Erich Weiss watched as General Shaw strode into the bunker, a small hitch in his stride. Even after months of captivity, the general still terrified Erich. The other men could spout bravado all they liked, but with his sunken eyes and scarred face, not to mention the massive pistol that seemed welded to his arm, the General seemed more an elemental force than a mortal man.
None of the men spouted much bravado any longer. When they were captured just after the midsummer push, their captors threw them into a holding bunker. Every few days, they’d received rations and water, but otherwise left alone in the large, sealed room. Every few weeks, more captured soldiers trickled in. Not all of them were Prussian or even German. Italians, Austrians, and even a few Turks inhabited the increasingly crowded cell. The men grew less and less civilized as time passed. A few went berserk, attacking their fellows. The guards mercilessly cut them down, dragging the still twitching remains from the room.
Now Shaw entered the cell without new captives. He scanned the room, his gaze settling on each man, assessing them, and moving on. When he looked at Erich, an auger drilled into his soul. He stiffened his shoulders and tried to stare back, something primal deep within him stirring. After a few moments trying to face up to the hell in Shaw’s eyes, he dropped his gaze, the beast within cowed. Oddly, he didn’t feel like he’d failed.
Shaw’s voice rivaled his eyes for horror. A horrible dry sound, it nonetheless filled the bunker. “You men were soldiers in the service of the Central Powers.”
A murmur ran through the room, mostly agreement. One of the Turks spoke up, his English broken. “Is soldiers.” Erich might have missed it, but Shaw immediately focused on the Turkman, his response as soft as anything his harsh voice and harder eyes could produce.
“Were. I have carefully studied the oaths you gave, and none of you are bound by them any longer. You have fulfilled them, in the way only soldiers may.”
The Turkman’s voice echoed Erich’s confusion, “Was?”
As Shaw spoke, foreboding gnawed at Erich, “Were. We separated some of you from larger captured units. The reason is simple. You are dead.”
Erich felt like he was falling. Desperate for anything sane, he clutched at Shaw’s next words like a drowning man clutching at a rope. “Each of you received lethal wounds from soldiers of the 54th. We brought you here. We reported you to your commanders as Killed In Action. You now have a choice to make.”
Erich’s fragmenting sanity focused on that statement. He had a choice. He could still make choices. He raised his hand. When Shaw acknowledged him, he expected his voice to fail, but it came out strong as it ever had, “What choices have we?”
Shaw smiled, a horrible expression on a man missing most of the flesh on the left side of his face. “You may choose to join the 54th. If you do, you will stand vigil on the day of Michael and All Angels. Any who can stand vigil eight hours on hallowed ground may join my unit.”
“What other choice?”
“You may choose to have your remains sent back to your units.”
One of the Italians screamed, his accent thickened by emotion. “You give no choice! You offer betrayal or death!”
Shaw didn’t raise his voice, but still it cut through the tumult in the room. “Captain Graziano, please come here.”
The screaming Italian stood and walked to Shaw. As he did, Erich saw him palm a shiv that he’d formed from a ration can. When came within arm’s reach of Shaw, he lunged, his shiv punching into Shaw’s side again and again. With growing horror, Erich realized the General didn’t fall, didn’t collapse onto Graziano, didn’t do anything except stand patiently.
After Graziano had stabbed for nearly thirty seconds, Shaw leaned forward, his mouth intimately close to Graziano’s ear, his horrible voice echoing through the room once more. “Are you done?”
The Italian captain stumbled back a pace. Shaw slapped the shiv from fingers gone nerveless, grabbed Graziano by his coat and slammed him into the wall of the bunker. His gun hand came up, pressing the barrel against Graziano’s torso. Thunder exploded in the room, deafening everyone for a moment. When it cleared, Shaw spoke once more. “Walking home is no longer an option. You. Are. Dead.”
Shaw stepped back, leaving the Italian hanging from the wall, pinned by a spike like a human butterfly. Erich stared at that spike, at the Italian clawing at it, at his future hammered into steel and concrete.
***
Sebastian Cole drifted through an endless half-conscious hell.
When awake, he knew he lay in a bed, aching from the waist up, numb from the waist down. He still preferred waking to sleeping.
