of the picture.

But, technically, he hadn’t killed that conduit. The man called Daniel. And Arthur Becket had been killed in the process.

Rose had had her world shattered, in the process. And she stared at him now, in the small ready-room where they were all strapping on their gear and going over today’s op.

“This is an extraction,” Lance said. “The target location is here.” He pointed to the screen, the aerial view of an apartment building. Even from above, through drone footage, the disrepair of the city was visible. “The Rangers have a man inside who was able to radio out. Before the transmission was lost, he relayed that there’s something like two-hundred people trapped inside. The Army’s going to get them out in troop transport vehicles. We’re tasked with clearing a path for them. We have to find the conduit, and subdue him long enough to get the civilians to safety.”

He surveyed his team: Tris, Gavin, and the two new ones: Gallo and Rose. Gallo’s face was pale.

Rose snapped on her flame-retardant body armor with her jaw set, her gaze hooded. She looked ready – in spirit if not in form. She looked too small for her helmet, and boots. For the gun she slung across her back.

“Green Company is on standby if we need backup, but otherwise, it’s business as usual.” From the table beside him, he picked up the silver sphere of a wraith grenade and showed it to them; showed the clasp, and the release button, and the cross etched into the side. “We’ve only got one this time, and I’m carrying it. It’s a last resort.”

Gavin and Tris nodded, old hat at this.

Rose’s gaze fixed to it, though. “It’s live?”

“It is.”

“They only had empty shells in training,” Gallo said, voice hushed. “We practiced deploying them.”

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