by R Coots
He thought for a moment before entering the next set of commands. He’d interrupted Quinn and his wives before. But Syrus had only had to track Oona down in her quarters maybe . . . twice in the time he’d been on the Fleet.
Fuck it. Sitting here and worrying about what he’d find on the other end of the vid was for people with manners. He keyed in the code for his second’s vid comm and waited for someone to answer. He didn’t have to wait long. In a few seconds, the signal cleared, and he was treated to an up close and personal view of someone’s shirt. The person backed up slightly and he realized he’d gotten Quinn himself.
The second blinked once, and then his face settled into its usual impassive mask. Too fast for Syrus to read the expression Quinn had been wearing when he answered the call. “You need Oona, milord?” the man asked.
Syrus nodded. “You too.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, remembering too late that he couldn’t talk only to his command staff. “Take your time. I need Kizen for this.”
Quinn tipped his head in a sort of bow and paused the link. Syrus ground his teeth, called the bridge again and spoke before the aide could get a word in edgewise. “Get the Ataorl Banso on the line. I need Kizen patched in on my call to Quinn.”
The woman went stiff and opened her mouth.
“Don’t let him run you over. Tell him if he doesn’t answer his comms, I’m going to start the next Fleet maneuvers without him and he can go park on the sun if he wants.”
>><<
It didn’t take long for Kizen’s image to appear on the surface of the table. He was dripping wet, naked, and holding a towel in one hand. The scowl on his face would have done justice to an angry bear. Syrus cut off the complaint the other warlord was about to make by shifting in his seat and asking, “I take it you’ve got the solar plant locked down?”
Kizen growled something that might have been a yes. Syrus nodded and looked at the image of Quinn and Oona, standing one in front of the other before their own vid capture. If either of them minded dealing with Kizen straight out of a bath, they didn’t show it. Syrus swallowed a snort. Why would they? The Fleet’s ideas of modesty didn’t match the Imperials’.
“Glad to hear it,” he said to Kizen. “Head this way. Don’t want to give the people down planet too much time to get ready for us. In the meantime, I need you to send out any cloaked stat-sats we have.” He switched from the vid of Quinn’s quarters to Kizen’s. “All over the system.”
Kizen opened his mouth, but Quinn beat him to it. “If I may, my lord, it is too early in the campaign for full sweeps. We have the data from the initial sats, plus the records we’ve pulled from the Customs base and the one we just took. Surely that will be enough to carry us through without risking resources.”
From the look on her face, Oona agreed. Syrus shook his head and leaned back. “Kizen, your people find any other keys in this gate?” It was dangerous, giving the man so much power, implying he would know things Syrus’s own people didn’t. Oona’s face went from irritated scowl to full glower, but Quinn stayed quiet. He probably understood what Syrus was up to. Hopefully.
Kizen puffed his chest. “No.” He started drying his arms with the towel, as casually arrogant as if he were the one who’d called and he didn’t care if he’d gotten them out of bed. “They have gone over the logs again and taken another look at the code. There is the system we passed through to arrive, where you summoned me.” He sank enough scorn into the word to drop a ship out of orbit. “And there is the code for the other empty system, which we were about to enter when your summons came. There are no other keys.”
Syrus leaned forward and propped his arms on the edge of the table, lacing his fingers together in a loose fist. “So. Once we take this system, where do we go?”
Oona and Kizen stopped for a moment. Quinn lifted his chin slightly and gave Syrus a look through the vid. Syrus let the corner of his mouth curl. Quinn saw it. The other two were so focused on the next battle, they weren’t looking any further than the Seeding of the whole system.
“There will be another Barbican.” Kizen stopped toweling himself off and stood, wrapping the fabric around his fists. “We just haven’t made it far enough into the system yet. Sometimes these outFleet fools stick the fucking things behind a moon and think they’re clever.”
“True.” Syrus looked at Oona’s image on the comm screen.
