Chapter 17

Roland.

Roland smelled the execution before it started.

There’d been a lot of strong smells in downtown Plano when he arrived. Gunpowder and sour fear-sweat, the acrid stink of anxiety and the warm, wet odors of grief and confusion. He’d smelled the stale reek of military rations, the sharp pang of anemia and the boiling hot testosterone that wafted from the Martyrs like a jet stream.

But, a half hour into his time downtown, something else had drifted over the packed masses of refugees and pilgrims and militiamen. It was hard to define: a bit of tension, and a bit of anticipation. The odor was faint enough to suggest something unconscious, a collective emotion. The aggregate scent of a crowd of people who weren’t consciously aware of how they felt. There was no neurotransmitter, no pheromone he could identify in particular. This scent was more elusive. He was only able to lock it down through the memory fragments it triggered.

Coal gray sky. A biting chill in the air. Hundreds of men and women bundled up, clustered around barrel fires. Everyone talking. Excitement in their voices. Anxiety on the air, mingled with gun-oil and anticipation. Something was about to happen.

A few seconds later, the scent of anxious anticipation started to rise. Roland heard the deep bouncing thrum of heavy rubber wheels on pavement. His hindbrain tied the sound to a particular species of obsolete armored personnel carrier, originally manufactured in Bulgaria. After following its route for several seconds his hindbrain guessed the APC was bound for the main square.

Roland spent the next few minutes jockeying for a good position close to the gallows. He wasn’t certain that’s where the convoy was headed. It seemed like a good guess though. And he was quickly proven right when the APC pulled up to a stop just a hundred feet away. The crowd stopped and gawked as the heavy doors slid open. Soldiers in full-body armor stepped out, dragging six men and women in honest-to-god manacles and chains out into the dying light.

The captives were all SDF. Roland didn’t even have to make an educated guess on that one. The Heavenly Kingdom had made sure to dress them in their tattered and blood-stained uniforms. They were, all of them, emaciated and broken-looking. The evidence of torture was so clear that Roland’s enhanced eyes weren’t even necessary. The captives had broken, bleeding fingernails, black eyes, painful limps, and feet that looked like they could barely stand to touch the ground.

One of the Martyrs, a tall man wearing a red beret instead of a combat helmet, strode ahead of the group. He had a voice-amp in one hand. He raised the other up in the air in a prayerful gesture that was matched by most of the crowd.

“Brothers and sisters,” the Martyr’s voice boomed, “today the Lord and his loyal soldiers have delivered unto you a blessing.”

The crowd tightened around Roland. He could see, hear, feel as people rushed out from cafes and shops to watch. The fear and excitement was so thick in the air Roland was sure even unmodified humans could have sensed it.

“Here we have six prisoners from the SDF,” the Martyr began. “These men and women were all captured in the last week. Rather than accept their defeat, they chose to fight as insurgents against the Heavenly Kingdom. God and his Martyrs are merciful. But these sinners have spat on that mercy. Now it is our privilege to execute upon them the judgement written: this honor have all his saints. Praise ye the LORD!”

A ragged cheer went up from the crowd. Many of the assembled sounded less than enthusiastic, at least to Roland’s ears. But there were still dozens and dozens of voices full of reckless hate. The prisoners marched forward with their escort, ever nearer to the gallows. Roland’s ear tingled, and he sensed Manny’s presence out in the street now. The kid smelled afraid, with a faint fading tinge of pheromonal arousal. Huh.

Roland backed away and escaped the main press of the crowd. In a few seconds, he was behind Manny and he put a hand on the fixer’s back. The young man jumped and then shot Roland a furious look.

“What the hell–” Manny caught himself and instead pointed up to the line of doomed men and women. “Roland I know that–”

“Hey!” A girl ran up to them. She smelled scared too. But the scent was much deeper on her, sunken into her skin. She’d been scared for quite some time. She seemed to know Manny, and he definitely knew her.

“Sasha,” Manny said, “I’m sorry. I just needed to…” he paused, shook his head, and then put a hand on Roland’s shoulder. “This is my comrade, Martyr Aaron. We fled here together, once the SDF retreated from Farmer’s Branch. Aaron, this is Sasha.”

“It’s good to meet you, Martyr Aaron,” she said, and flashed him an anxious smile. “I’m so glad God’s grace has brought us all together.”