When he slept, nightmares reigned. He stood in the door to the garage, holding it against a foe that knew no mercy, no retreat, and no end. Again and again, they charged through the courtyard, guns seeking him out. Again and again, he smashed them into scrap, hammered them until they burned, or exploded, or just plain stopped moving. All the while he ignored his mounting exhaustion, his accumulating wounds, and the failing Mechanicals behind him. He couldn’t block out Gardner’s corpse, what was left of it. An enemy mechanical pulled him half through a heavy bunker door, then used the door to grind him against the courtyard pavers until little only a chunky paste remained. All but his face. Not Gardner’s face. Sebastian’s own.
The DaVinci that killed Gardner was shattered by the same woman who repaired his broken Mechanicals, sending them back into the line. An angel in a drab olive dress, ignoring danger, dashing unarmed and unarmored to drag damaged mechanicals back to her tools. Nothing stopped her until Sebastian fell to the siege gun of the Bertha Command Mechanical.
Every night he fell, and every night she abandoned him as too broken to repair. He tried to crawl back into position, to fight against the waves of Blitzmen charging the gap. A shadow fell over him; he looked up at a Blitzman blade raised to end him.
Then he woke up screaming. Every time he shamed himself with his screams, they came with more drugs to force him back to his cycle of nightmare and shame. He begged to be put back into action, to come to grips with the enemy once more, but in his lucid moments he remembered his legs refusing to work. When he tried to rise, he felt nothing, saw nothing between his belted down sheets, and heard only a faint metallic grinding.
Then, one morning like any other, he awoke screaming and she was there. An orderly reached to administer more drugs, to confine his screaming to the inside of his own head. With a gesture, she froze the orderly in place; with a word she pushed him back to the corner of the room.
Her voice remained as husky as he remembered, her figure the same thick hourglass designed to mesmerize the eyes of every man in the room, but now she gave orders with a confidence he didn’t recall from before. It stirred something deep within him, even more than her rescuing him from another drug-induced nightmare. “Thank you, Corporal, but I believe the Captain has had enough drugs to last a lifetime.”
The big orderly’s dull, slow voice proved he’d been chosen for size rather than brains, “He’s screaming, Miss. Dr. Abrams said to sedate the screamers. Orders.”
Leigh Abrams turned, all emotion leached from her voice, her face blank. Sebastian almost lost what she said to the sight of metallic muffs covering her ears. She’d combed her hair to hide them, but from the side of her head they couldn’t be missed. “My proper title is Major. If for some reason you cannot remember that, ‘Ma’am’ is an acceptable alternative. If you persist in remembering neither, I am sure one of the line companies needs a medic. Do I make myself clear?”
The big man’s fear would have been comical, had Sebastian not been living the horror of The Line every night in his dreams. “Yes, Ma’am. Perfectly clear, Ma’am.”
Abrams studied him for another long moment, then turned her attention back to Sebastian. Immediately her expression softened, as if trying to hide a smile. No wonder. She was a Major now and must have done something extraordinary to be promoted so quickly. Anyone with that much courage would see his nightly screaming as an obvious source of disgust and coarse humor. Again her newfound poise impressed him; he couldn’t detect the slightest note of disdain when she spoke. “So, Captain. How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine, Major. Some time must have passed since we last spoke. You’re misremembering my rank. It’s just Lieutenant Cole.”
“You’re not fine, Captain. If you were, you wouldn’t be lying about in my ward, waking us up at odd hours.” A frown creased her brow, and she turned back to the orderly. “Corporal, I am countermanding Dr. Abrams’ previous standing order regarding medications. From now on, medications are to be dispensed only on the orders of myself or another physician.”
“Yes, ma’am. But isn’t he a doctor?”
Sebastian caught a hint of rolled eyes, and no small amount of exasperation. “That is a quandary. So be it. Medications are to be dispensed to military personnel only on the orders of a military doctor. “
When her gaze returned to Sebastian, exasperation evaporated like spit on a griddle. “At any rate, you were promoted for rather the same reasons as me, I suppose. After the battle, General March promoted each of us to Captain for bravery in action.” She blushed, obviously unable to prevent the reaction. He would blush too, trying to describe himself as brave. At least she deserved the description. “At any rate, you’re officially on the roster as commander of the Repair Company.”
Sebastian felt his brows knit in confusion, “Wouldn’t Repair be your posting?”
