The Blue-Spangled Blue (The Path Book 1)

by David Bowles

  “Okay, soldiers, you know what I want,” rumbled the captain. “Get it to me as fast as you can.” He turned to face Ben, who stood from the stool. “You stay here. I might need you. You think Santo will communicate anymore with Beserra?”

  “No. Konrau would never believe anything he says anyway.”

  “All right, then. Shan, put a com through to Archon Koroma, on the main terminal.”

  After the com had been routed through various offices, secretaries and ministers, Santo Koroma’s head oozed up from the surface of the large central terminal.

  “Yes?”

  “Bud Mukerji here, captain of the Pacifactor II. I’ll get right to the point: call off the demolition crews from the CPCC building and put an immediate end to the forced evacuation of CPCC citizens from Station City, named by a treaty between your world and the Consortium as governed by CPCC law. Do this now, and there can be a diplomatic end to this situation. If you don’t comply, I’ll send troops to occupy Station City and the CPCC building. I’ll order them to open fire on any hostile Jitsuan armed security force attempting to stop them from carrying that directive out.”

  Santo’s lips pursed slightly, and rather than answering, he directed his gaze at Ben, who was standing just to the left and a little behind the captain.

  “Captain Wu. No queue? Heh. I see you escaped and are spreading the lies you and your mafia friends concocted. Very good.” His eyes closed momentarily and then refocused on Mukerji. “There are syndicate ships in orbit above my planet. They’ve got control of one of my stations. And you, Bud, expect me to trust off-worlders who, for all I know, may in reality be Brotherhood agents? Will not happen. Do what you think you need to, Bud. You’ll just reinforce what I have always told my people: the CPCC can’t be trusted. Koroma out.”

  The archon’s image slithered back into the darkness of the com terminal’s top. Some indistinct voice on the far side of the center muttered, “Bastard.”

  “Okay, boys and girls, this is it. Send a message to the Agamemnon and the Santa Anna. Let them know what they’ve got waiting for them here in-system. The shuttles loaded up?”

  “Affirmative,” came the reply.

  “Well, then, let’s go wipe that stupid grin off the Archon’s face. Send three shuttles to the surface to provide back-up to the constabulary forces there. I need to talk to the squadron leaders on the other five. They got some yaks to roast.”

  Bud turned to Ben, a smile unexpectedly crinkling the mottled shades of dark brown in his complexion. “This might turn out to be fun. We’re worn out from observing heretic Kunti, but a soldier’s never too tired to fry yegster, what.”

  CHAPTER 44

  Nestor Bos stood before Konrau, and the kasike was struck by how old his counselor looked, despite only being seventy.

  Brothers age faster.

  In Nestor, the age was compounded by emaciated thinness and an almost delicate pallor of illness, though the man was healthy and strong.

  The discovery of Nestor’s collusion made him livid with rage, but Konrau realized he didn’t want to kill the old man. Nestor was no father figure, but he had become, though the kasike would never admit this to anyone, a surrogate mother. Like an spinster aunt who is annoying but tolerated.

  Nestor had devised a plan, and it had backfired. However, he’d not intended Felipe’s death, so Konrau decided that punishment would be sufficient. The deaths of the people actually behind Felipe’s murder would be carried out soon enough.

  “Never,” he muttered low, leaning his head close to that of the counselor, “ever do shite behind my back again. I decide to wait to tell you something, that’s my decision. You and me make a plan and it don’t work, that’s tough shite for us both. But you go around hiring fuckers with other agendas and put them on a crew of mine, you give the enemy all the ammunition they need. I’m not going just forget this, vieho. You betrayed my confidence, and Santo fucked me.”

  Nestor’s eyes dropped. He was visibly shaking.

  Fear? Or anger? After all, I was lying to his ancient arse, too. But it was the honorable thing. Had to protect the Brotherhood. And I was right to. He was a leak. My right hand was the weak spot in my organization.

  “I ain’t gonna kill you, Nestor. I’m just—fuck—I’m just in shock that you would go sneaking around—huh?” Nestor had muttered something. “What?”

  “I was trying to protect you,” Nestor said, and Konrau noticed a hint of liquid in his yellowing eyes.