“Oh yeah,” Roland said in his most convincing voice, “God’s so good. I’m really, just–” he gestured toward the gallows, “I’m psyched to see this.”

A look crossed over her face. Disgust, mixed with building anxiety. She was dressed to play the part of the Good Christian Woman; her hair done up in a tasteful bun, her face unadorned by makeup, her sleeves long, and her clothing baggy. But her scent didn’t lie. It suggested she was pretty far from all-in on this whole “Heavenly Kingdom” thing.

“You’re not excited to see God’s justice?” Roland asked.

The young woman frowned and shook her head.

“I understand the necessity of such bru…of such extreme measures. But I don’t have to like it. Manny, do you–”

She started to ask Manny something, but the young man broke off from their little group and darted forward toward the gallows.

“Oh!” Sasha said, in surprise.

“I’ll…go check on him,” Roland said. “It’s probably best if you wait here, eh?”

She looked confused, but she nodded. Roland followed behind Manny and caught up to him about four people deep into the growing crowd around the scaffold. The fixer’s eyes were locked on one of the SDF prisoners, a middle-aged man with a prominent black mustache and a look of courageous resignation in his brown eyes. He stood in the middle of the gallows, calm as a stone in the ocean, while one of the Martyr’s fitted a noose around his neck.

“Manny,” Roland said.

“That’s Mr. Peron,” Manny said.

“Someone you know, then?”

Manny swallowed and nodded his head. Tears threatened at the corners of his watery eyes. Roland felt like it would probably be a good idea to get the kid away from the gallows before he did something stupid. Roland’s hindbrain helpfully informed him that there were only around sixty armed men in the whole square. But he also knew there were one-hundred-eighty-three armed men within a mile of their current position. If shit started now it wouldn’t end for a while. Roland put a hand on Manny’s shoulder.

“We have to do something,” Manny said.

“What do you want me to do?” Roland asked. “Rush up there, beat that red-beret’d fucknugget with his own sidearm and then cock-punch the rest of them into submission?”

“You can beat them,” Manny said.

“Yeah,” Roland nodded, “but if I do, that’s the end of the mission. And probably the end of those hostages. I can save your buddy, and you, and probably even that girl if she wants to come. But the Kingdom’s going to assume some monster-man from Rolling Fuck just terrorism’d them. They’ll bury those captives too deep for us to find. And then Austin’s as fucked as a blind pussy in a dick forest.”

A man in the crowd turned and stared at Roland. Volume man, volume. Roland guessed he’d heard just the tail-end of his last sentence. The word “pussy” had probably piqued his ears. Before the man could say anything, Roland pointed toward the gallows and let out a loud “WHOOP!” followed by a “PRAISE GOD! PRAISE GOD!” The inadvertent eavesdropper started cheering along with him and turned back to the impending execution.

Roland turned back to Manny. The boy was quiet, his face controlled, but fat tears ran down his cheeks and his shoulders shook with silent sobs. Roland directed him back, away from the worst of the crowd.

“Mr. Peron baked the cake for my twelfth birthday,” Manny whispered. “He showed us Monty Python. He dropped us off at soccer practice.”

Manny had started to babble. He smelled on the edge of an outright panic attack. Roland’s hindbrain started to identify potential improvised weaponry options among the crowd. He settled on a small, thick-set man. He’s got a real dense cranium. Good weight distribution. He’ll make a great club.

Roland shook himself out of it. Then he tried to shake Manny out of it by, literally, shaking him by the shoulders.

“Hey. Listen. Your friend up there is going to die. Or a lot of other people are going to die. Those are the two options. I know it sucks. I know it’s shit. But we cannot fix this. If you stay calm though, we can fix something worse. Do you understand me?”

Manny’s eyes came unglazed. The flow of tears slowed, then stopped. It was an impressive feat of willpower. Most people didn’t have that kind of control over their emotions. Roland had to guess Manny’s work as a fixer had, at least, prepared him to function in the middle of a waking nightmare.

“OK,” the kid said, “but I have to watch.”

Roland wanted to argue. But one look at Manny’s eyes made it clear that arguing wouldn’t do any good. So instead he stood there, next to Manny, and kept his hand on the boy’s shoulder until the terrible thing was done. It was as ghastly as these things always were. Most of the crowd cheered every snapped neck, every jerk of a dying soldier’s legs.