Abrams’ blush deepened. It was amazing how flushed her dusky skin could get, almost as amazing as how attractive he found the sudden return of the shyness he remembered in her. “Corporal, go down to the repair bay and bring me up a five gallon can of high proof mechanical fuel.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
When the Corporal left, she resumed speaking, “I’m afraid the General thinks that would be one too many hats for me to wear, officially. At present I’m on the roster as the driver of our Assault Mechanical, Chief Engineer of Headquarters, and Chief Surgeon of the same. That last is why I’m brevetted to Major. Well, pending confirmation, which the general tells me is near certain. General March’s star is on the rise in Washington, and he’s convinced I’m the reason.”
“Pardon?”
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“Oh.” Her blush glowed fiercely, and she stared at her hands. They clutched at one another like drowning kittens, and when her voice so soft he could barely hear it. “I’ve a confession to make. I’m the only one qualified to treat you, so the other doctors don’t come in here. You’re usually asleep at the end of my shift, so I stop by then to check on you, and I usually spend a few minutes talking. I’ve told you so much while you slept that I forget what you don’t know.”
The confession ought to have angered him, but somehow Sebastian couldn’t bring himself to be upset. He coughed to get her attention, then smiled. He tried to at any rate. The ongoing aches made any smile halfhearted.
When she spoke, her voice regained some of its brisk confidence. “Well, when the two new doctors arrived, each expected to be made Chief Surgeon. They were both brought into the service as Captains due to their prior medical experience. General March wouldn’t have it. He brevetted me to Major and threatened to charge them with insubordination.”
She shook herself, obviously throwing off the memory of the General’s displeasure. When her gaze returned to his, only the barest hint of her shyness remained, “So. You’ve been lying about in my infirmary nearly four months, and an absentee commander for at least two of those. How are you feeling?”
Shame stole Cole’s voice away for a few moments. When he could speak, that shame filled his words, “I told you, Ma’am, I feel fine.”
“Please, Captain Cole. Hearing you call me ‘Ma’am’ makes me feel like I’ve gone gray and wrinkled. Call me Leigh. Abrams if you absolutely must.”
Sebastian’s mouth dropped open at her sudden offer of familiarity. His own cheeks warmed as he realized how long he’d been silent. Leigh’s voice was brisk and professional when she spoke once more. “I’m sorry, Captain. I did not mean to presume. Now, as I mentioned, stop lying to me. You’ve still a few bruises from the most recent surgery, so you’ll be aching at the very least. Now, tell me if any of this hurts.”
She began an examination more thorough than any he had ever received. Starting with his fingers, she bent each joint through its full range of motion. Her hands, cool and surprisingly strong, forced him to move just a bit too far for comfort each time. The feel of her skin against his, even that slight touch, sent his mind wandering along paths best not taken. Chastising himself silently for a fool, he forced his attention back to her examination. As Leigh worked, he realized his soreness was no more than to be expected from such a lengthy stay in a hospital bed. She confirmed his suspicion, explaining that he might feel some weakness, but that she had some ideas how to prevent that from being a problem.
When she finished examining his arms and, much to his embarrassment, his bare torso, she reached into one of the capacious pockets on her uniform belts and retrieved her goggles. She slipped them on and, without warning, whipped his sheet back completely. He groped feebly to cover his nakedness, but she slapped him away and prevented another attempt with a quelling look.
“Who do you think operated on you before? I’ve yet to find a way to operate through clothing. Now, be still.” Once more shamed by her, Cole averted his eyes as she lifted his unresponsive legs, bending them at the knee, stretching them until he felt discomfort, then laying them back flat on the bed. Her voice regained its cool distraction when she spoke again. “Can you feel me moving your legs?”
About to answer in the negative, he realized he could tell what she was doing without even looking at her. He felt what she did now, bending each foot about the arch, then pressing the toes back with the heel of her palm to check his range of movement. “Yes, I can! I can feel my legs! I can feel my…” The rest of his statement died unspoken as he turned his head back to look at Leigh.
The foot in her hands gleamed with the metallic sheen of polished Mechanical armor. His eyes went wide as she pushed the alloy toes back with the heel of her palm once more, and he felt his toes bend backward. She pressed further, leaning her weight on them. Any other time he would have been mesmerized by the site down the front of her décolletage, would have been enthralled by the weight and warmth of her bosom surrounding his foot. She bounced her weight against his foot again. “Does this hurt?”
