Faded Steel Heat

65

You bark at some people, you make nice over others, you spring for a barrel of beer, suddenly you're an honored guest at Heaven's Gate. Even Medford Shale mellowed for six minutes before he passed out.

"Lay him out on his bunk like it's for his wake," I told Miss Trim. She did say she was in charge, didn't she?

Her given name was Quipo, she said. I could keep a straight face when I used it.

It turned into that kind of evening.

"That old fart is so mean he'll outlive me and any children I might father so I might as well enjoy a fake wake."

Miss Trim was all right once she got some beer inside her. But she'd never be a cheap date. She put it away by the pitcher. She chuckled a manly chuckle, slapped me on the back hard enough to crack a few vertebrae. "I like a man wit' a sense of humor, Garrett."

"Me, too. There's a guy I know, name of Puddle, you really got to meet."

One of Quipo's henchwomen appeared. She hadn't acquired her job through sex appeal. Few of the staff had. "The new barrel is here."

I groaned. I hadn't ordered up this latest soldier but I knew who would pay for it. And I hadn't gotten much out of anyone yet, though I'd been offered the impression that I'd learn plenty if I just hung on.

"Have them bring it right over here where I can keep an eye on it. Some of them are indulging a little too much."

The old men were doing their damnedest to get ripped. The staff were one scant stride behind. Boys and girls alike tried to light lanterns and swat bugs in the courtyard. They did more harm than good but laughter filled the air.

"This is a good thing you're doing, Garrett." Quipo waved vaguely. "These men need a party."

"It's an expensive thing that I'm doing." Not that my employer—employers—couldn't afford it. I would bill them. If ever I rooted out anything useful. "They're lubricated now. I really do need to find out something about shapeshifters."

For a moment Miss Trim looked like she might contribute something. Then she asked, "Isn't that kind of an exotic concern?" Her hand brushed my leg. The Goddamn Parrot noticed, stirred restlessly, muttered under his breath. How steep was the bill here likely to be?

Word was out that I wanted information. Shale had said plenty, most of it untrue, wrong, or just plain libelous, and nowhere near the subject.

Old or young, rich or poor, saint or sinner, the human males of TunFaire have one thing in common. We're all veterans. The tie binds us. Once invoked it can, however briefly, shove aside most other concerns.

One peculiar geezer named Wright Settling, who never recovered from having been a career Marine, drew himself a sputter off the dead barrel. He grumbled because the new one wasn't ready. I told him, "Jarhead, I really need to talk about—"

"Yeah. Yeah. You kids. Always in a hurry. After all these years it can wait a minute."

"What can wait?"

"Hold your horses. Trail and Storey, they'll tell you all about it. Endlessly." Evidently hearing all about it was one of the more painful costs of sharing Heaven's Gate. He glanced at Miss Trim and snickered. "Maybe somebody else's got something for you, too. In more ways than one."

Ever notice how some older people stop caring if they're rude? Jarhead was a case in point, often less politic than Medford Shale, without complaining as much.

"People's lives do depend on me solving this." Solving what? I had only a shadowy notion what was going on.

"That's Storey right there. I'll get him soon as I get my beer."

I fooled Jarhead. I didn't play his game. I broke Quipo's heart by abandoning her, too. Me and my delinquent feather duster went to Storey.

"Mr. Storey? Mr. Settling says you're the one man here who can really help me." Never hurts to mention their importance.

"He did, did he? Jarhead? Why the hell is that old fool putting it on me? Who the hell are you?"

"I'm Shale's great-grandnephew."

"I'm sorry."

"More significantly, I'm the guy who bought the beer. And I may not tap the new barrel. I seem to be wasting my time. Why waste my money, too?" I turned toward the newcomer.

"Me and Trail was in the army together," Storey said, not missing a beat. I had a feeling I was about to hear one of those stories that define a lifetime. "During the Myzhod campaigns we saw more shapeshifters than you'd think could exist."

Myzhod campaigns? Could've been the bloodiest phase of the war but that didn't mean anything to me today. "A little before my time, Mr. Storey."

