The Blue-Spangled Blue (The Path Book 1)

by David Bowles

  As he lurched into the hall, he realized the dead yaks’ legs were too long, or his too short: stumbling, he began to fire at the four men approaching from the outer end of the corridor. They returned fire, and he was spun around in midair as the blasts impacted the corpses he’d draped about him. He hit the floor facing the inner end and the three yaks running toward him soon fell beneath his fire. Concussion bursts slammed into the dead gunsel at his back, forcing splinters of bone from the corpse into his own skin.

  “Fuck this,” he muttered, rolling over with great effort and nailing the nearest yak, who was thrown backward toward his fellow soldiers.

  Brando wriggled out of his armor and sprinted toward the three dead little brothers, piling one atop another as a sort of barricade behind which he positioned himself prone. The other yaks ducked into rooms along the corridor.

  Shite, they’re going to come around behind me!

  He leapt to his feet, slung the rifle over his back, yanked a knife from the belt of one of the dead soldiers and began running toward the inner end of the corridor, where a lift could take him to level six. He skidded to a stop in front of it, just as the door chimed and hissed open. Two soldiers stood inside, one holding a pair of boots, the other with an EVA suit draped over his arm. They both opened their eyes in shock and reached for their weapons.

  Brando was on them like a raging oni at the same second, the knife in his hand ripping across their throats and through their hearts with deadly speed. Behind him came a shout, and a lazgat burst slammed into his right buttock, ripping off a good chunk of flesh and making him forget the other pains he felt. He fell back against the right side of the lift, punched the button for level six, and unslung his rifle, leaning forward to shoot at the yak who was about to barrel in. Then the door shut and the lift began to move up.

  The EVA suit was combat ready, which meant that it would absorb most lazgat and chrome fire, though not konk rifle blasts or nades. His one-handedness making the process unwieldy, he pulled on the suit and the gravity boots, tucking the excess legging into them and sealing them tight. He felt blood trickling rapidly from his semi-cauterized butt wound.

  I’d better get to the damn infirmary now.

  He looked around, but there was no helmet.

  Why the fuck did they want an EVA suit without a helmet?

  As the lift began to slow, he activated the boots and walked up the side of the lift, grabbing at the lighting fixtures so as not to bend too far backwards. Soon he was crouching on the ceiling of the metal-surfaced lift, the fingers of his only hand being burned by the heat from the ceiling light.

  Won’t be able to see me.

  The lift stopped. The door slid open, and a barrage of weapons fire ripped the two corpses and the back wall to shreds. When the brief but furious hail of energy blasts had stopped, Brando let go the ceiling with his hand and yanked his lazgat from its holster in a single motion, firing at the control panel as his body swung down, his boots still firmly stuck to the ceiling. The blood rush nearly made him pass out, but he stomped along the ceiling, out the stuck doors, and along the corridor, firing upside down at five sikaritos whose battle lust was hampered by Brando’s bizarre tactics.

  They recovered their wits after two of their number had fallen under Brando’s fire, and two of them opened fire on him with gats while the third remaining yak pulled a konk rifle from one of his dead comrades.

  Brando’s body swung back and forth in painful little hyperboles as the energy blasts were absorbed by the suit. His gat went dry and he tossed it, taking up the rifle instead and ripping one soldier’s legs out from under him, then decapitating another. A blow from the third yak’s rifle slammed into his left arm, sending him arcing backwards, knees bending as his back banged against the ceiling. A sharp pain followed by a numbing sensation warned him that his arm had been yanked from its socket and most likely broken in several places. The yak was really close, nearly beneath him now, and Brando slapped his rifle against the sensor that activated or deactivated his boots.

  In a twisting tumble, he fell down and outward, knocking the remaining soldier to the ground. They landed with Brando’s knees around the yak’s head, and in a violent, satisfying jerk of his hips, the ex-professor broke the man’s neck.

  For a moment, Brando just knelt in the hall, panting wildly, oblivious to everything in the universe but the hammering of his own adrenaline in his veins. Then his conscious mind became aware of the pain: everywhere, and extreme. Waves of darkness rolled over him and he retched, coughing up pinkish acid.

