She hadn’t expected the girls to be so girly. While she sewed up tears in her jacket, they embroidered their cuffs and buttonholes. They used their spark to make ice roses that melted at a touch. They’d brought dresses and fancy shoes. Olya even had a crystal radio to listen to her favorite radio play. When Linné warned her it would get confiscated, Olya smiled in challenge. Didn’t they know anything about being soldiers?
Of course not. They hadn’t jumped through hoops and cut their hair and bound their breasts and learned the foul language of the marching army. They hadn’t walked an extra half kilometer to pee to make sure they weren’t spotted. They’d sauntered in and expected to be treated like ladies.
Linné tried to help them at first. By evening she gave up. She sat alone, ate alone, and went out for inspection alone.
The day’s assignment saw them on the far side of an unused laboratory, crammed together with a map of the western Mariszkoy Mountains and orders to memorize peak heights and notable landmarks. Linné got to work. The others burst into complaint as soon as Hesovec left.
“I don’t see the point,” Olya said, shoving her topographical map away. She had fine fingers and the sort of soft face that adorned the pinup pictures Linné had seen in her old regiment. She pushed her curly brown hair out of her eyes. And she kept smiling at Linné as if she wished Linné would drop down a well shaft and never come out. “I was chosen to make bombs, not draw routes.”
Linné couldn’t let it be. “The Elda are on the other side of those mountains. What if you lose your way on a flight back? What if you crash?”
Olya smiled wider. “I can survive the mountains. I was at the top of my outdoor class in preparatory school.”
“Surviving a park in Mistelgard isn’t the same as getting lost in the mountains in wartime.”
Olya kept smiling. The other girls weren’t even pretending to work; their eyes darted between Linné and Olya as if they were watching a competition. “You always take the boar’s side,” Olya said.
“Don’t call him that,” Linné warned. Hesovec might make an ass of himself and waste resources, but it didn’t mean the girls could make a habit out of bad-mouthing their superiors.
“Ha,” Olya said. She probably thought Linné was only proving her point. “Why bother kissing up to him? He’s never going to like you.” She pulled the map back toward her and ran her hand through her short hair again. “No matter whose daughter you are.” Olya had been the first to ask if Linné was that Zolonov. Linné’s status seemed to make them hate her a little, and she struggled not to return the favor.
Inspection took place on the airfield, which lay fresh and green and, most important, empty. Intelgard was the second air base on the southern front, and what few aircraft the Union had scrambled to put together had been sent to the first. No one screamed orders, and the day’s construction hadn’t yet begun. Little mechanical messengers scuttled from place to place, and the flat-backed palanquins that normally acted as people movers carried cheap board panels to build the base’s administrative offices.
Linné watched the Union flag flap from a pole at the edge of the field, letting the cold kiss the back of her neck. The golden firebird flew on a field of red, wings outstretched, beak open to let out a war cry. Stars shimmered above its wingtips. She could see it small, pinned to her chest as a Hero of the Union medal, with a gold ribbon dangling like a burning tail. She could see the crowded hall, full of everyone who’d ever doubted her. This, she reminded herself. She was here for the Union and for glory. Not for anyone or anything else.
The men joined her right on time, trotting up and clustering a few meters away. A couple of the girls came, too, but most arrived after Colonel Hesovec started to pace along the line. The latecomers pelted up and tried to stand at attention. It would have been funny if Linné were allowed to laugh. But Hesovec didn’t find it amusing, so neither did anyone else. He swelled so much that she thought he’d pop the bottom button of his uniform. Then he spoke to the girls.
“Late. Again. Always. And to make matters worse, not one of you is in uniform.” Linné stared down at her issued boots and clenched her fists.
A girl at the end of the line piped up. “Excuse me. Sir.” Linné leaned forward to eye her. The girl who spoke had half a head of height on most of the boys, long frizzy hair, and a friendly face. “We still don’t have any uniforms.”
Hesovec stopped and glared at her. “Why didn’t you make a request?”
The girl looked around, bewildered. “For what?”
“Uniforms,” he snapped. “What else?”
She considered. “May we have some uniforms, sir?”
Linné watched Hesovec’s mustache twitch as he worked his lower lip. Apparently he’d attended the Colonel Koslen school of mustache expression. “What’s your name?” he said at last.
“Magdalena Chuikova.”
“And why are you here?” he said.
“I’ll be an engineer,” she replied.
Hesovec let out a short huff. “Good. You can spend the morning assembling the laboratory.” He stepped back and raised his voice. “As for the rest of you—this sort of behavior will not be tolerated. You have asked to participate in the war, like men. If you truly want to, you’ll have to act like them as well. Be timely, respect the discipline of the base, wear your uniforms, which I will assign forthwith, and attend to all duties given by your commander. Once Commander Zima is here, she will direct your pursuits. But until her arrival, I am in charge of the base and everyone on it. And I will send you away if you give me a reason. Clear?”
“Yes, sir,” chanted Linné and the men. “Yes, sir,” the girls chorused an instant after.
“Good. First things first: Everyone who was late this morning can practice their march around the yard. Zolonova, come with me. The rest of you, report to your platoon commanders for your morning assignments. Get this base built by the end of the day.”
The girls set out across the yard with woeful faces. Some of them tried to emulate the march of the men, strutting across the field with their arms swinging like pendulums. Linné resisted the urge to put her face in her hands. Nearby, one of the male soldiers smirked. “I never thought the front would be a place for comedy.”
“Shut it,” she replied, and stalked off. The girls needed to be put in their place. They didn’t need to be mocked.
“Zolonova,” Hesovec mused as she approached. His eyes flicked over her form, dismissing her from head to toe. “You don’t resemble your father much, do you?”
I hadn’t noticed. “No, sir.” Comments like that had followed her from childhood. When she was four, the Minister of Agriculture had joked, “Are you sure she’s yours?” at an informal dinner. Her father had laughed, but three days later the minister was gone.
Hesovec led her past the barracks and office buildings, dodging metal constructs as they hauled cheap materials to the skeleton of a warehouse. He went into a finished warehouse and sparked the lamp inside. The interior smelled like damp pine and cold metal. Yellow light flickered over crates, piled haphazardly and stamped with the Union’s firebird and stars. She’d stacked the uniform crates against the wall herself.