"I didn't expect you to know." He smiled resignedly. We all learn to do that. "There must have been a hundred huge campaigns that nobody remembers now but them that survived them."

"Yeah." Don't I know it? Most times I mention what it was like in the islands, guys who weren't there just yawn and come back with a story about the really deep shit they got into. "So you ran into shapeshifters down there? Were they Venageti?"

"They was supposed to be ours. Folks forget that they worked for us first."

"Special ops?"

"They wouldn't waste them as infantry, would they?"

"I wouldn't. But I'm not the brass. You never know with them."

Storey chuckled. "You got that right. I recollect one time—"

"So what about these changers back then?" I didn't expect much. "Anything might help."

"They took the point on the Myzhod offensive." Storey seemed a little dry. I made sure he got first crack at the new barrel. He sipped, saluted me by hoisting his mug, continued, "The Myzhod is a dried-up river. The Venageti had a string of bases on the south side. They used them as jump offs in a bunch of different operations. Those bases were tough. They'd stood up to some heavy attacks. Some big names were getting embarrassed. High Command was pushing hard. They come up with a plan where shapeshifters would infiltrate a base and open the way for us commandos. We'd bust everything open for the regulars following on behind.

"First night us guys carried off the bodies of the guys the changers replaced. Second night, after those things wormed deeper inside, where they would cause confusion and grab the inner gates, we were supposed to attack where they'd prepared the way. We'd rip the belly of the base open before the Venageti knew what was happening."

Storey paused for a long drink. A tear dribbled down his cheek.

Another old man joined us. "This the Myzhod massacre, Will?"

"Yeah. Garrett, this's Trail."

"Glad to meet you, Trail."

Trail said, "Will an' me was almost the onliest ones what got away. That's on account of we smelled a rat because things was going too slick. We'd already switched livery with some dead Venageti so we just ran around like a lot of other scared crazy idiots till we figure it out. Then we cut out soon as we got a chance."

"It was a setup," Storey explained. "The whole thing was from the beginning. The Venageti line troops wasn't told up front they was part of a trap so they didn't give it away. The fact is, them shapeshifters sold us out. They led the whole damned army in there and got most of Karenta's best soldiers killed. Which probably made the war last forty years longer."

I guess the powers that be wouldn't brag about a defeat so severe it took two generations to recover.

I knew I'd learned something interesting but didn't see a connection with my situation now. This was the first I'd heard about shapeshifters serving on our side. Except for what was implied by the dragon tattoos with their Karentine motif, of course.

"When was this, Storey?"

"Forty-one or forty-two."

"Forty-two," Trail said. "It was the year my mother died and my brother was killed. That was forty-two. You remember, Will. The news was waiting when we finally got back to friendly territory."

"Yeah. Would you believe they wanted to charge us with desertion?" Storey grumbled.

Trail grumped, "We demanded a truthsayer. Even then they didn't want to believe us because a disaster that big would ruin lots of careers. But eventually enough others got back that they had to believe a story everybody told."

"We won a kind of battle, just getting back with the truth," Storey said. "The gods smiled on us. We had to cross two hundred miles of desert without getting caught by the Venageti or the natives. If we didn't get back, them shapeshifters could've pretended to stay with Karenta and led even more troops into the cauldron."

"It was bad," Trail told me. "I still get nightmares about that desert. I wake up and try to convince myself it was worth it 'cause if'n Will an' me didn't make it back, maybe there wouldn't have been any war for you kids to win."

"Most of us try to think that way, Mr. Trail." I shuddered, recalling the islands. Mostly we'd just wanted to stay alive but there'd been a flavor of hanging on so somebody else could bring the slaughter to a favorable conclusion someday.

In forty-two, eh? Over fifty years ago. And these old friends were still scrapping with the darkness. Maybe there was one more trick they could play on the nightmares.

"You ever see those shifters up close?"