Shockwaves of memory wracked Roland’s mind at the sight. He felt warm spring air blow across his cold chest. He saw a small sea of familiar strangers, men and women he’d known once upon a bloodier day. He felt a big gun kick in his hands, he felt a warm splash of blood across his chest and face, he heard the heavy final thump of a tiny body hitting the ground. He saw Topaz. She looked ill. He saw Skullfucker Mike with a hand on her shoulder. He heard Jim’s voice.

“Make sure the cameras catch this next one,” Jim cried. “We’ve got an ­honest-to-god Cheney with us today!”

Back in the present, Roland watched as Manny’s friend’s turn came around. Manny swallowed. His face went pale. Tears streamed down the boy’s face and Roland felt a sudden, peculiar urge to bury him in a hug. He did not do that, though. Roland just stood still with a firm hand on Manny’s shoulder while they tightened the noose around Major Peron’s neck and dropped him down to hang until he was dead, dead, dead.

Roland was proud of how straight Manny stood, how the boy held back from sobbing and how, once the sad spectacle was over, Manny turned back around and headed toward the Christian girl, Sasha. She still stood where they’d left her. Roland could tell she’d been crying too, although she’d taken some pains to disguise it. She was hard to get a read on, that one. She struck him as one of the faithful, but she didn’t strike him as a nut. Maybe she’d just gotten suckered into this awful place. Roland could certainly understand that. He was pretty sure he’d been suckered into dumber things.

“Praise God,” she said, with hesitation.

“Praise God,” Manny responded. Roland didn’t say much. She gave him a look, but not an angry one.

“That was…” she locked eyes with Manny. Roland was pretty sure she’d blocked the rest of the world out. She must’ve seen the signs of his tears too. She coughed a little and continued, “That was awful. I know it’s necessary, but I’ll never stop hating that.”

“It’s a good thing to hate,” Manny said. And then, “Look, we have to get back to base. Curfew’s coming up soon. But if you’re looking to hide from those, uh, undesirables tomorrow, I’ll be waiting outside the cafe.”

They kept talking, but what they said was beyond Roland’s interest. He was busy listening as the prison convoy drove off. Now that he knew the sound of the prisoner transport APC, aurally tracing it back to its origin point was child’s play.

“Aaron,” Manny’s voice jerked his attention back to the conversation happening in front of him.

“We should probably go,” Manny said. “The buses will leave soon.”

“Oh, shi– uh, sh…surely. Right. Surely right. We should go.”

Roland smiled at Sasha, “It was lovely to meet you. Good evening.”

He put a hand on Manny’s shoulder and, together, they headed off to the buses. Manny only stopped twice to cry.

Manny didn’t say much the rest of the night. Roland was proud of him for holding back his tears during the bus ride and the walk to the barracks. The kid broke down as soon as he got into bed, of course, but he kept his sobs silent and Roland was pretty sure none of the other recruits noticed. It helped that they were all exhausted at the end of the day.

Roland puked up, then popped, a handful of Ambien and Percocets and washed them down with a tall glass of the beer he’d brewed in his own guts. He offered Manny some but the boy declined. So Roland had a second glass. And then a third. It wasn’t enough to get him wasted, but the cocktail of drugs did a tolerable job of leading him to unconsciousness. He drifted off to sleep an hour or so after the rest of the men in the barracks.

The next day was more army-style bullshit. Push-ups and windsprints and a big dumb obstacle course. Roland had to be real careful to act challenged as the day went on. He instructed his body to elevate his blood pressure and temperature, to flush his face red with blood and to send enough sweat from his pores to make a passable imitation of exertion. It was tedious and he hated it. But the first half of the day went by pretty fast.

Then it was time for a close-quarters firefight drill. The men were given actual rifles, sans ammunition, and divided up into assault teams. They spent the next five hours taking turns defending or attacking different rooms in an old apartment complex that had been commandeered by the Heavenly Kingdom. There was a lot of shouting from instructors who sure as shit wanted the recruits to think they knew more about urban warfare than they did.