  Oh, shite. This I don’t want to see. If he goes all fem on me, I’ll gat his wrinkled arse and fuck L’onda.

  “Protect me? I don’t need protection. You never believed in me, ain’t it? Couldn’t trust me this time, eh? Was no problem back when you wanted Toni taken out, though, right? No, don’t say shite. Go pack, Nestor. I need you to get back to the nebula, you hear me? Contact my uncle, tell him the plan’s a go. We need a courier. Our tunnelers are bollixed from the imrizabu. Beides, I need you away from me right now, because I’m bloody pissed and once this shite gets started, I don’t know if I might change my mind. Felipe’s dead and it’ll take a lot of blood to pay that debt. Get back to Beta Pictoris, and run things till I’m done, got it?”

  Nestor nodded numbly. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t bleeding thank me: bete a la chingaa!”

  Clearly relieved to be alive, Nestor ducked out of Konrau’s temporary office in the rec room. Konrau waited a few minutes, then summoned a couple of little brothers to accompany him to the gaol block.

  Once there, he had his men shut off the energy mesh. Brando was sitting on the floor, hands pulled tightly behind his back by the cuffs, head drooping upon his chest.

  Overcome by rage, Konrau yanked a lazgat from the holster of a nearby soldier, dialed it to its lowest setting, and began shooting the squadman. Brando’s body twitched with every jolt of energy, falling sideways and flopping on the floor like a fish even after he’d lost consciousness.

  “Water,” Konrau said as he eased his finger off the trigger mechanism.

  “Huh?” A little brother stared at him, uncomprehendingly.

  “A bucket of water, now.”

  The man rushed out to the ban down the hall. In a moment he was back with a cubic container filled with cold water.

  “Throw it on that bastard.”

  The water hit D’Angelo, reviving him at the same instant that Konrau burst into the cell, clenching both hands around the ex-professor’s bull neck and yanking him onto the slab.

  “Strong yak, aren’t you?” Brando muttered weakly. Beserra smashed his fist into the squadman’s face, once, twice.

  “You fucking dared, cop, to walk onto my station and bleeding threaten me? You’re just now figuring out how strong I am? Who the fuck you do think you are?”

  “I’m the man whose family you and Santo sent that maniac Felipe to kill! What’s with this fake outrage of yours? Shouldn’t you be angry with yourself for getting your little brother involved in this shite?”

  Again Konrau felt himself paralyzed by Brando’s uncanny insight. The squadman lay before him, bloodied, muscles still spasming from the shocks he’d been given, yet from between split lips he was able to rasp words that did more damage to Beserra than any blow.

  Guilt for the deaths of those he’d loved settled heavily upon his mind, and his eye began to throb.

  “What are you doing here, anyway, Beserra? What’s the point of all this death? Why expand your power if it means losing your kin? Explain it to me, because it seems real frigging stupid.”

  Konrau spat in his face.

  “Fuck you. It’s to preserve the group, not that you’d ever understand that, coming from Earth like you do, everyone separated out, no sense of community, faux this, faux that, no real jobs, no real community, uplinked half the day, no responsibility except the contracts you watermark. The Brotherhood, it’s a family. You don’t like what do we do, but who are you to judge? We take care of our own, give them a life, but the Brotherhood mu
st come first. Anybody fucks with it, even one our own, we eliminate them. If that means stretching our arms out and crushing the CPCC, the AF, and their bloody aetherocracy, that’s what we’ll do. Neogs here on Jitsu are the same way: it’s a community, and it has to be preserved at all costs. That means rounding up offworlders, then that’s what the true Jitsu guys will do. Means killing some pilgrims, that’s what’ll happen. Means knocking off Reformer cunts like you who ain’t looking out for the good of the community, then they got to go.”

  “But who decides what’s good for the community, you bastard?” Brando spat. “The guys in control? And why we should believe them when they say it’s good? Because they tell us to? Bollocks, Beserra. Just a couple of frigging dictators sapping yall’s people dry, that’s all you and Santo are. Want to justify the shite yall do with words like honor and brotherhood and community, go ahead. Lie to yourself. Want to explain away killing my wife by invoking the common good, that’s your own mental masturbation. But don’t expect me to nod my head in agreement, you piece of shite. You’re a fucking murderous corridor rat, and like I said before, I’m going put you down.”