She sighed. “None of the preliminary scans show any indication of another Barbican in the system.” She knew what it meant. Now that he had her on board, Syrus could concentrate on talking Kizen around.
“Haven’t found it yet doesn’t mean it’s not there,” Syrus said. “Fleet got its masking tech from Imperial colonies. No reason they wouldn’t still be using it.” He knew for a fact that the military still used the masking tech. Before he’d left Imperial space nearly six years ago, there’d been a very memorable clash between a Kizarard house and a trade guild that ended with both parties nearly flattened by the Imperial military when it restored order. “There are ways to hide the power draw on the solar collectors, too. Easiest is to set up dedicated collector panels instead of shipping in power cells.”
Oona nodded and bent over the console that probably bracketed her comm screen. Quinn squeezed her shoulder once, then turned away to work on something else. Syrus would lay money on his sending orders to the men who were working on removing hard drives from the base they’d just finished taking. No captives this time. Just blood. Syrus had left them to the clean up so he could have the conversation with Jossa without an audience. He should have talked to her earlier. Before they launched this latest offensive on the station closest to the occupied planet.
You shouldn’t have given yourself away so easily, a voice whispered in his head. You let her goad you without realizing what she was doing, and you gave her too many weapons. Did you think she wouldn’t realize what you are by birth? And then you made it worse by staying away instead of owning it and showing her what you are now.
Syrus ignored the voice. Regret was too little too late. All he could do was fix the lack of information for the Fleet as fast as he could, before his suspicions turned into reality and they all went down in a blaze of glory.
He looked away from Quinn and Oona’s screen to meet Kizen’s eyes through the vid. “Once you send out your sats, head this way. Soon as you get here, drop into orbit. I’ll wait till you’re on this side of the sun and head down planet.
“Not very many people living on the surface of this thing. Not hab shields either. I’ll take my people deep and fast into the cave systems, then drive them up to meet you. Catch them on the surface.” Syrus took a breath and decided to be grateful that emotion couldn’t transfer itself over a data connection. “Oona’s going to mark the smaller landing fields and space ports. Leave them alone. Take the big ones instead.”
Kizen glowered as Syrus gave his instructions. Once or twice he opened his mouth, probably to point out the obvious problems of having one force land before the other was ready to lock down the surface.
When Syrus finished talking, he exploded. “You’re ruining everything,” the man growled. “There are more holes in this rock than a Breeder ship at full capacity. You know how many of these Imperial fucks are going to escape if we don’t flatten those landing fields? We need to make it impossible to fly anything larger than a gnat down there.”
He shifted to look at a different part of his vid screen. Probably the section with Quinn and Oona’s feed. “Is this the sort of Campaign you let your warlord run?” he snapped at Quinn. “Are you that weak, that you let a man who obviously has no idea how to run a Campaign rule our people?”
Syrus leaned back and crossed his arms. “You’re right,” he said. “There’s a fuck ton of caves on this rock. No way could we block all of them.”
“You want to see where the escapees are going,” Oona said, realization painted all over her face.
“What do you mean, escapees?”
Syrus nodded, i
gnoring Kizen. “Tag them, carefully. Especially the smaller ships. Older military models get sold off to traders sometimes. But the military uses them for secret work too. There’s going to be a military presence down planet. The base we just took wasn’t for trade.” He exchanged looks with Quinn over Oona’s shoulder while she worked and Kizen growled.
Quinn nodded. He understood. Syrus let himself smile. “Let me know when the sats are out,” he told Oona.
He looked back to Kizen’s image. The other warlord growled low under his breath and crossed his arms. “Once this Campaign is over, we will have a reckoning, you and I.”
And wouldn’t that be a thing. Syrus shrugged and leaned in closer. “There is something wrong with this system. Something more than too much resistance too fast. We should have been able to Seed this base and move on. Did you have difficulties with the solar plant?”
Kizen frowned. “Whole sections separated by airlocks. More than usual for a solar plant. The outFleet staff fled to the central area and held there.” He lifted one shoulder. “But we have taken systems full of paranoid people before. This is not the first time.”