At the end of one particularly long set of door-breaching drills, one of the instructors dropped to his knees and started chanting in tongues. He seemed to be celebrating that one of his “slowest” squads had finally nailed a textbook entry. Roland wasn’t sure what to hell to make of it. The man almost smelled like he was having a schizophrenic break. The heady wash of neurotransmitters wafting off him made it clear this wasn’t just some gesture for show. He seemed legitimately overcome with joy.

Other soldiers, and even a couple of the instructors, started kneeling down around him. They were all chanting in some strange language. The first instructor kept repeating what sounded like, “Om nashakallaska, om nashakallaska.” Roland’s hindbrain knew a lot of languages, but this sounded like nonsense to him. He noticed that the speech patterns of each chanting man were pretty consistent with American English. The actual words were gibberish, though, and–

Manny grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed, gently, down. Roland took the hint and then took a knee. The kid started to chant in a low voice.

“Hila taskilla jeosapha tinshalla…” It was more gibberish, but Roland followed suit. He started to spit out nonsense of his own in a tone low enough that it didn’t rise above the din of chanting maniacs. Manny’s strategy, he realized, was to make big exaggerated mouth-­motions without actually speaking at a high volume. It made him look right without drawing any attention.

The whole weird scene went on for a little over two minutes. Eventually the instructor stopped chanting and lay on his back, sweaty and spent. The other soldiers seemed to have ended their fits in the same way. Roland could tell from their heart rates and body temperature that about half of the men had been faking it, just like he and Manny. The humid stink of guilt was heavy in the air. Roland’s heart went out to them. It must be agony to believe so hard in something so dumb that you’d castigate yourself for not buying into it enough.

After that, they filed into the mess hall. They said their prayers, ate their dinners, and then queued up for the buses downtown. The ride was uneventful. And the instant their feet hit the square Manny went off to find Sasha. Roland shook his head in appreciation for the all-consuming power of human desire and then bounded off to check out the presumed location of the jail.

It was about a three-mile jog. At full speed, Roland could’ve cleared the distance in a few minutes. But a low profile was the name of the game. He stuck to a fast walk and kept to the shadows and alleys as best as he could. Plano hadn’t been a very dense city before the Martyrs had taken over, so there were a lot of times where he was basically out in the open. He had to trust that his uniform and the general state of chaos in the newly-founded Kingdom would obscure him.

This was the first look he’d gotten of the Kingdom on foot. Roland decided he didn’t care much for it. There was a great deal of foot and vehicle traffic but most of the people seemed to be either soldiers or refugees without anywhere else to go. He passed two checkpoints where twitchy-looking Martyrs performed datascans on decks and personal hard drives. He even saw one soldier sorting through paperback books in the trunk of some poor fuck’s car.

Roland noticed several white vans with black crosses painted on the side. They cruised the streets, clearly on patrol for something. He watched one stop in front of a family of refugees, heavy with backpacks and carrying intake papers in their hands. Men in white jump suits with gold cross badges piled out and surrounded the family. Roland concealed himself behind a dumpster and watched as the patriarch of the family handed them his papers and spoke in a frantic, animated tone. One of the men pointed at his daughter, who wore a stained t-shirt and a ragged pair of denim shorts. They were baggy and hardly stylish. But the men in the jumpsuits seemed furious. They pointed and shouted. The man put his hands in the air and tried to say something, but one of the jump-suited men smashed his head with a cane.

Cold rage bubbled up inside Roland. Fuck this place, he simmered to himself, fuck these janky-ass throwback fundamentalists and their fascist bullshit. He wanted to charge out from behind the dumpster and tear into these low-rent, hisbah motherfuckers. He wanted to shove those thick wooden rods so far up their asses they’d be shitting splinters for weeks. The mission, he reminded himself, the fucking mission.

And so he watched as the men in white beat the old guy. He watched as they pulled the poor bastard’s daughter into a van and forced a hide­ous gray woolen dress over her head. It didn’t fit and it looked liable to give her heat stroke in the late Texas summer. She didn’t fight them though.

Roland moved on, reluctantly, and found what his hindbrain suspected was the old jail. The APC’s he’d seen last night were parked out front. The compound was crowded and busy. Roland counted fourteen guards just outside. Mind you, they were human guards. No powered armor, no heavy artillery, nothing at hand that could do much more than tickle him. They wouldn’t present a danger. But they would cause a hell of a lot of noise if he attempted a daylight prison break.