Sebastian just stared. The hunk of machinery Leigh molested was, somehow, his foot. He tried to wiggle the toes, tried to wrench it from her hand, but it remained stubbornly still, despite his ability to feel her warmth through it. She looked up, perhaps concerned at his lack of response. The moment she saw where he was staring, her face grew thunderous. She dropped his foot, straightened, and folded her arms across her more than ample breasts. “I thought we were past you ogling me like some common whore, Cole.”
Shock compounded on shock made him stammer stupidly, “No! I… I’d never…”
“Well since you can’t possibly mean ‘you’d never stare’, I’ll have to assume you mean ‘you’ll never get past staring at my chest’. Fine.” She turned from him and walked to the door. The lock clicked faintly before she turned back to face him. He could see the disgust in her eyes, but before he could speak to defend himself, she snarled at him. “I suppose you only think it’s fair that since I’ve seen all of you, you should see all of me? Is that it?” She reached for her bosom, and for a moment he couldn’t tell if shock or anticipation paralyzed him. Then she grabbed at one of her tool belts, withdrawing a thin silvery screwdriver. He shook his head to clear his confusion, but she saw it and continued her rant. “No? Are you not even that coherent about it? Am I just another piece of meat, no matter what my epaulets are carrying?”
“Major Abrams, I apologize for any…”
“Oh, do just shut up. I’ll be done in just a few moments, and then we’ll need not bother one another again.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
In stony silence she rolled him onto his side. Ratcheting vibrated his spine at the same time his back went taut. Firm, strong hands grasped the back of his head, and something cold and metallic slid into his neck. A click echoed through his skull. A moment later, Major Abrams backed away. When he rolled over to look at her, a look of grim satisfaction warred with her scowl.
“It appears your legs are fully functional. Be careful until you’ve acclimatized yourself. They’re stronger than you’re used to. Not up to the strength of a full-sized Mechanical, but far more powerful than anything human. When you report to duty, you’ll find a set of braces for your arms. The set should fit roughly like a coat, and it will give you the same strength in your arms that you have in your legs. It will also keep you from tearing your fingers off if you try to lift something.
“I’m prescribing some mild analgesics. Use them if you need them for the pain. If you have any difficulty with the prostheses, speak with your mechanics. They’ll call me in if anything further is required. Do you have any questions?”
“Major Abrams, I’m terribly sor…”
She cut him off, voice as cold as the steel of her tools, “Do you have any questions related to your prostheses or your medication?”
Chastised, understanding nothing but her need to be away from him, he whispered, “No, Major.”
“Good. I will sign your release on my way out. I’ll tell the General you’re fit for duty. I’m ordering you on light duty for at least a week, to allow you to come to grips with your new legs. I’ll see you at the General’s staff meeting.”
“Major?”
“Yes, Captain?”
“Thank you.”
Her voice didn’t soften in the slightest. “Think nothing of it. It’s the least I could do for the man who saved us all at the Garage.”
***
Leigh stared at the paperwork covering her desk. Since the day she’d taken over as the Chief Surgeon for General March’s HQ, the pile never got smaller. She finished reviewing another requisition, signed it, and placed it in her outbox. A moment later she pulled it back, unable to remember what it was for.
“What have I done?”
The words tumbled from her mouth without conscious volition. She stared unthinking at the requisition, her angry words playing themselves over and over in her head. For the barest of moments, she’d thought Sebastian might be interested in her. Then he’d ruined it by staring at her damned chest again.
“Isn’t that what men do, though?” she muttered, confusion leaking out of her in words. In her mind’s eye, the crystal clarity of her memory replayed Sebastian’s shocked speechlessness. She reduced him to stammering apologies when she called him out for staring at her, but by then she’d been so livid that she’d gone and pulled rank on him.
Her voice rose to a choked wail, thankfully held inside her tiny office by the thick manor walls, “What did I do? What did I almost do?”
Her words to Sebastian hadn’t been the worst. She had locked the door for the worst possible reason. Her first response to him hadn’t been to slap him, or to upbraid him verbally, but to give him a good long look at what he had been trying so hard to catch a glimpse of. The impulse had been wanton, unprofessional, and such a massive dereliction of her Duty that by the time she’d locked the door, her hands had reached for her tool belt rather than her blouse.
Leigh knew she owed her present situation to a set of extraordinary circumstances. She was a terrible officer. Good officers didn’t threaten their men. Good officers didn’t spend days, even weeks agonizing over decisions. Good officers made decisions, gave orders, and were obeyed.
