Leo Geroncleros sat down on the road and cried.
Below, the city stretched, a charred scatter of remnants, struts supporting nothing out of grey-black ash, broken here and there by a splash of color--a tent or something similar. The civic dome still stood, cracked, and a sprawling tent city huddled against it.
Three years gone and this was all that remained of his home. His last view of Panthea had been sheets of roiling black smoke rising up in answer to the alien bombardment. Nothing had been rebuilt that he could see. Through the haze of tears it seemed dreamlike, unreal. Leo blinked, hard, and the brilliant colors of the refugee tent city stabbed at him. So bright, so desperate.
"Your Honor?"
Leo rubbed his nose on the sleeve of his robe and looked up at his escort. The girl watched him uneasily, sharp lines in her young forehead, dark eyes softened now by an unfamiliar concern. Her body was hard and angular, her energy evident even in the shapeless grey-green utilities she wore. The only thing truly casual about her was the way she let her rifle rest in the crook of her arm, like an old musical instrument played into absorption with her deeper self. She was younger, Leo believed, than his wife had been.
"Sorry," he said, rising. He waved at Panthea. "I didn't know..."
"It's only been four months since we retook it. We're still trying to find all the bodies. But we've got power now."
"Did you find any Intruder corpses yet? I'd very much like to see one."
The girl gave him a puzzled look, then shook her head. "No. There haven't been any Intruder corpses. Only their machines."
She continued on down the road toward Panthea. After a few moments Leo followed.
The road was roughly paved. It wound through the hills south of the city. Leo had seen many caves, some still occupied by partisans operating communications and observation posts. Here, above Panthea, it finally left cover of the thick forests. It was late autumn. The unblocked sun felt good on his head, but the wind from the open plain to the west made him wish for a jacket. All he had been given by the partisans who had found him were boots. For that he was very glad; his bare feet would never have managed this harsh surface. But the thin robe he wore was hardly sufficient.
At the first checkpoint Leo had been brought to, his name had been run through a computer. When they had verified his identity and that he was an authentic Returned, the girl was assigned to escort him. She had said little in the six kilometers since. Leo had been disinclined to talk much: the countryside was riddled with outposts and the forest was rife with warriors.
The road leveled out and they passed through the outer sections of the city. Up close, the destruction looked like the work of careless giants who broke everything they touched. Then the smell hit him and Leo caught his breath.
The girl watched him curiously for a few seconds until Leo controlled his gagging. A few dozen meters further on he saw the pit and the tangle of limbs sticking out of the dirt and lime. About a hundred meters away an earthmover was pushing more dirt over the bodies, its engine a faint, steady drone.
"We identify as many as we can," the girl volunteered. "But it's hard to know when all you have is an arm or a leg. There aren't enough of us and the fleet has more urgent duties than collating death lists."
"Fleet...?"
"Admiral Hanford's 34th Task Force. They arrived five months ago. Without them we'd still be blowing up Intruder transports, sabotaging power plants, throwing rocks at them."
"Ah. How many others have, uh ... come back?"
"A couple of hundred. All in the last week, it seems. Why'd they let you go?"
Leo shook his head, staring at the mass grave. "I don't know. One moment I was there, the next..."
"That's all right. You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. It's been bad for all of us."
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