  Okay, now really need to get to the infirmary. Struggling to his feet, he stumbled down the corridor, which began to vibrate crazily under his feet. Platform’s under attack. Good, keep them busy, boyos.

  He soon came to the door of the medical station. It didn’t open upon his approach, so he blasted at the control panel with his rifle. It still wouldn’t open, so he blasted at the door itself till he’d ripped a sizable hole in it. Peering inside, he saw two civilian medical staffers huddling in a corner. No yaks in sight.

  “Yall want to open this door? I’m a squadman, and I need some medical assistance right fucking now.”

  CHAPTER 45

  Thirty minutes after the attack began, Konrau found himself nearly alone in the conference room, only a couple of people manning communications stations and keeping him up to date. The Maliyas was coming around the divide and would hopefully draw off the Pacifactor II, which, despite the lie that Nestor had been fed by that bastard Ben Wu, was in good enough condition to engage the Brotherhood battle transports while smaller CPCCAF shuttles pounded the platform. The station’s weapons, added gradually over the last decade, managed to keep the shuttles far enough away to do little damage.

  “Message from the Matõ, boss,” Chuy announced. “They just unholed and are at maximum decel.”

  “Let them know how things stand.”

  The large holographic display above the main terminal in the center of the room altered slightly to show the Matõ’s position relative to the conflict. Though the ship had defenestrated in-system thanks to the extensive data its frame had received on second-to-second changes in gravitational and magnetic fields, three hours would pass before it would be in range to have an effect on the battle.

  That was okay. Konrau was ravenous for destruction—he wanted the AF to keep pounding him, wanted the chance to blast them into oblivion. As long as the concussions rocked the platform, as long as his mind was ringing with the claxons of alarum, Konrau wouldn’t be able to see Jeini and Felipe, wouldn’t hear their muted voices in his mind telling him it was all for nothing, that he’d thrown their love away for meaningless, empty power.

  “You get through to my uncle yet?”

  Chuy shook his head. “Nah, boss. I’ll keep trying. Our tunnelers are still shot to shite, and this ancient wreck ain’t got much new tech to speak of. I might be able get the Maliyas to relay the signal through their own equipment.”

  Konrau nodded. So soon like I raise him, I’m striking now. Tell him to load up and ride the tunnel. Fuck it if the AF is stronger than our ships. The fuck I been blackmailing the heads and hording ships if I ain’t gonna use them? Even if we fail, give them a fucking fight. Rip Nereus and Jitsu to pieces, that’s what I’m gonna do. Ain’t never gonna forget me, fuckers.

  The kasike looked around him, searching. The last half hour had gone by in such a flurry of activity that he’d forgotten about his prisoner.

  “Chuy, chingaa maje, where are Bisko and Danyel? I sent those pendehoz to bring D’Angelo more than thirty minutes ago.”

  “I can’t raise them. Their percoms show they’re still in the hall outside the gaol block. Shite. I told Nestor to set up in the security station, boss, but he said you was gonna want a bigger space. Hang—let me patch into the surveillance cameras on that hall.”

  The image of Jitsu’s star system winked out and was replaced by a grainy view of several bloody cadavers.

  “What? You
mean nobody saw this?”

  “Boss, most of the boys are at the shuttle hangars and defensive stations.”

  “And the weapons discharge sensors?”

  Chuy simply shrugged. Konrau balled his hands into tight fists. Too much shite happening all at once, and my counselor compromised and returning home.

  “Where’s Brando?”

  Chuy keyed in the id code of the cuffs. “Says he’s in the infirmary.”

  “Send some little brothers down, armed heavy and ready to kap him if need be.”

  “I send some of the guys from out there? You got like two dozen watching this door.”

  “Yeah. Buzz them, let half go. I want that dekaman bastard, and I want him now.”

  Konrau heard movement outside the door as twelve soldiers tramped off toward the lifts.

  “Try calling the infirmary. Put an image up.”

  A low beep. The display switched to the infirmary. A young man’s face filled much of the image. It was a Neog nurse, one of several station staff that Santo had provided. On a table behind him lay an indistinct male figure, covered with a sheet.