General March made it all look so easy. He carried himself with all the confidence of a man at the peak of his career, and men responded. Leigh rather thought women might too, but he’d been such a father figure to her over the past months that she couldn’t quite see him that way. Instead she tried to emulate him, with wildly varying results.
The mechanics in the garage obeyed her without question, never complaining in the slightest. The other Mechanical Commanders treated her like a tomboyish younger sister; their voices held faint traces of amused condescension, but never outright disrespect. The surgeons were the worst. They looked on her as a jumped-up mechanic.
Of course, it didn’t help that she attached so many Mechanical prostheses after that first one.
Those thoughts brought her right back around to Sebastian. That day at the garage, he’d been a pillar of strength. When she broke under fire, he set her back on her feet, got her moving again. The men followed him into fire without question. She followed him into that cauldron without question, until only she remained. Alone, unarmed, hopeless, she ran, leaving him behind, showcasing her cowardice. She’d run, and in the back of the garage she’d found…
“I’m such an idiot.”
After so long alone she habitually tried to solve everything herself. For being an officer, that mostly held true, but for matters of the heart, she had someone to turn to now. The thought warmed her, even as her cheeks heated with the thought that dealing with Sebastian was a matter of the heart. Reaching up to the crystal device covering her ears, she twisted a knob. Capricious’ voice, her mother’s voice, murmured into her ear, speaking of places and trades. Occasionally mother would interrupt herself in another woman’s voice. Unsettling, but nothing compared to what mother had done to be with her.
“Mother?”
The murmur paused, a dreamer partially roused from sleep, then continued. Leigh tried again.
“Mother!”
The murmur quieted. Leigh got a sense of a mind honed by training and focused by circumstance bearing down on her own. Her mother’s voice was crisp, strong, and confident.
“Yes, daughter?”
“I need advice.”
“Tell me.”
Leigh did. She told her mother of her first meeting with the young soldier, where she took inexplicable delight in discomfiting him. She told of the desperate fight at the garage, where she broke and he picked her back up, set her to rights, and fought until he fell defending her. She told of the aftermath, months spent visiting him daily, performing surgery no less than four times before she was certain he would survive. Finally, shame thick in her voice, she told the events of the day, her voice quiet as she confessed her desire to have done with the uniforms, the propriety, and anything else that might stand between she and Sebastian.
Through it all, her mother remained wordless, her only sounds quiet, insistent noises of encouragement when Leigh faltered. At the end, a dozen heartbeats of silence. Then a quiet hiss of static filled her ears, and Leigh recognized her mother’s sigh.
“Mother?”
“I am here.”
“What should I do?”
“Child, I’m not the best to ask on this matter.”
“Why not?”
“My record with men isn’t stellar.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know he’s your father, but David Abrams is an ass.”
“Oh, I… Sebastian’s not like that, mother. He’s a real hero. He would never hurt me.”
“Well then. If you want him, I can offer some advice on bedding him. Ass or not, David succumbed readily enough.”
“Mother!”
“What? He did. Succumb readily, that is. Some minor alterations to my clothes, a few chemical additions to my perfume, some subtle suggestions, and he leapt at the chance I gave him.”
“Mother! I come to you worried that I might be a wanton, and you tell me that you can instruct me on effective wanton technique.”
Another mechanical sigh tickled Leigh’s ears. When Capricious spoke, her voice dropped to a pensive whisper delivered to Leigh’s ears by her crystal devices. “I knew the Sisters would teach you and protect you from your father. I forgot you hadn’t Gramma Jones to teach you the facts of life.”
“I know the facts of life, Mother. I am a surgeon, you know.”
“You know the mechanics of rutting and birthing. That’s not enough.”
This time was Leigh’s turn to sigh. She laid her head against her arms, resting them on the piles of forms covering her desk. Mother would hear her, no matter how muffled her voice. “I know. I can tell you three ways to access a man’s heart should it require surgery. I have no idea how to get a man to notice me. Let alone become enamored of me.”
“Is that what you want, then?”
Leigh looked up, emotions warring within her. It was what she wanted, she realized now. Even as she did, she saw why it was impossible. They were soldiers, officers of the same unit. “I want to, Mother, but I can’t.”
Whatever Capricious was about to say was cut off by the jangling bells of Leigh’s alarm. Time for another staff meeting. She lowered the volume on her crystal connection to her mother and dragged herself to her feet. Duty called once more.