Marque and Reprisal Read Free Page B

from the wreckage, but most of the flames had blown out… stubs of walls, spikes of unidentifiable framing members. With the survivors—pitifully few—he stared at the ruin. Somewhere in there was San, his only son onplanet. Surely dead… he turned away, unwilling to look anymore.
    Gaspard stayed with him as he staggered toward the house. Here nothing was left but a hole in the ground; the gardens were covered with debris; a single flowering spray of luchis orchids curled up from beneath a window frame, still unwilted. They made their way around to the back, where parts of the roof had breached the garden wall. A mat of debris floated on the water of the big pool… shards of wood, sheets of paper, bits of cloth, fronds of jabla still pink with bloom, and wide leaves of the haricond like rafts, each with its own burden of grit and unidentifiable pieces. Some sank as he watched, as the wind ruffled the surface.
    He was on his knees on the edge of the pool, mouth stuffed with fear and anguish, unable to call her name, unable to see. Someone was crying, someone was saying her name, someone’s hands were wet, the water stinging the burns. Someone was pulling at her shoulder, struggling to get her face out of the water, ignoring the red streaks turning pink in the dirty water.
    And then he was lying back against someone, someone talking to him, and he could see her lying in the sun as it dimmed and brightened with the whirls of smoke blowing past. Water pooled under her, water stained red, and she did not turn her head to him, did not cry out, did not ask what happened.
    Someone put a flask to his lips. He smelled the sharp edge of whiskey he didn’t want, but he sipped because his throat was dry and then nearly choked because it was raw, pain almost as sharp as that in his heart. He smelled clean earth and onions, and saw that the hands of the person he lay against were crusted with earth and a shred of green. A gardener. His mind seemed to float, slowly noticing, slowly combining what it noticed.
    Then it all came together. Attacks. Explosions. The house and his wife gone. The office and his son gone. He had warned Stavros. He had to—he tried to sit up, and his ribs stabbed him again. The hands behind him helped, lifted.
    “They’re dead,” he heard himself say. His ears still rang; his voice sounded tinny. “They’re all—who’s alive?”
    Gaspard had the list. Soler, Tina, Vindy from the clerk’s section. Bonas, who had been in the toilets on the end not directly hit. Gaspard. Old George. All three gardeners. Little Ric, who had been sweeping the front porch and drive, and been blown into the ornamental grove of palms and jablas that the drive circled.
    Everyone was watching the sky; he had to do something, start sorting things out.
    “Water,” he heard old George say. “Gotta get some water first.”
    “I’ll check the tanks,” said the gardener who’d been supporting him. “If you can stand, sir?”
    He could stand; he had to stand; he still had people depending on him. “Go on,” he said. “Check the tanks. Thank you.”
    Water. Shelter. Food. Protection from whoever had done this. Transportation. Medical care. He prodded his sluggish mind. Decisions to be made. Make them.
    By the time the island’s town-based emergency evacuation system arrived, one of the survivors had already died. Gerard struggled to talk to the officials who arrived with the rescue squad. His ears still rang; he could barely stand, and they were asking him why the attack came, as if he knew. As if it were his fault. Why didn’t the fire/rescue service respond? Why were they housed in the office building anyway? Why had they put the reserve fuel storage underneath? Why, why, why?
    His implant offered no answers, either. Who had done this? How had they done it? More aircraft arrived, full of law enforcement investigators, some he knew and some he’d never seen before. Someone brought a scorched chair, blown from the office,