The Winter Palace

Helene

Every bullet had a name.

She decided to call this one Hélène—Hélène Cézanne. Hélène died five years ago, when San Diego burned, and she was Carmen's favorite niece. They never got a chance to meet.

Carmen quietly pulled the bolt back on her rifle. She popped out the magazine, removed a gold round from her pocket, stuck it in the chamber, closed the bolt again.

Hélène Cezanne was a firebug round. A well-placed firebug could ignite the hydro battery in a mech's fuel tank. The explosion would disable it, sometimes killing the pilot.

Carmen needed the firebug to strike true: the plan would work only if the team—Carmen, Dot-Dot-Dot, Dash-Dash-Dash—crippled all three mechs before anyone knew they were there.

The team acknowledged their instructions via Morse Code comms.

On her right, buried in thorns, was Carmen's favorite weapon: Whistler rockets. Two dozen of them could flash-bang a large group of enemies, blinding and deafening them for up to two minutes. The rockets were the true reason she and her team had been so successful against much larger forces. She'd paralyzed three Glaive platoons once; she and her team were almost two miles away before they recovered.

But the Whistlers were tricky to set up. They were powered by compressed jets of water, not rocket fuel. Keeping the water lines from freezing was a hassle. She had to aim them with an elaborate routine using wrenches, barometers, wind meters, sometimes a protractor. Today, Carmen had shaped a Phalanx—a rocket pattern that would wreak havoc on the base.

Or so she hoped.

She refocused her mind.

Orders from Quaker... then orders from above Quaker...

This mission was obscenely complex.

Fours hours ago, Quaker had warned her of the Red Duke's imminent arrival on the base. Soon after, she started getting messages from Quaker's superior, whom she'd heard about but never talked to—someone called Playwright. Carmen received an alternate battle plan, then ordered to keep it a secret from Dot-Dot-Dot and Dash-Dash-Dash.

As the messages trickled through, Carmen could sense the admin wrangling, the brilliant improvisation in planning, that somebody upstairs actually knew what he was doing.

She rarely felt that comfort on the field. Her orders were often confusing, nonsensical. There was a constant sense of shadowy men demanding the impossible, all her achievements leading her to greater, disparaging sacrifice—and now, this. In an hour, would she believe it was all worth it? Would she even be breathing?

This Playwright is speaks my language, Carmen thought.

From Dot-Dot-Dot:

MY WHISTLER SETUP IS MALFUNCTIONING IT'S DEAD

Great. If Carmen and her team didn't have enough Whistlers on the battlefield to disorient those mechs and soldiers, they'd be lunch meat, and Playwright's plan wouldn't matter. Right now, it was them against an entire Glaive airbase and the enemy of the free world. There was no room for "Whistler setup is malfunctioning."

Carmen messaged Dot-Dot-Dot:

ROGER FOCUS ON MECH TO YOUR LEFT

She checked her watch. Sixty seconds. They seemed ready.

From Dot-Dot-Dot:

ROGER LEFT MECH AYE

Suddenly, doubts started flooding. Insecurity.

Her concern was, the Whistlers worked well about half the time. With three sets of Whistlers, one for each team member, out of two volleys, one should be enough to upend the base for about a minute, assuming they didn't have protective personnel ready to go. After all, this was the Red Duke...

Why is the Red Duke alone other than those patrol mechs?

Carmen messaged:

DASH-DASH-DASH STATUS PLEASE

The aircraft overhead grew louder.

She set her nerves aside, allowed herself a millisecond to daydream about putting a bullet in Salvador Innes' heart, and aimed at the center mech.

If those mechs saw her now, it was over.

Worry was out of character for her. She kept her cool on missions, even if every night, in her dreams, the enemy found her... a burst of orange light from the tracer rounds, her team shredded by 30mm bullets. Waking up in a cold sweat, sometimes plunging her ka-bar into the wall.

Why am I remembering this right now? I'm better than that.

No time for doubt. She swept it away, but it was harder than normal.

The moment is too big, she thought. This is history.

Through her rifle scope, she glimpsed the center mech's pilot: a mop-headed kid, probably eighteen or nineteen years old.

This was his last day on earth.

This is for Hélène Cezanne, who never saw her eighteenth birthday, she thought coolly.

From Dash-Dash-Dash:

DOT DASH

They had ten seconds left before they attacked.

She transmitted her confirmation in return, counted to five, and kicked a dark steel block at her feet. It opened the seal on the rockets' compressed water tank, instantly shutting off the small heater that kept them from freezing.

Four seconds.

She exhaled, corrected for windage, relaxed, and pulled the trigger. The scope blurred out as the recoil kicked the rifle in the air.

Hélène Cézanne, the firebug round, shot across the snowfall, leaving a glowing trace behind it.

A distant explosion. Carmen saw a small burst of flame on the horizon where the center mech used to be.

A second explosion... the mech on the right.

Two down, she thought.

Now she prepared to do the stupidest thing possible.

She got up from her position, slung her rifle, and ran—a thousand-yard sprint across the snow, in the open, with no cover.

The idea was that she'd give the Glaive something to shoot at. So they'd be looking; their eyes would be open when the Whistlers hit.

For maximum effect.

Behind her, a massive whoosh as forty-eight rockets shot through the air. A mist of frost coated her face—vapor from the missiles. They sailed over her head silently toward the base. Somewhere on her left, a glint of light—vapor from the second set of Whistlers. Hopefully they were targeted correctly.

The adrenalin overpowered her senses; she didn't feel the crunch of the snow beneath her feet, the cold air stabbing her lungs, the distant mechanical squeal of the remaining T-990 searching for a target.

She simply ran for her life and hoped the Whistlers would do their job, ignoring the glint of sunlight from the final mech's cockpit.

Pop-pop-pop....

Already, she heard gunfire from the base.

She ran through it and flames from hell toward the devil himself, the Red Duke, the enemy of all Creation, the author of the end of the free world.