Syrus nodded. “Most of the people in this base were military. Not just separate airlocks here. They divided the base into wedges. Separate life support systems in each. Very few children. Almost no women. None taken.” He sat back. “The military emptied two systems linked to the Barb we came through.” Better to avoid telling Kizen how Syrus knew that. “Tell me you’d look at this system on your own and not think something is wrong.”
Kizen’s whole body tightened. His shoulders came up and the veins on his forehead and neck bulged. Syrus waited. He could do that, millions of miles away and not in any danger of getting fried by the man’s emotions. Did he realize how much his body gave him away? Syrus wondered if Kizen’s second was as unflappable as Quinn or if the warlord drove his underlings to distraction. How fast did he run through them anyway? They couldn’t have a high survival rate, given the man’s temper.
Of course, Syrus went through his underlings fairly quickly himself.
Finally, when his shoulders were nearly up around his ears, Kizen growled and flung his hands in the air. “Very well, Lord Turan,” he said. “We will take the larger space ports and send out our cloaked sats. But the thank-gift you bring me had better make it worth my while.”
Syrus waited a full ten count after Kizen’s image vanished from the table to look back at Quinn and Oona’s comm link. Quinn was nowhere in sight. Oona had evidently gone about her business of sending orders and muted the comms. She looked up when he pinged the alert light on her panel. “Milord?”
Syrus crossed his arms. “Thank-gift?”
Something twitched near the woman’s eye. Her mouth twisted.
“Oona,” Syrus said carefully. He never knew when this woman was going to be helpful and when she was going to roadblock him. “What. The fuck. Did he mean by a thank-gift?”
Oona drew herself up straight and focused on some point over the cam. “Milord, a thank-gift is customary when a member of the Fleet has given aid to another member of equal rank. It is commensurate with the degree of assistance given to the one who could not properly perform his duties, and a way to acknowledge that while he may have been temporarily weak, he is not without other resources and is capable of holding his position.”
Syrus’s translator had to fill in the blanks on some of that, giving him the words milliseconds after they came over the comm. Syrus wondered if Kizen planned that little comment, or if he’d really thrown it out as an offhand remark.
Was the man that subtle? Was he even able to do anything but crash around like a rampaging bull?
Bastard. Now Syrus was going to have to watch his back for something besides a physical knife. He fucking hated politics.
“Milord?”
Syrus spoke without looking at her. “And if I don’t give him . . . something?”
No answer. He turned his head to look at her. “Oona.”
That twitch next to her eye again. She must really hate having to explain Fleet custom. Or maybe she hated having to do her husband’s job of wrangling her warlord. “Milord, he could have basis to take your Helm. If you are unworthy of it.”
Well, that answered the question of whether the fucker was able to do “subtle.” Syrus snarled. He knew what Kizen wanted. The women. And he wouldn’t wait long to demand his “gift” either. Probably in public, so all their soldiers could see the warlord of the Edde Belo fall flat on his face.
“That will be all, Oona,” he told her. “Link the reports to me when you have them.”
She murmured something and the light of the comm screen cut out. Syrus sat back and stared at the blank screens in front of him. Just how badly did he want to keep the Helm on his head?
> Chapter Fifteen
Jossa
It is possible to design a single medunit to cure all ills. However, the thing would have to be the size of a small house just to hold all the supplies needed. This is why even the poorest town has at least one unit for trauma and another for long-term care.
-“Basic Operations of Freestanding Medical Units” Professor Ipkus, New Hopks College of Medicine
Jossa’s first clue as to her impending eviction came when Iira entered the room and started pulling needles out of her patient’s skin. By the time Jossa’s brain caught up with what was happening, the medic had moved on from the veins in the arms and was working on the legs instead.
“What?” Jossa tried to take her feet away, but the medic wrapped one hand around her ankle and held her in place. Done with that foot, she moved on to the other, catching it before Jossa had a chance to yank it out of the way.
