The Ghost didn’t respond.

Mara’s bleak gaze was on Pirius. He had to look away, disturbed by the turmoil inside him.

Nilis seemed fascinated by the Ghost, as his scientist’s curiosity overcame his Commissary’s ideology. “If you don’t know who you are, do you at least know what you want?”

“To serve you,” the Ghost said.

Chapter 22

It took ten hours for a dropship to come pick them up from Factory Rock. Pirius Blue and his two wounded charges spent all that time huddling in the ruins of the Xeelee emplacement.

When the medical-corps orderly clambered out of his little craft, he was surprised to find them. The three of them were the only survivors of two platoons. “You must be the luckiest man alive,” the orderly said.

“I must be,” said Pirius Blue.

Cohl’s injury was obvious; Tili Three was in deep shock. The orderly said he was supposed to separate able-bodied Pirius from Cohl and Tili Three, and send them back through different “processing channels,” as he put it. Pirius refused to be parted from his comrades. It boiled down to a standoff between Pirius and the small, heavy orderly, there on the churned-up surface of the Rock. The orderly caved in, shrugging his shoulders, saying the officers would sort it out later.

So they loaded Cohl and Tili onto the dropship. By now their skinsuits had turned rigid and filled up with a greenish stabilizing fluid full of nutrients, anesthetics, and stimulants. You were actually supposed to breathe this stuff. Pirius had tried it in training and, no matter what assurances he had got about the glop’s oxygen content, it had felt like drowning. But both the wounded were mercifully unconscious; as they were manhandled, the dense fluid sloshed around their faces.

The dropship lifted easily. Pirius glanced back at the ruined emplacement, the scarred bit of ground that marked the site of the monopole factory. It was just another battlefield, in an unending war of a million battlefields. But it could have been the most important place in his entire life, for he could easily have died here. He knew he would never see it again.

The ride was short, a flea-hop to the nearest clearing station. The dropship skimmed over the ground. The casualties lay like two statues, locked into their rigid suits. The ship had no medical facilities. It couldn’t even be pressurized, so the casualties couldn’t be taken out of their skinsuits.

The orderly was cheerful; he actually whistled tunelessly as he flew the ship. Pirius shut down his comm loop.

After a couple of minutes, more dropships came into sight, other bubbles of light skimming over the asteroid’s battered surface, converging from all over the Rock. A crude traffic control system cut in, and Pirius’s dropship joined a queue. Soon they were so close to the ship in front Pirius could see its passengers, and their bewildered expressions. Ships streamed the other way, too, dropships heading back out across the Rock to ferry in yet more casualties.

The clearing station had been set up in a wide impact crater. A pressurized dome perhaps a kilometer wide sat in the crater like a huge droplet of water, its skin rippling languidly. It was marked with a tetrahedral sigil, the symbol of free Earth.

The dome was studded with airlocks, to which ships came nuzzling up. Some of them were dropships, others larger boats; there was even a captain’s corvette. The ships rose steadily toward a fleet of Spline craft which drifted far above, fleshy, patient moons. Pirius could see movement inside the dome, through its translucent walls: it was a hive of frantic activity. But there was commotion outside as well, and the surface of the Rock around the dome was covered with glistening rows, as if it had been plowed up, like a big nano-food farm.

Pirius expected his own dropship to dock with one of the dome’s ports. He was surprised when the little craft began to descend a few hundred meters short of the dome. It came down on a patch of bare dust, a landing site hastily cordoned off and marked with winking globe lamps.

The hull popped open, and the orderly, still businesslike and cheery, asked Pirius to give him a hand with the casualties. They set Cohl and Tili in their rigid suits down on the bare ground.

All around the ship, troopers were lying in the dirt, their skinsuits glowing orange or red. This was what Pirius had glimpsed from above, what he had thought looked like the furrows of a plowed nano- food farm. The furrows were rows of wounded, thousands or tens of thousands of them, lying patiently in the dirt, waiting for treatment.

“It’s always like this,” said the orderly.

Pirius began to see the process. The wounded were brought here from all over the Rock. On arrival, they were organized into these rough rows. Close to the dome’s walls, tarpaulins had been cast over the dirt, and there were even a few beds. But out here you just had to lie in the asteroid dirt, still locked in your skinsuit, without so much as a blanket beneath you.

Medical officers hurried through the ranks of the newly arrived, peering into each skinsuit, trying to pick out the most severely wounded. Some were marked by a floating Virtual sigil, and the stretcher crews would come out and take prioritized cases into the dome quickly. The whole setup was like a factory, Pirius thought, a factory for processing broken human flesh.

The orderly glared at Pirius. “This your first time out?”

“Yes.”

“Rookie, you gave me shit, out there by the emplacement. If you’re ever in my boat again, be polite. You got that? We all have our jobs to do.” Then, whistling again, he made his way back to his dropship.

Back at Quin Base, the atmosphere was dismal. Casualty lists were posted, simple Virtual displays that hovered in the air. People crowded around, desperately scanning the lists of names and platoon numbers, the smiling images. They chewed their nails, cried, hugged each other for comfort, or wept with relief when they found a loved one who had survived.

Pirius was shocked by this open emotion. There was nothing like the stoicism of a Navy base during an action. It wasn’t supposed to be like this; you were supposed to give your life gladly, and accept the loss of others.

As Captain Marta had promised, the returned warriors were rewarded with extra food. Pirius opened his own small hamper, left waiting for him on his bunk. The food was sticky stuff, very sweet or salty. It was treat food for children. So few had come back that there was plenty to go around; he could have eaten as much as he liked. But he ate only a little of his portion before giving the rest away.

Pirius managed to get a message to Enduring Hope with his artillery platoon, telling him Cohl had been injured but was recovering. It occurred to him that he ought to look for the friends of the Tilis and the rest of the platoon. But he didn’t know who those friends were — and besides, what would he say? In the end, he shied away from the idea, but he felt ashamed, as if he had ducked a responsibility.

That first night there were many empty bunks. The barracks seemed to have been hollowed out. The normal sounds of play and lovemaking and trivial arguments were replaced by stillness. Once, sleepless, he glimpsed Captain Marta moving through the barracks, her metallized body gleaming, her movements silent and deliberate. She stopped by some of the bunks, but Pirius couldn’t hear what she said.

In the days that followed, Pirius learned that the Army had more “processes” for dealing with the aftermath of such battles.

The day after Pirius’s return, a massive reorganization swept through the barracks. Pirius, Cohl, and Tili were to be kept together, but they were assigned to a new platoon, number 85 under the new hierarchy. They were moved to new corners of the barracks. Once Cohl and Tili had returned, the three of them were squashed into a block of bunks with their seven new platoon comrades.