"Up close?" Storey growled. "Shit. We practically slept together the three months before the attack. I reckon we saw them up close. One I'll never forget. We called him Pinhead. Pinhead sounded something like his name in his own language. And it fit. None of them was really bright. It made him really mad when we called him that."

Trail said, "They were so dumb we figured the gods made them that way to balance off how they could turn into something else when you wasn't looking. Like they had to be too stupid to take complete advantage."

Storey said, "I don't think they had the ability to appreciate the blessing. Some of it they couldn't control. Some of it they had to do whether they wanted or not."

"Yeah," Trail said. "There was this one called Stockwell. He made a chicken look smart. He was only a kid by their standards. The rest of them rode him—"

"Whoa! Stockwell? For sure?"

"He was another one that got called what his name sounded like. Most of them did. We turned this one into Carter Stockwell. It was kind of a joke, too, on account of—"

Couldn't be the same clown. Could it? After all these years? "I've been butting heads with a bunch of shifters. Believe it or not, one of them calls himself Carter Stockwell."

"Really?" Trail asked. For the first time he seemed completely interested. "Ain't that interesting, Will?"

"Sure is. I'd like to run into Carter Stockwell again some time. When I have a sack full of hot irons and silver knives. You know it's almost impossible to hurt them unless you use something silver?"

I nodded. "I noticed."

Trail said, "Always been my pet theory that silver is the reason they got involved in the war in the first place. That they never was on nobody's side but their own. If they could glom onto the silver mines, they'd control the best weapon that could be used against them."

"You could be right," I said, though that sounded like a stretch to me. "Interesting. Have some beer, gents. Keep talking. Name some more names." Not that I believed their Carter Stockwell was mine. He might be a grandson, though. "Talk to me about tattoos."

That drew blank looks and puzzled grunts.

"The changers I'm running into all have a dragon tattoo right here. It's about six inches long but hard to see when they're alive."

Storey shook his head. "I don't remember nothing like that."

"Me neither," Trail said.

"I do," Miss Trim told me. She was well sloshed now, sliding out of focus. She wore a lopsided, trollish leer. Was she making it up to get my attention? "It's a dragon squeezing the commando insignia in its claws."

I grunted. "We're onto something, Quipo."

"They were commandos. Mercenaries. I didn't know they were shapechangers, though. They called themselves the Black Dragon Gang. Said they came from Framanagt."

"Which is an island so far east of nowhere that nobody would ever check. Was anybody named Norton involved?"

"Colonel Norton was their commander. But he was Karentine."

Stockwell and his pal had expected me to know something about their crew. "What did Black Dragon do to get famous?"

"Nothing. It was the other way around. They did everything they could to hang around Full Harbor. They only went out when they couldn't avoid it. You don't make a name doing that."

"That's where you were? Full Harbor?"

"For nine wonderfully miserable years."

Full Harbor was where I'd had my only previous encounter with a shapeshifter, a Venageti agent masquerading as a Karentine spy-master. Was there a connection? Should I have made one? "When did you separate?"

"Six years ago." Quipo didn't want to talk anymore. She wanted to act but the only guy around young enough wasn't interested.

Six years was long before my own encounter.

I reminisced silently, trying to discover if I knew something I didn't know I knew. Apparently I did. Or Black Dragon didn't realize that I didn't know. "Was there ever any suspicion that the Black Dragon Gang might not be trustworthy?"

"Uh?"

The beer was hard at work now. I was about to lose Quipo. "Is there any chance those guys were really working for Venageta?"

Miss Trim's eyes focused momentarily. She gave it a good try. "Uhm? 'Dwould 'splain a lot. Never fought a dat."

Plop! She melted on the spot.

The Cranky Old Men became excited. Only the fact that Quipo had a few sober sisters chaperoning saved her from a catalog of minor indignities and vengeances.

I became the crowd favorite. I was an ear that would listen. Every old man wanted to tell his life story. None of those had anything to do with shapeshifters.

Part of the cost of doing business. I might have to come back someday.

I hung in there bravely, almost as long as the moon did, but eventually the beer ran out and I fell asleep.