the Long Rides, would have said to him now. You’ve done well. You’ve taken the fight to them. I’m proud to call you son. Yet Peter would have given it all back for just one more hour in Theo’s company.
And whenever he looked at Caleb, it was his brother he saw.
He was joined at the table by Satch Dodd. A junior officer like Peter, Satch had been a toddler when his family had been killed in the Massacre of the Field. As far as Peter was aware, Satch never said anything about this, though the story was well known.
“Any idea what it’s all about?” Satch asked. He had a round, boyish face that made him appear completely earnest at all times.
Peter shook his head.
“Good haul up in Lubbock.”
“Just tires.”
Both their minds were elsewhere; they were simply filling time. “Tires are tires. We can’t do much without them.”
Satch’s squad would be departing in the morning to do a hundred-mile sweep toward Midland. It was bad duty: the area was a cesspool of oil, bubbling up from old wells that had never been capped.
“I’ll tell you something I heard,” Satch said. “The Civilian Authority is looking into whether or not some of those old wells can still be operated, for when the tanks go dry. We may find ourselves garrisoning down there before too long.”
Peter was startled; he’d never considered this possibility. “I thought there was enough oil in Freeport to last forever.”
“There’s forever and forever. In theory, yeah, there’s plenty of slick down there. But sooner or later everything runs out.” Satch squinted at him. “Don’t you have a friend who’s an oiler? One of your crew from California, wasn’t it?”
“Michael.”
Satch shook his head. “Walking all the way from California. That’s still the craziest story I ever heard.” He placed his palms on the table and rose. “If you hear anything from upstairs, let me know. If I had to bet, they’ll be sending all of us down to Midland to wade in the slick before too long.”
He left Peter alone. Satch’s words had done nothing to cheer him; far from it. A half dozen enlisted clomped into the mess, talking among themselves with the rough-edged, profanity-laced familiarity of men looking for chow. Peter wouldn’t have minded a little company to take his mind off his worries, but as they moved from the line in search of a table, none glanced in his direction; the tarnished silver bar on his collar and the poor spirits he was radiating were evidently enough to ward them away.
What could the senior officers be talking about?
To abandon the hunt: Peter couldn’t imagine it. For five years he had thought of little else. He’d signed on with the Expeditionary right after Roswell; a lot of men had. For every person who’d perished that night, there was a friend, or brother, or son who had taken his place. The ones motivated solely by a need for revenge tended to wash out early or get themselves killed—you had to have a better reason—and Peter had no illusions about himself. Payback was a factor. But the roots of his desire went deeper. All his life, since the days of the Long Rides, he’d longed to be part of something, a cause larger than himself. He’d felt it the moment he’d taken the oath that bound him to his fellows; his purpose, his fate, his person—all were now wedded to theirs. He’d wondered if he’d be somehow less himself, his identity subsumed into the collective, but the opposite had proved true. It was nothing he could speak of, not with Theo and the others gone, but joining the Expeditionary had made him feel alive in a way he never had before. Watching the soldiers eat—laughing and joking and shoveling beans into their mouths as if it were the last meal of their lives—he recalled those early days with envy.
Because somewhere along the way, the feeling had left him. As campaigns were waged and men died and territory was taken and lost, none of it seeming to amount to anything, it had slowly slipped away. His bond to his men remained, a force as abiding as gravity, and he would have sacrificed himself for any one of them without a flicker of hesitation, as, he believed, they would have done for him. But something was missing; he didn’t quite know what it was. He knew what Alicia would have told him. You’re just tired. This is a long slog. It happens