He scrambled up onto a half-collapsed condo that had been abandoned after a heavy mortar shell gutted the inside. It provided a good view of the jail. For the next hour Roland just watched. His hindbrain mapped the pattern of the guard rotations and noted the security protocols they followed when each new vehicle arrived. He took a lot of deep breaths and, gradually, pulled enough scents from inside the jail to have a decent idea of how many people were in there. He’d never smelled Marigold or the other Rolling Fuck negotiators before. But his nose picked up on three people with a handful of aftermarket modifications. Most of the Martyrs he’d met had been limited to civilian-grade healing suites and sensory upgrades. It was a safe bet that these were their targets, then.

When you’ve got the message, put down the phone. Roland wasn’t sure where, or when he’d heard that aphorism. But it came into his head and, a moment later, he realized the sun was pretty low in the sky. It’d be bus time soon. He headed back through the high shadows and across the cracked and bullet-scarred boulevards until he was able to merge back into the evening crowd at the square. Manny and the Christian girl had moved on from the cafe by that point. He actually ran into them in front of some building with a sign that identified it as the “House of Miriam.” They were saying weird, chaste, religious-y goodbyes.

“Oh, hello, Aaron!” Sasha smiled when she saw him. Manny turned around and flashed him a weary smile too. Roland could still see pain in the kid’s eyes, but it was at least cut with a bit of arousal. He decided that was a good thing. Ever since Oscar’s death, Manny had been riding the line between function and complete emotional collapse. He decided to encourage the fixer’s weird little friendship with the Christian girl.

“Hey!” Roland said. “How was the, ah, coffee? Smelled like it was mostly chicory and food dye when I walked by earlier. But maybe they sold y’all the good stuff.”

“They did not,” Manny said.

“You must be blessed with an exceptional nose,” Sasha said, and gave him an odd look. Then she asked, “What did you get up to?”

“I checked out the farmers’ market,” Roland lied. “I’ll tell you what some, uh, some good freakin’ cucumbers up in there. That’s where I was. Cucumbers.”

Sasha’s odd look deepened. Manny brought a hand up to the bridge of his nose and kneaded his brow in frustration.

“We should head back to the buses. I’ll see you tomorrow Sasha, yes?”

“Yes, of course!” Sasha replied with a genuine smile.

If this was a sane world, the two of them might… Roland shook his head. This was the Heavenly Kingdom, they were surrounded by extremist militants and Sasha probably wasn’t even allowed to look at condoms. Also, she’s one of those militants, Roland reminded himself.

He let the kids say their goodbyes and then walked back to the bus with Manny. The kid seemed unsettled.

“I feel like I’m making a real dumb decision,” he said.

“What?” Roland asked.

“Talking with that girl,” Manny shrugged. “She’s told me all she knows about those prisoners already. But we’re supposed to meet at the one shitty cafe in this town tomorrow. I know it’s stupid. But I kinda wanna make that meeting.”

“Why’s it stupid?” Roland asked. They had to drop their voices a little as they drew closer to the line for the buses.

“Because,” Manny said, “we’re not going to be here long. Sasha confirmed our people are in the jail. And you scouted it out today, right?”

“Yep.”

“So we’re confirmed twice over. It’s time to do this thing and get out. I don’t have time to eat shitty food with a pretty girl.”

Roland turned and fixed his eyes on Manny’s. He leaned in, until their noses were almost touching. And then he poked the boy’s chest with his index finger, for emphasis, while he spoke.

“Emmanuel Sanchez, listen to me: there is always time to eat shitty food with a pretty girl. Fuck the war, fuck what’s a ‘good idea.’ Go eat some garbage and stare into her eyes. Do something human in this inhuman place. Late night will be a better time for the rescue anyway.”

Manny was silent for several long seconds. Then he said, “OK.”

The next day started with more PT, as usual. Then it rolled right into an extra-long trip to the firing range and three more hours of close assault drills. Roland found himself disgusted by the Kingdom’s tactics. Their go-to was to dump heavy artillery on any embedded resistance. No heed was paid to the civilian cost. They were fine having untrained kids lob mortars into crowded neighborhoods.

“The Lord will recognize his own,” Martyr Carruthers said, over and over again.

