The Butcher of Anderson Station Read Online Free

salute collapsed under its own weight.
    “What?” was all he could manage to say.
    “I’m going back down the well. I’m too old to suck vacuum anymore. They’ll pin you with the UN Marines highest honor, then shortly thereafter give you your first star. You’ll have a seat here at OPCOM before the year is out. Try to look happy about it.”
     
    * * *
     
    The silence stretched. Fred focused hard on nothing about ten feet in front of him. Dawes watched him for almost a full minute, then gave up.
    “All right. Why don’t I start, then?” Dawes said. “Here’s what happened. You were sleeping with one of the marines. Keeping it quiet because you were the commander, and that’s a no-no, right? So you’re very careful taking the station. You keep your casualties low, but you don’t get lucky and your lover dies.”
    Fred kept his face stony and still. Dawes leaned back, resting on one long, thin arm like he was lounging under a tree in some sunlit park.
    “You can’t get the usual psychological support,” Dawes went on, “because that would mean exposing the relationship, and you’re still ashamed of it. You have a little breakdown. You end up knocking around OPA bars hoping someone’ll kill you.”
    Fred didn’t respond. His legs were past numb now and starting to hurt. Dawes grinned. He seemed to be enjoying this.
    “No?” the OPA man said. “Don’t like that one? All right. How about this? Before you joined up with the Marines, you were a troubled kid. Did all kinds of bad things. Wild. Joining up is what straightened you out. Made you into the staunch, upright, legal, and appropriate guy you are today. But then the Anderson Station broadcast comes out. A bunch of people from your past see the feed and someone recognizes you. You come back a hero, but there’s a sting in it. You’re being blackmailed for…mmm. How about rape? Or, no. Drug trafficking. You used to cook tabs of grace in your dorm room, sell it at the clubs. Now it’s come back to haunt you, and you have a little breakdown. And you end up knocking around OPA bars hoping someone’ll kill you.”
    Dawes waved a hand in front of Fred’s eyes.
    “Still with me, Colonel? Don’t like that one either? All right. Maybe you’ve got a sister who came up the well, and you lost track of her—”
    “Why don’t you save your fucking air,” Fred growled. “Whatever you’re here for, do it and be done.”
    “Because why matters, Colonel. Why always matters. Whatever your story is, I know how it ends. It ends with you, here, talking to me. That’s the easy part, and I think you’re here looking for easy.”
    “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
    The woman with the rifle said something. Either her Belter patois was too accented and fast or it was some OPA verbal code because Fred couldn’t even cut the flow of syllables into individual words. Dawes nodded, took his hand terminal out of a pocket and keyed something in. Fred leaned forward, trying to get the blood flow back into his legs. Dawes put the hand terminal away.
    “You changed, Colonel. The way you behave changed after Anderson Station. Before that, you were just another inner planets asshole who didn’t give a shit whether the Belt lived or died. You stuck to your bases and your stage-managed outreach programs and the station levels where the security gets paid by Earth taxes. And now, you’re not.
    “I’ve lived in the Belt my whole life. I’ve known a lot of men who wanted to die. They act just like you. Women don’t. I haven’t figured that out yet, but the men? Even if they do take a walk outside or swallow a gun, there’s always this part before. Taking risks. Hoping the universe will do it for them. Make it easy. And the Belt’s an unforgiving environment. You want to die, getting sloppy’s usually enough.”
    “I don’t give a shit what you think,” Fred said. “I don’t give a shit what you want, or who you know. And your popular psychology