  Konrau reached out, grabbed Brando’s right ear and slammed his head repeatedly against the back wall of the cell. “How, motherfucker? HOW?”

  Brando jerked free of Konrau’s grip, rolled back on his shoulders and pounded the soles of his manacled feet into the kasike’s chest. As Konrau went sprawling toward the entrance to the cell, Brando gained his feet and crouched to spring. The three soldiers outside the cell rushed in and began pummeling him with their fists and the butts of their rifles. Several blows to his face knocked out his top front teeth, which he spit at the guards as they beat him to the ground. Crunching sounds told of ribs breaking, and Konrau reacted at last.

  “Stop! Parelen!”

  The guards backed out of the cell, and Brando regarded the kasike through blood-curtained eyes, his body already mottled purple, black and red from the blows.

  “Why?” Konrau asked, suddenly calm despite the immense pain in his chest. “You’re suicidal, or what? I mean, I know your family’s dead, but why this? Why look for death like this?”

  “Because,” Brando managed to growl, “my system, the system of real human beings, requires that justice be done. You’re like a foreign object that must be expelled.”

  “So it ain’t revenge, eh? Then you’re just fighting to preserve the same social system that created me, cop.”

  “Bollocks. You created yourself, Konrau. You made the decisions, did the acts, talked the talk. Don’t fucking try to pin that responsibility on anyone else. You betrayed the best in you.” He paused a moment. “You did it when you killed Jeini.”

  Konrau’s face hardened and twisted. “Iho de tu puta maje… Say that again so I can kill you right now.”

  “One good thing in your life, and you destroyed her. How sad, for real. No wonder my wife’s life meant shite to you.”

  Thinking how he can know all this, Konrau dialed the lazgat’s setting to maximum and extended his shooting arm toward the battered figure. “Your life means shite, too.”

  Strident claxons went off, and Konrau whirled to face his men.

  “Ke karaho?”

  He strode over to the control console and flicked a com channel open.

  “Nestor? What the hell is going on?”

  A slightly fuzzy voice responded. “This is Chuy, boss. Nestor just left the main hangar, heading out like you ordered. We got CPCCAF shuttles approaching, three of them. They’re broadcasting a demand: they want you to surrender.”

  “Nestor said that they—ah. Shite. I’ll be right up.”

  Never trust that fucking hoto again, Baby Fidensio damn him forever.

  Any guilt he’d felt at keeping information from Nestor was obliterated by waves of cold anger. Turning to assess the situation, Konrau decided on a course of action.

  “I need yall two,” he pointed at the men who’d accompanied him, “to head to shuttle hangars A and B in a minute. I’ll send down a couple guys to escort this myerda. When they get here, yall get moving.”

  With a final hateful glance at Brando, he strode from the room to begin a war that had lost all purpose except release.

  Brando watched the yak boss leave through a haze of agony. One of the guards entered the cell again, booted D’Angelo a few more times in his cracked and broken ribs, and then hoisted him back onto the slab, face-down. Brando concentrated on pushing his consciousness away from the pain and focusing on his plans.

  The arrival of the CPCCAF was good news. It would keep the yaks occupied and leave the halls of the platform clear of most surveillance. Of course, there was the little problem of the cuffs and the manacles, which even now were being squeezed further together so he’d only be allowed slow, shuffling steps.

  A hum penetrated the dark of his closed eyes: the energy mesh had been reactivated. He drifted in and out of consciousness and a strange fugue state. He was aware of a churning mass of discordant inner voices, regarding and discarding alternatives in a frenzied attempt to find a way to escape and kill the two men he needed to get past.

  Soon he heard voices outside his head, and understood that the two yaks were leaving, their replacements having arrived. Brando hoped they were less competent. He needed every edge. Slowly he opened his eyes.

