by Bruns, David
“That was fast,” I grunted. “And not something I can do anything about.”
Bekah gave me a look that told me she’d wrestled her grief to the mat. “I can. Maybe.”
“All righty, then. You protect the tech stuff. I’ll take care of Richter.”
“Wait, Stacks … do you think they suffered?” she asked. “Do you think—”
“I think it came quickly for all of them,” I lied, trying not to remember the look on the face of that young woman sprawled next to the station lift. She and the others; they’d all been mice to Richter. Terrified mice with death overtaking them, one hitching, shallow breath at a time until the air wouldn’t come anymore.
“That’s something, anyway,” Bekah said.
It wasn’t anything, not really. It was nothing. My lie was cold comfort at best. But I left Bekah with it because it was all she had left. And I needed her thinking and functional.
“And Daniel’s still alive, somewhere.”
“And so is Richter.”
“I’ll lock out his biometrics from accessing the War Room,” she said. “He won’t be able to get back in here.”
I made for the door, and it slid aside.
“Stacks!”
“Yeah?”
“Please be careful.”
I winked her way, hoping it gave her confidence. “Stay snug in here,” I said. “And can you get the lights back on? I can’t see a damned thing.”
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll—”
The door to the War Room closed behind me.
Time to beat the brush and scare out a snake wrangler named Richter.
Chapter 21
Kwazi Jabari • Aboard the Freedom’s Herald
“Three breaches now,” Monk Beecham said. “We should be about ready to—”
“Assault shuttle three: launch.”
Elinda Kisaan’s order was tinny and loud through Kwazi’s headset. The oversized platoon of twenty Soldiers, tightly packed aboard, raised another cheer. Kwazi’s palms were wet and cold, and when he glanced at Braxton, he found the thick man clearly irritated. Probably from hearing Kisaan’s voice give the launch order. This was supposed to be his show.
“I’m honored to be your wingman,” Beecham said. “Or battle buddy, or whatever we’re supposed to call ourselves.” The rest of their squad chuckled over comms. Most were green recruits, pressed into service like the luxury shuttle about to carry them into combat.
One trooper smiled over her shoulder at Kwazi, giving them both a thumbs-up. “It’s a big honor, protecting the face of the revolution!”
Kwazi worked to keep his face neutral.
“Snag your straps!” Braxton growled. “Launching in ten … nine … eight…!”
Everyone grabbed the nylon straps hanging from the hastily installed metal runners along the shuttle’s roof. The thrusters fired, and they lifted off. The starship’s bay doors parted, an infinity of starlight shining beyond.
“Here we go!” The excited pilot sounded downright giddy.
The shuttle swung quickly around the Herald ’s port quarter. A wing of ten Rabh mining shuttles flew ahead of them, bait for the station’s point defense cannons. Ten kamikaze pilots on ten suicide missions.
“I feel sorry for those guys,” Beecham said.
“Don’t,” the woman ahead of them replied, her tone corrective but reverent. “They’re martyrs for Cassandra. We’ll reap what they sow here today.” Over comms, the rest of the squad oo-rahed .
She’d sounded proud, but what struck Kwazi was her lack of empathy. There’d been no concern at all for the pilots’ sacrifice.
“Five seconds to PDC green zone,” the pilot said. “Five…”
The shuttle bucked, steering away from incoming fire. Two sacrificial craft erupted to starboard. Kwazi grabbed his strap with both hands. He could hear the blood pounding in his ears. Adrenaline made his senses sing—colors were crisper and smells were sharper, even in the vac-suit. He heard the rapid breathing of his comrades over the open channel and the shuttle’s engines straining to get them past the kill zone.
“We’re clear!” the pilot reported. Another cheer went up. It reminded Kwazi of sports fans watching their favorite team score a goal.
Rabh Regency Station loomed ahead. Three dark, sputtering patches of mangled metal stood out like massive bruises along its superstructure. The pilot powered back to control entry as the shuttle flew through the breach and into the station’s loading bay.
The doors parted before they’d even settled on the deck. Braxton was the first out, his step steady as he adapted to the station’s gravity. Beecham and Kwazi were the last to exit per protocol. The assault squad broke in two, each team with its own mission.