  “Uh, medical assistant Sararegi here.”

  “Yall got a wounded man there?”

  “Uh, no. A dead one.”

  “Walk over to him and uncover his face. Chuy, pull in close.”

  As the man nervously approached the shrouded cadaver, the sound of concussion fire came from out in the hall. Konrau grabbed a nearby railing to steady himself. The image centered on the dead man’s face: a little brother named Luis Sainz.

  “Where’s D’Angelo, you Neog fuck?” Konrau screamed at the medical assistant. The weapons fire continued beyond the door.

  Quivering, the young man managed to gasp, “On his way to pay you and Koroma back for these atrocities, you damn yak.”

  “Yak? I look like I’m from Saturn, hoputa? Fuck! I should’ve killed all yall freaking Neogs the minute I stepped onto this platform! Chuy, call those soldiers back! Tell them that fucking cop, he disguised him as one of us!”

  With an ear-shattering boom, the door exploded inward and a little brother stepped in, a short one, heavily armed. Konrau’s eyes focused through the drifting haze of soot, dust and smoke: it was Brando, dressed in Brotherhood garb.

  “I told you I would put you down, Konrau.”

  Chuy and the other three brothers in the room leapt to their feet and palmed their weapons. At the same moment, there was a flash from the display, bright enough to blind everyone for a moment. As Konrau rubbed his eyes, he could have sworn he heard Jeini’s voice, whispering something he couldn’t make out.

  Brando shot from the hip, downing Chuy and Big Boy, and then leapt high into the air to land beside Paulino. The redheaded yak immediately let loose a barrage of kicks and blows, most of which Brando countered. Being one-handed and doped to the gills, not to mention pumped full of nanodocs that were in a constant struggle to maintain his vitals, interfered with D’Angelo’s abilities.

  He leapt free of Paulino, twisting to avoid the sizzling bulls that Mando, the other yak in the conference room, sent whizzing from the barrel of his chrome. One of the projectiles ripped through his thigh, but Brando was so hyped on painkillers and stimulants that he barely noticed.

  By Sopiya, I was lucky to find a Pathwalker nurse. Or Santo was stupid for leaving them here. Or he did it on purpose. Shite. Who cares?

  He jumped and bounced off one of the consoles that rimmed the circular room, firing as he spun through the air in the direction of the long-haired yak named Mando. By the time he impacted with his enemy, the man was already dead.

  Rolling, he leapt to his feet.

  “Boss!” yelled Paulino. “Boss, move! What’s wrong?”

  Konrau was standing still in the midst of the carnage. Brando turned to see just what had frozen the kasike to his place.

  Konrau couldn’t move. He couldn’t take his eyes off of what he was seeing on the display, over and over: him, as a young man, gun pointed at Bruno, who held Jeini. Him, firing a shot that wrenched the life from his only love. In a loop. Over and over.

  “No,” he whispered, stumbling backward and slumping to the floor against a console. “No.”

  The image froze, and Jeini turned her eyes on him. Her face filled the projection field, blood dribbling down the bridge of her nose. Her eyes teared up, and her lips formed a soundless word: why?

  Konrau, who hadn’t shed a tear since he was eighteen months old, could not stop the flood of heaving, gasping sobs that surged from the darkness in his heart to wrack his body much in the way the station itself was being pummeled by CPCCAF fire.

  “I’m SORRY!” he cried, a great, wrenching cry of despair and humiliation. He understood everything at once. All that he should have done and never had. The love he had squandered. The lives he’d destroyed. It was too much: his heart and mind began to crack.

  Brando faltered as the kasike collapsed to the deck, sobbing like a bereft parent. The face of Jeini Andrade turned to the squadman and spoke with Tenshi’s voice.

  “Kill him now, Brando. No hesitating.”

  D’Angelo lifted his konk rifle, hypnotized by the voice, yearning for what he’d lost, what’d been ripped from him.

  Paulino started to raise his own weapon, but the scan console beside him suddenly exploded, sending bits of shrapnel ripping through his flesh.

  “Now, Brando.”