  He still lay on his stomach upon the plascrete slab, hands pulled upwards behind his back in the most uncomfortable position due to the cuffs. Every centimeter of his body throbbed and ached, at least those parts that hadn’t gone nearly numb from the torture and beatings. He knew the moment was upon him when through the energy bars of his cell he watched the two new yaks, chromes holstered at their sides, rifles in hand, stride into the room. They mumbled something, and the guard who’d been in charge of Brando until now ambled over to the console that stood at the right of Brando’s cell, and, leaning over its back, his face toward the wall, shut off the bars.

  What an idiot. Brando imperceptibly shook his head. Turn his back on me like that. Then he realized: he represented no threat to these three at all.

  “Lebantate kulero.”

  “Help me up, then. I can’t do it alone.”

  “Fuck you. Up, now, or it’s over right here.”

  Brando managed to roll off the slab, not looking the least bit menacing on his knees in the middle of the cell. Separating his legs as far as the manacles would allow and thrusting his knees against each other, he surged upwards to a standing position.

  “Sal pa hwera.”

  He stepped out as ordered, but slowly. If there was any chance, it had to be this instant. But nothing occurred to him. Darkness swirling. No music. The guard turned as Brando cleared the cell’s entry, leaned over the back of the console, and reactivated the energy mesh.

  The molten stool leapt into Brando’s mind. The yak’s gat in full view. His back turned. The other gunsels unconcerned. One scratching his balls.

  No. Fucking. Way. I can’t.

  Sure you can, Tenshi’s simran reassured him. You’ve endured worse.

  Then he heard the children of Kinguyama, chanting years ago, when he’d first stood before the old teyopan at Tenshi’s side.

  Amo inyani, iruju tani.

  It isn’t reality, it’s just a mirage.

  And his spark’s voice echoed in his memory as well.

  There’s a reason for the pain. Always remember. Your love matters.

  Taking a deep breath, Brando stepped back.

  A shower of sparks erupted as the mesh split the left cuff and reduced Brando’s left hand to a bloody stump.

  A wave of horrible agony began to crest, but he didn’t wait for it to hit. Four hops forward, swinging his free and only hand around, seizing the guard’s lazgat, lifting to fire once, twice, thrice, three yaks on the floor with bubbling brains in less than five seconds, a little laugh, then the wave hit.

  Brando fell to his knees, vomiting on top of the sizzling gray matter as blood continued to spur
t almost comically from his stump. Lowering the chrome’s setting amid the swirling darkness, he aimed carefully as possible and cauterized the artery.

  A tube, a tube, my left ball for a tube of moku.

  He began giggling, which set him to retching. Leaning on the console, he slowly stood. When the darkness sought to shut his eyes, he popped his temple with the butt of the chrome. Reset and a single shot freed his feet. The anklets actually looked fashionable, he reflected morbidly before the pain wrenched his nervous system.

  Let the blue fall, he begged. Let it fall.

  The infirmary, Brando. Level six, remember?

  Grimacing, he thought of the probable yaks in the hall, perhaps drawn to the gaol block by the muffled blasts. A glance at the monitor in the corner across from the console confirmed it: a half-dozen men made their stealthy way down the hall.

  I got no armor. Defenseless. These yaks just got jumpsuits.

  He hobbled around the control console and examined the storage compartment beneath it. There were odds and ends, wires and wrappings, and a small molecular bonder for sealing and splicing. He took it up in his one hand and regarded the yaks on the floor. He yanked a belt off of one, buckled it around his waist and holstered the weapon and the bonder. Grunting softly, he dragged one of the yaks on top of another and used the bonder to meld their arms together, creating a gruesome sort of fleshly armor.

  Planning to stick your nose in those brains?

  “No way.”

  He drew the lazgat and seared their heads off, leaving only a cauterized gap upon their shoulders. The effort of concentrating helped keep the pain at bay, but he needed to get to the infirmary fast, or the black would overtake him

  “This is going to suck.”

  But against the well-prepared yak soldiers, his only chance was surprise. Insanity. Becoming a dervish.

  He awkwardly hefted the flesh-armor into the air and over his head, thankful for the station’s low gravity. Trying not to think too much about the cold, dirty skin pressing against his, he palmed one of the pulse rifles and slammed its butt against the door release.