“Get that barrier up!” Braxton ordered Alpha Team, pointing at the breach. Turning to the station’s interior and the second team, he said, “Don’t open that door until it is.”
The bay was tall and expansive. Autoloaders were maglocked along one wall. The shuttle that had opened the breach in the station’s hull was a mangled mass against the bay’s interior wall. No one would be coming out of there.
Alpha Team worked to erect a hermetic barricade over the shuttle-sized hole in the station they’d just passed through. If the breach wasn’t sealed, the minute Bravo Team cracked open the bulkhead door to the interior, they’d all be blown into space.
After a few moments of cursing effort, Alpha’s sergeant reported in. “Barrier in place. Seal nominal.”
“Open that door!” Braxton shouted to Bravo Team.
A screeching like talons on metal filled their comms. Several troopers doubled over, gripping their helmets. Kwazi managed to keep his feet.
“They’re jamming comms!” someone shouted. But that didn’t make sense. If comms were jammed, Kwazi wouldn’t have heard the trooper announce that fact.
There was movement along the gantries above. The shadows became solid. Large shipping containers, just like the ones Kwazi had used to practice variable gravity maneuvers, began dropping to the deck. One crushed a trooper beneath its massive weight.
“Shoot those fuckers!” Braxton called over comms.
Their job done sealing the breach, Alpha Team moved toward the middle of the bay, rifles at the ready, as more containers hit the deck from above. No one fired.
“What the hell is wrong with you people?” Braxton demanded. “Shoot, shoot!”
Sporadic rifle fire cracked from Alpha’s weapons. Personnel in vac-suits leapt over the railings from the gantries above, dropping behind the containers for cover. One attacker went down. The screaming came again through their headsets, and Kwazi realized that’s exactly what it was—screaming . The high-pitched ululation of warriors challenging their enemy with bloody murder.
A man in a worn, orange vac-suit landed next to Kwazi. He carried a long-handled tool with a metal hook at one end. “Hirst!” he shouted, swiping at Kwazi, who just dodged away in time.
“Kwazi!”
Beecham sprinted forward, raising his rifle, and the attacker turned to meet him. Beecham fired twice, and two dark holes appeared in the man’s chest. He fell to the deck.
“You all right?” Beecham asked.
“Yeah,” Kwazi said, staring at the unmoving body. The man had been a miner. Kwazi recognized Valhalla Station’s red-eyed Jupiter patch on the arm of the vac-suit. Why were miners defending Rabh Regency Station?
“Hirst … Hirst … Hirst!”
The enemy had somehow hacked their comms channel, and a score of voices shouted their challenge. Kwazi could hear the rapid breathing of the untried troopers around him. The glamor squad, called to action.
“What is that?” he asked as the enemy got louder.
“Probably some goddamned Viking death chant,” Beecham said.
Alpha Team had reached Braxton, Kwazi, and the others, surrounding them like wagons attacked by Indians, facing outward toward the scattered shipping containers hiding the miners. A rifle appeared aroun
d a crate and fired, and one of the troopers went down.
“Attack, goddamn it!” Braxton shouted. “This is what you trained for!”
But the miners moved first. They appeared from cover on all sides, some armed with projectile weapons like the shooter had, but most holding tools from the colony on Callisto—tethering hooks, heavy chain-hoses for securing scoopships in the Jovian atmosphere, farming tools from hydroponics.
“Hirst! Hirst! Hirst!”
They came on quickly, drawing a noose of deadly intent around the SSR troopers.
“Open that goddamned door!” Braxton yelled at Bravo Team.
With a single, screaming shout of “Valhalla!” the miners charged.
A trooper pulled his trigger, and the flood of fire began. Vac-suits were no match for bullets, and the first rank of attackers went down. Kwazi brought his rifle up but couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. A miner moved against him, brandishing a heavy piece of plastisteel pipe over her head and shrieking the warrior’s cry. Then holes opened in her vac-suit, and she collapsed with a shriek.
“You need to pull that fucking trigger,” Beecham said. He shucked his empty magazine and loaded another.