That evening, before the dinner prayer, the raspy-voiced pastor came by to speak to all the recruits in the chow hall. Roland missed Martyr Ditmar’s introduction of the pastor (he was too busy puking up and surreptitiously eating his last bag of drugs) but his ears perked up when the wild-haired old nutfuck launched into his speech.

“The burdens placed on the Warriors of God are great. You men have sworn yourselves to a ponderous duty. But that duty does not end on the battlefield. If the Heavenly Kingdom is to remain and expand, we will need you to fight in the field and with your other God-given attributes.”

This elicited a dim chorus of chuckles from the audience. It took Roland an embarrassing amount of time to realize what the preacher was talking about. Ah jeez, this speech is about fuckin’.

“The Lord commands us to be fruitful and multiply,” the pastor wheezed, “but he also calls us to respect the sacred bonds of Holy Matri­mony. In times of war, the times we all live in now, this might seem to create some difficulty. But that’s only because most of us are trained to think of marriage in the secular context. The average married couple in the American Federation ‘dates’ for eight years before being wed. In California, it’s closer to ten. Of course, in both those places, ‘dating’ is more or less a form of cashless prostitution.”

Roland had to strain to avoid rolling his eyes. Next to him, Manny listened dutifully. His face was almost unreadable.

“Perhaps people who don’t trust their creator need years of time to decide if another person is a suitable partner. Happily, we have the Will of God to guide us. You young men are strong and virile and faithful. Your Lord wants you to find love. He wants you to bring more children into this world. This is why, as the hour of action draws closer, we still encourage each of you to spend time every day going out into the city and mingling with the other sheep of our great flock.”

Aha! Suddenly Roland understood. It had seemed odd to him that the Heavenly Kingdom, a state still so unformed and tumultuous, would devote time and resources to busing their military recruits downtown. It made sense now. They wanted all these young men to find women and fill them up with babies before they went off to die. It was grim as hell. But it was also quite logical.

“The truth of it is,” the pastor rasped, “marriage is a simple process. When you find the right person, the proper arrangements can be made in an hour or two. That is why I’m here, along with Pastors Sandor, ­Elsworth, and Biggins. You can find us at any hour of the day—or night—to bless your unions once God shows you to your wives. And there are more pastors at the House of Jacob near the square. I urge you to go out into the Kingdom in search of love and make use of us. Our chief job, and our chief joy, is to help our noble Martyrs find the love and bliss God promises every faithful man. Wives are his blessing to us. Children are our duty to him. Now,” the man said with a rakish grin, “go forth, and multiply the flock.”

The line for the buses was extra long that day. By the time Roland and Manny actually made it to the square, they were nearly an hour later than usual. Manny rushed right off to find Sasha. Roland made his way to an alley and then darted across town and toward the jail once again.

They’d already confirmed the location of their targets, so Roland’s last job was to mark out a good exit route from the city. He didn’t expect it’d be a quiet prison break. That would draw attention, and fighters. The good news was that nothing within the Heavenly Kingdom looked particularly well organized. A ton of fighters patrolled the streets, but most of Plano was still pretty war-torn. Their camera grid was far from comprehensive. If they had a sizable drone force it was kept nearer to the front than here.

The quickest route seemed to be to head straight north from the jail, up K Avenue and past an old housing development filled with crumbling mansions. That route would take them past two fortified bases. There’d be a couple hundred infantry to deal with, along with their attendant APCs and a handful of drones. Roland felt confident he could punched a hole through all that on his own, but he expected to have four or five civilians in tow. The odds of one of them taking a stray round were just too high.

Another possible route took him up and to the left, toward an old tollway that seemed to mark the end of the Heavenly Kingdom’s static defenses. They controlled a lot of the territory beyond, but the patrols there looked random. There were no fortifications or checkpoints. It was a much longer route than the other but, potentially, one that required a lot less fighting. The last option was to veer right and take Park Avenue to Richardson. The Heavenly Kingdom had controlled that territory for even less time than they’d held Plano, and the fighting there had been heavier. They’d pass a lot of checkpoints, but not much in the way of troop concentration as long as they kept south and away from Dallas proper.