“What are you doing?”
“Bath,” the woman said. “You smell. Clothes. Exercise.” She yanked another lead and Jossa couldn’t help the reflexive jerk of her foot. Iira hauled it back and reached for the next lead.
Jossa wanted to protest, but she couldn’t find a single logical argument to use against things like fresh clothes and a bath. What she could use, though, was her imagination. The minute she left this room, she’d be a laser-marked target for the warlord. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t make herself reconcile with that reality.
So she shook her head and pulled the blanket up around her bare shoulders as she tried to regain possession of her foot. “I’m ok here. Really. Besides, I can’t leave Delfi alone.”
“No choice,” Iira snapped, yanking the last of the leads a little harder than she needed to. Jossa yelped and jumped. Then yelped again as the woman started shoving her legs apart. “Stop fighting,” the woman snapped, taking each ankle and forcing it over the edge of the bed. “You want to piss on your own?”
It was so like what Goris might have said that Jossa quit struggling long enough for the woman to flip back the blanket, reach up between Jossa’s legs, and start pulling out the catheter they’d fitted her with. Hissing in pain, Jossa clamped her legs around the table to keep from closing them and getting slapped again. Iira had a point. Two, she realized. She might not be an atrophied stick anymore, but she was still weak as a babe. Staying here wouldn’t fix that.
She looked over at Delfi, still sleeping the sleep of the coma induced. Her skin looked better than it had. And her face wasn’t as hollow as before.
Leaving her sousi in this room was a very bad idea. What if she woke up and found herself alone? What if the warlord came back and Jossa wasn’t there to distract him? What would he do to Del? Just because he hadn’t taken his rights that Jossa knew of, didn’t mean he hadn’t while they were both asleep.
She could have slapped herself. The maruste, of course. Idiot girl. He hadn’t touched her for touching’s sake until he’d taken care of the light that could give him away.
Besides—she winced again as Iira did something with the catheter—she’d met any number of men with odd fetishes. So far, a man who would climb on top of an unconscious woman poked full of wires and tubes ha
dn’t made the list.
That decided her. Mostly. “I want to sleep in here.”
Iira looked up from what she was doing with the cath tube and the urine bag. Jossa tried to look serious. Like she knew she couldn’t be argued with. “At night. When the warlord isn’t . . .” She waved a hand, not sure what they called it among the Svis Konanuog. “I want to sleep in here with her.”
After a long moment, the woman nodded. “For now. When milord returns, he’ll decide. Come.” She set the catheter and urine bag and other paraphernalia somewhere out of sight and held out her hand. “Time to go.”
Lacking a choice, Jossa allowed herself to be helped off the table. She lost her sheet and blanket in the process, but the promise of a bath was growing too strong to ignore. Iira let her hobble to the door by herself, not even standing ready to catch her. Well, that was in keeping with what she knew of the Kuchen.
“Will she be—” Jossa turned to take a last look at Delfi. And saw it. “Ancestor’s Balls,” she breathed as she staggered and caught herself against the wall. “Why didn’t you just use that? Why don’t you just use that? It would wake her up! She could be well by now! We both could!”
Tucked under the beds, which she could see weren’t beds at all now that she wasn’t lying on one, were things that looked remarkably like the hoods of medunits. The kind for healing a person all at once. The kind that left long recoveries a thing of Border worlds and the hospitals of the poor.
Iira’s sigh was that of a woman who’d been burdened with a very stupid person to watch over. “Come,” she said, and tried to take Jossa by the elbow. Frustration, muted and faint, threaded its way up Jossa’s arm.
Jossa planted her feet as best she could. “No. Not until you tell me if I’m right and you could have gotten rid of the cryo sickness the first day.”
Iira’s hand clamped down. Jossa glared at her. The woman could move her by main force. They both knew it. But there would be injuries involved. Only Iira knew what the warlord would say about his new toy being damaged. If they wouldn’t use the medunit for cryo sickness, who said they would use it for a twisted or broken arm?