Dismayed at their casualties, the miners fell back to their shipping crates.
“Engineering’s taken!” Braxton announced.
But there were no high-fives or oo-rahs as there had been earlier. Half of Alpha Team was dead or dying on the deck. Fearless of death, the miners were regrouping, preparing to charge again.
“Hirst! Hirst! Hirst!”
Kwazi heard in that cry a furious, unified purpose. The few of the enemy armed with rifles fired, and two more SSR troopers went down. One, then another of those still standing edged a foot backward toward the shuttle. They were here to shoot video with Kwazi as the star, not face an angry mob of Callistan defenders. He could see more troopers shifting their bodyweight backward.
Another wave of miners appeared along the gantries circling the bay’s second level, prepared to leap into the fight below.
“Fall back!” Kwazi heard himself saying. “Fall back to the shuttle!”
Several troopers from Alpha Team didn’t wait for a second order. They turned and fled, firing blindly behind them. A shot felled one of their own with friendly fire.
Braxton whirled on Kwazi, face full of rage. Before he could countermand the order to retreat, the bulkhead door disappeared into the wall. Atmosphere flooded the bay, and everyone in it staggered under the sudden pressure.
More miners poured through the open door. The first few died quickly at point-blank range, but bolstered by reinforcements from above, their comrades in the bay charged again. The few SSR recruits still standing their ground panicked, turning to follow those who’d already fled.
“Hold your ground!” Braxton cried. “Kill these bastards!”
This isn’t how it was supposed to be , Kwazi thought. They were losing and vastly outnumbered. The heavy fighting was supposed to be in Engineering and Rabh’s penthouse, not here at the photo-op site.
The bulkhead door continued hemorrhaging miners shouting for Valhalla, cursing with their battle cry of “Hirst! Hirst! Hirst!”
In the middle of the chaos, Braxton stood straight as a statue, his hand to the side of his helmet. It was almost comical, Kwazi thought, with all that death and disorder around him. Alpha Team fought its way toward the shuttle, while pressed by the sheer weight of the enemy coming from inside the station, Bravo Team fell back toward the middle of the bay, pumping bullets into miners assaulting from the station’s interior.
The tide of fighting had shifted away from Kwazi, and for a moment, he found his own eye of calm in the storm. Braxton faced him and hefted his rifle. Kwazi could still hear shouting. Another Soldier went down … miners were being shot and falling around him. But his vision tunneled to the black mouth of Braxton’s barrel pointed at him. Braxton set the rifle tight against his shoulder.
A shot and a blur, and Monk Beecham hit the deck hard at Kwazi’s feet. Stunned motionless for a moment, Kwazi dropped to his side on the deck, gathering the rough material of Beecham’s vac-suit in both hands.
“Rabh’s HQ has fallen!”
The ecstatic voice dominated the general comms channel, even drowning out the miners’ battle cry.
“The station is taken!”
Alpha Team’s survivors had almost reached the shuttle. But hearing the news, they’d stopped and turned back to the battle. The miners still standing ceased their advance. Their warrior’s cry faded.
“The station is taken!” someone shouted again.
Kwazi looked up to find Braxton still standing on his island of calm. Their eyes locked together, and the captain lowered his rifle.
Holding Braxton’s gaze, Kwazi keyed the medical channel on his mic. “Soldier Beecham needs emergency evac!”
After a moment’s unblinking hesitation, Braxton nodded and moved toward them.
Beecham reached up to grasp Kwazi’s hand. “A martyr for the cause,” he said, a bloody smile streaking his face.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Kwazi said. His brain was buzzing. His skin felt hot. Around him, miners were dropping their weapons.
Gasping, Beecham motioned, wanting his helmet removed. Kwazi unsnapped the locks of his own first and set it on the deck, then removed Beecham’s.
“You’re more important than me,” Beecham said. “You’re the promise of the revolution.”
I’m nothing , Kwazi thought. I’m just a Martian miner.
“He’s the Hero of Mars.”
Kwazi’s head snapped up to find Braxton standing over them, his rifle slung. Alpha Team’s remaining troopers began taking Rabh’s miners roughly into custody.
