Grand Junction by Dantec Maurice G

Author:Dantec, Maurice G. [Dantec, Maurice G.]
Format: epub
Publisher: Del Rey
Published: 2009-09-29T05:00:00+00:00

Anyone who has seen a battlefield after the battle knows the meaning of the word desolation.

Everyone is now aware of Yuri’s discovery. The boy soldier was about the same age as Link de Nova—twelve, thirteen at most.

They have found six other bodies of children or young teenagers around the convoy, crushed under the masses of their sidecars, their mustangs, their camels, their motorbikes, their corpses full of holes of every caliber. They are dressed in various military uniforms and long Afghan-style brown tunics, Pashtun turbans and Arab kaffiyehs. They are pale beneath the watery light of the glacial moon. They seem even younger in death, as if their lost childhoods were revived at the moment of their deceases.

No one in the group really noticed their presence in the heat of combat.

Except the French sniper.

He gives them a technically perfect summary of the operation, concluding with a final stroke:

“The SR25M has an effective range of a little over eight hundred meters; it’s a semiautomatic but still very precise up to that distance. At first I thought they had hired jockeys! When I realized the truth, I have to say it only strengthened my motivation. I wasn’t going to let them become experienced adults.”

It is truly the Law of the Territory. The Law of Bronze. The one that will crush everything in its path to save this library. Everything. Including a bunch of children.

“I should also tell you that I probably sniped the fucker that was commanding them. There, to the east, around six hundred meters away; he’ll be easy to find. He was riding a white stallion. His bodyguards were both kids I had just picked off; he had binoculars and he was speaking into a walkie-talkie. He was wearing a sort of khaki turban and a Nazi uniform.”

“A Nazi uniform?” Campbell repeats, intrigued.

“Yes, a gray-and-green German uniform from the Second World War, with swastikas and SS insignia. I am French. I would have recognized it without night vision.”

Yuri realizes that “Magic Bus” has been playing on repeat for almost an hour. During the entire battle, while men, horses, dogs, camels, and children were killing one another, the tape had imperturbably continued to play. Too much, magic bus!

The economy of the Territory has its own rules, more implacable than those of nature, since the Territory has outlived not only nature but its destruction. This economy is already in full activity. While Yuri puts together a complete plasmapack for Brother Friedrich’s chest, he can see the two poles of this singular organization click into place, geographically, ethically, naturally. Under the black sky, the dusting of stars, the curving silver sliver of the moon, the starlight reveals a whole secret world; the dark light of the night sky is the light best suited to portray this world, this economy, this way of life.

Slade Vernier, first: Yuri gave him the first emergency medical care; like Yuri, he had been lucky—the high-caliber bullet, fired at close range, had exited his body after piercing an outer section of the femur.

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