  For a second, Konrau’s eyes met Brando’s, clear hazel reflecting sudden utter comprehension. Amazingly, he gave the slightest nod, as if granting D’Angelo permission, as if accepting that history would forever view him as a strange felo-de-se.

  Then Brando blew his head off.

  “Yes. Good.”

  Brando turned to face the image, now morphing into Tenshi’s hauntingly beautiful features.

  “Now, come, my love. Come to me.”

  “Fuck you, Santo. I don’t know how you’re doing this, but you can take your mind games and shove them up your arse.”

  Tenshi’s image laughed softly. “You don’t understand anything, Brando. But that’s okay. You want Santo? Come get him. He’s yours.”

  “Sick old man,” Brando muttered, turning the muzzle of the rifle on the terminal and blasting the image into showers of sparking phosphors. He stepped closer to Konrau’s cadaver, now slumped sideways, the spurting blood at its neck slowing to a trickle.

  Brando tried to feel something, relief, release, nausea, anger, anything.

  But there was nothing. Just—nothing.

  Hurrying out of the conference room, he was confronted by twelve soldiers dashing his way.

  When the enemy outnumbers you, Kyosu, become the enemy. He’s never gonna suspect that shite.

  Those had been the words of Bily Kim, a vicious fighting man who’d served on Alpha Squad for six months a few years back before moving on. Brando had taken the advice to heart in the infirmary, as the one nurse he hadn’t shot had set and fused his arm, sealed his wounds and injected him with drugs and nanodocs. He’d quickly gotten up, pulled the dead out of the hall, and donned the clothes of a brother. This had allowed him to walk right up into the midst of the soldiers guarding the control center and kill them all before they could react.

  Now their confreres were back, and he was shite out of luck.

  As they slowed to take in the carnage, he darted into one of the circular corridors that ringed the central axis of the platform. He’d been on the stations several times on missions, and knew several short cuts to the shuttle hangars. Shots whizzed by him as the yaks gave pursuit: he luckily was able to run much faster than they. The floor shook under a renewed and heavy attack by the CPCCAF.

  Keep at it, boyos.

  He turned outward at the access corridor, a wide hall specially designed for moving large, recently off-loaded crates into a series of storage rooms that lined it. At the end of the hall stood a good number of guards, and between them the shimmering glow of the force-field-protected entrance to the hanga
r.

  Just as they began firing, he twisted sideways into one of the storage rooms, hurtling up a stairway to its second level. From there he shot a ventilation grill to shrapnel and threw himself into the airshaft that led straight to the hangar. He slalomed along its slippery metal interior, propelled by momentum mainly, and slammed to a stop where the duct made a turn. To his right was a ventilation grill that, if he had calculated correctly, hung a couple of meters above the catwalk that traced a squarish U above the main hangar. He figured they’d be expecting him, and for a moment he thought of trying one of the auxiliary hangars above and below this one.

  No. I got to get off this platform now.

  Santo knew he was coming: Brando had lost the element of surprise.

  Taking a deep breath, he kicked the grating free and slid out into thin air. His eyes scanned the bay as several weapons fired at him. Crouching low and moving inward along the catwalk, he was dumbfounded: fifty-plus guards surrounding a large ship, a holing-capable Brotherhood junk.

  Konrau’s very own.

  Drawing himself erect and running, he took out the three guards up on the railing with him.

  Gravity seems weaker: my imagination?

  Shouts below, and heavy fire was aimed in his direction. No place to hide, fifty yaks shooting. Against twelve men, with an element of surprise, he could usually handle himself. But these odds were ridiculous. Time seemed to slow: a bull ripped through his shoulder, another grazed his cheek, and blasts ripped the metal walkway to unnavigable strips behind and before him.

  Nowhere to go. Then he heard music, and he saw the blue, falling like a funeral shroud across his eyes. The world receded.

  Nowhere but toward the jagen’s belly.

  Time for the Wende ra-Kobomaga.

  Time to dance, motherfuckers.

  Clambering atop the railing, Brando hurled himself toward the guards below, firing not at them, but at the hydrogen drive section of the junk, lazgat fire sending him into a spiral, projectiles slamming into his right foot and left arm.