“Yeah,” Beecham said proudly. “I saved the Hero of Mars.”
Kwazi watched the light leave Monk Beecham’s eyes.
Behind him, Braxton sighed. “Poor bastard. If he just hadn’t gotten in the way.”
Kwazi stared at him from the corner of his eye. “If he just hadn’t gotten in the way … what?” He heard the challenge in his own voice. The steel in it.
Braxton held Kwazi’s gaze. “If he just hadn’t gotten in the way,” he said, nodding in the direction of the prisoners, “we’d have one less miner to guard. The one that was about to put one of those long hook-things into your spine. I guess you didn’t see him, huh?”
“No,” Kwazi said, his tone flat. “No, I didn’t see him.” If there’d been a miner about to skewer Kwazi and Beecham took the bullet meant to end that threat, why was Kwazi still alive? Beecham had been shot in front of Kwazi. Not behind him.
“Huh. Damnedest thing.” Braxton’s head turned sideways. “I don’t know what Beecham was thinking. Damned shame. He was a good man.”
• • •
“And what of Adriana Rabh?” Cassandra asked via subspace.
Braxton cleared his throat but didn’t speak. Kwazi eyed him from behind. That would become a new and necessary habit, he thought, still trying to make sense of what had happened during the battle. Braxton was undoubtedly waiting for Elinda Kisaan to answer Cassandra’s question. The victory was hers, after all. And so was the failure wrapped inside it.
“She’s avoided capture,” Kisaan said directly. She had courage, a core of confidence Braxton lacked for all his bulk and bluster. “We’re scouring the colony. Looking in every nook and cranny of the station.”
Cassandra’s silent, appraising glare spoke volumes. Not only had Adriana Rabh managed to effect her escape, but the willingness of the miners to sacrifice themselves on her behalf had shocked everyone, especially the raw recruits assigned to Kwazi’s glamor squad. The average citizen was expected to welcome Cassandra and the SSR—why were they fighting to the death for the old regime instead?
“She’s a sly one,” Kisaan said in a voice that sounded like it needed an excuse. “And Kwazi’s … cowardice…”
“I…” He wasn’t sure how to respond. Braxton turn
ed his head, regarding him with flinty eyes. “I’ve never fought in a battle before,” Kwazi said.
“That’s not true,” Braxton said. “You helped take this ship.”
“That was different.” The killing was less . The killing was at a distance. And I didn’t have to do any of it . “People were dying on both sides. I…”
“Yes?” Cassandra prompted with impatience.
“I didn’t see the point,” Kwazi finished.
Braxton grunted but said nothing.
“The point ,” Kisaan said, “was to liberate Callisto from the Rabh Faction’s oppression.”
Kwazi was silent. In his head, though: We liberated a lot of them with death, then.
“His battle buddy died in the firefight,” Braxton suggested. “Beecham was a friend.”
No, he wasn’t , Kwazi wanted to say. I hardly knew him. He annoyed the crap out of me .
The hole in his gut—the one first opened when he’d learned Amy and his mining family had died, then been ripped wider when he’d learned Telemachus had murdered them—that hole bled anew inside him now. He’d barely known Monk Beecham, it was true. Or more to the point, Monk Beecham had barely known him. And yet, he’d sacrificed himself to save Kwazi’s life.
“War is hell,” Kisaan said to the expression on his face.
“Don’t quote platitudes to me,” Kwazi replied without thinking. He heard the disrespect in his voice, the potential for violence. He wondered if Braxton would try to kill him again for saying it.
Try to kill him again ? Was that what had happened?
“You’re right,” Cassandra said quietly. “But war does require sacrifice. Our Soldiers, even the civilians we’re trying to free from the Company’s enslavement—every revolution has casualties, a price that must be paid for the greater good.”
The greater good , Kwazi thought. Maybe that’s what Helena Telemachus said to herself when she ordered the executions of Amy and Beren and Aika.
“Elinda, find someone you trust and leave them with a garrison to secure Valhalla Station,” Cassandra said. “They’re to maintain order and find Adriana Rabh. You, however, have a new mission.”