The scouting work itself was exhilarating. Roland had a lot of ground to cover so he spent most of his time sprinting and scaling buildings, leaping from roof to roof and in between shattered windows. His senses were in full use. There were always passing convoys of civilians or patrols of Martyrs or those odd white police vans somewhere nearby. He was close to caught a dozen times and he loved every minute of the work.

By the time he got back to the main square it was quite late, and almost time for the buses to leave. He did a quick loop of the square to see if he could find Manny and Sasha. He caught traces of their scents but neither of them seemed to be out and about. He eventually tracked Sasha’s pheromone trail back to the House of Miriam, but Manny seemed to be gone. That was strange. Roland headed back to the buses in the hope of finding him there. But Manny wasn’t in line, or on any of the buses.

So Roland headed back to the base and tried to ignore the unease as it blossomed in his belly. Maybe he headed back early. Maybe the “date” went bad. That made sense. Sasha seemed nice, for a religious extremist, but you couldn’t predict zealots. It was so damn easy to set them off. Manny might’ve just said the wrong thing and decided it’d be safest to head back to the base and chill in the barracks.

The bus pulled into the school-cum-training-facility’s little vehicle depot. Roland noticed at once that Martyr Ditmar and a small bodyguard of armed men were waiting. That was unusual. Roland’s hindbrain warned him that this was probably related to Manny’s disappearance. He felt a thin drip of adrenaline start tapping on the back of his amygdala. It was the feeling he associated with Shit About To Happen. Roland tried to enjoy it, without letting it push him into action before he knew what was really going on.

“Martyr Aaron,” Ditmar said, as he approached Roland. The instructor’s bodyguards stayed close behind. “Would you come with me? We’ve got some news for you.”

“Where’s Emmanuel?” Roland asked.

“We’ll explain everything,” the older Martyr said. “Just come with me.”

Roland followed him into the maze of buildings and toward a small office occupied by a white-haired man in what looked like the Heavenly Kingdom’s equivalent of a dress uniform. It was blue, bedecked with medals, and had a shining silver cross on each epaulet. The fancy man looked very tired. Roland could smell cheap caffeine wafting from his pores.

“This is Commandant Dawkins,” Martyr Ditmar explained. “He’s in charge of this facility. We’ve been telling him about you.”

“Martyr Ditmar is hard to impress,” the Commandant said. “But to his eyes, you’re some sort of latter-day Samson.”

“The strongest man I’ve ever seen,” said Martyr Ditmar. “He’s a darn fine shot, too. Something of a marvel.”

“Where’s my friend?” Roland asked. “Where’s Emmanuel?”

The Commandant gave an indulgent smile. It didn’t meet his tired eyes.

“Listen, Martyr. I know you can appreciate how important unit cohesion is during a situation as stressful as combat. We’ve had to make some changes in order to ensure unity. Emmanuel is one of a number of soldiers we’ve transferred to special duty.”

Roland could read between the lines. He was sure if he checked in the barracks that Manny, Jonathan, and the other handful of non-white recruits would all be absent.

“What kind of special duty?”

Ditmar growled behind him, “Now listen, son. Just because the Commandant called you a Samson doesn’t mean you’re in charge around here. We’re prosecuting a war. You won’t be privy to every decision made above you and you’re just going to have to get used to that.”

The Commandant was a bit calmer. He put his hands forward in a placating gesture and tried again.

“Your friend is fine. He’s better than fine. He’s going to get a chance to serve his Lord and the Heavenly Kingdom in glorious Martyrdom. You should be happy for him.”

Ditmar stepped forward and squatted down next to him. He put a hand on Roland’s thigh. A third of a second later, Roland had calculated the best way to rip that arm free of its socket and beat the other men in the room to death with it. But he held still, for now. Manny would have been proud.

“Listen, boy,” Ditmar said, “I know you got used to having that brown kid help you talk with people, and I’m sure he did a fine job. I get that you’re not much for social graces. But we’re going to take care of you now, alright? You’ve got a whole army of brothers here. Just do what you do best and we’ll handle the rest.”

“OK,” Roland said. He put a hand on Martyr Ditmar’s wrist and clenched it hard enough that everyone in the room heard the bones snap. The look of dawning terror on the other man’s face was the best high Roland had gotten in days. He savored it for a quarter-second before finishing his sentence.

“I’ll do what I do best, then.”