by Marko Kloos
It took a moment for Bandhari to respond, and when he did, she could practically hear his teeth grind.
“Affirmative, Color Sergeant.”
Go ahead and hate me for that, Idina thought. At least you’ll be alive to hate.
Dahl steered the gyrofoil around a building corner and descended onto the intersection beyond. When they were just a few meters above the ground, the craft lurched again and dropped forward and to the right. Dahl tried to correct the veer, but they were too low, and the remaining engines of the gyrofoil didn’t have the power left to pull them out of the drop. They hit the ground at an angle with a resounding crash. Idina lost sight of the world outside as the automated crash system filled the cabin with flame-retardant kinetic foam. She felt the craft skid across the road surface and spin to a grinding stop.
“Are you all right?” Dahl asked. Her voice sounded muffled through the layer of hardened foam that now separated them.
“As far as I can tell,” Idina replied. “You?”
“The same. Pull the red lever above your door. We need to get out of here.”
Idina looked for the lever, which was partially covered in dried foam. She grabbed it and yanked it down, and the door on her side of the gyrofoil fell out of its frame, accompanied by the dull cracks of emergency charges. She released her seat harness and hoisted herself out of the craft while Dahl did the same on the other side. They had come to rest with the right side of the gyrofoil’s nose against a building. Idina took cover between the vehicle and the nearest wall and drew her sidearm from its holster. The tactical screen projection on her helmet visor kept resetting itself, so she shut off her data monocle and opened her helmet. The warm night air smelled like dust and artillery propellant.
They did it again, she thought. Binary explosives. They were waiting for us all along. The whole thing was a setup from the start.
Dahl came around the back of the gyrofoil, gun in hand. She looked a little dazed behind the clear shield of her helmet visor. Idina pulled her behind cover and scanned the street beyond the gyrofoil for threats. If the enemy—whoever they were—had camouflaged riflemen or rail guns in position, the light armor on the craft would be little protection. Any moment, Idina expected to hear the threat detector in her armor alerting her to the spike in EM radiation generated by a charging rail gun, hidden on a rooftop or behind a distant storefront, ready to tear her platoon to pieces.
The street remained quiet and empty. The only movement in her field of vision was the holographic advertising on a storefront in the distance.
“My tactical screen is out,” she said on the platoon channel. “Squad leaders, give me a status report.”
“We are securing the perimeter around the site,” Corporal Bandhari replied. “None of us were closer than half a block. The QRF transmitters are all offline, Colors.”
“Anyone got eyes on the building?”
“I’m on the northeast corner,” Corporal Shakya sent. “The whole thing collapsed when the ground floor went. Blue section is taking off right now for overhead cover.”
“Blue section, do you read?”
“Loud and clear, Colors,” Corporal Noor replied. “We have you on tactical. You’re a block and a half to the northeast.”
“Noor, you’re in charge for now from up there. Our ride is down and my tactical link is out. Captain Dahl and I are going to make our way to the site on foot. Keep overwatch and have purple and yellow sections redeploy for perimeter security.”
“Understood, Colors,” Noor said. “The alert force is boarding the combat ship at Sandvik Base. ETA fifteen minutes.”
Whatever is left of the alert force, Idina thought. The QRF usually had just a single platoon on emergency standby, only four squads of troopers, and one of those squads had been in the hotel when it blew up.
“The police and emergency responders from our side are on the way also,” Dahl said next to Idina. The Gretian officer holstered her weapon and raised the visor of her helmet. After a moment of consideration, Idina returned her own gun to its holster as well. If there was another trap waiting for them, the pistol would make no difference in the end. The QRF squad had been armed to the teeth and trained to expect trouble, and now they were buried in the rubble of a four-story building.
The site of the detonation wasn’t hard to spot even from almost two blocks away. A billowing cloud of smoke rose into the night sky where the hotel had stood just minutes ago. One of the JSP patrol gyrofoils rushed by above their heads and made a wide circle around the block, climbing as it went. The downwash from the engine’s rotors made the rising smoke swirl. The smell of the explosives residue triggered unwelcome olfactory flashbacks in Idina’s brain, memories of blood and fear and bone-deep exhaustion. This was the scent of a battlefield, not that of a civilian neighborhood.
“Good gods,” Dahl said when they rounded the corner of the next intersection.
“The gods had nothing to do with this,” Idina replied grimly.
The site of the hotel was half a block ahead and to their left. Whoever had set the ambush had either vastly overestimated the amount of explosive needed, or they had meant to demonstrate their willingness to commit destruction to excess. The capsule hotel was just a pile of concrete rubble and twisted steel girders. Every building in the intersection had taken severe damage from the shockwave and the flying debris. It looked like the aftermath of an artillery strike.
“What do you see, Noor?” Idina asked on the platoon channel.
“Nobody’s moving down there but our people,” Corporal Noor replied. “Thermals are all over the place. Half the block is gone, Colors. And most of what’s left is on fire.”
“Everyone stay clear of the damaged buildings,” Idina said. “Keep the perimeter secure for when the backup gets here.”
“What about the QRF unit?”
She looked at the burning ruin that had been the hotel. The fire that had engulfed the remains of the building radiated intense heat that was uncomfortable on her unshielded face even from half a block away.
“They are being welcomed by their ancestors right now, Corporal,” she said. “And I hope they get piss-drunk with them in the Hall of Heroes tonight.”
CHAPTER 15
ADEN
“Some smuggling crew we are,” Maya said.
On the navigation plot, the icon representing RNS Minotaur was almost at the edge of their awareness bubble, a hundred thousand kilometers astern of Zephyr. They were burning at two g, nice and easy, but Aden could tell that Maya would go full throttle if she had her way, just to leave the Rhodian Navy behind as fast as possible.
“I feel like I just got a stern lecture from my old teacher,” Tess said. “That’s a damn funny way to show gratitude to someone who drops a stolen nuke back into their lap. I wasn’t expecting a reward. But a ‘thank you’ would have been nice.”
“That was a nuclear warhead,” Decker said from above. “Navy people really get their overalls in a wad about those. To be honest, I’m surprised he let us go.”
“And you took it to them anyway?” Tess looked a little scandalized.
Henry cleared his throat.
“Nukes are poison,” he said. “We did the only thing we could have done that carried the chance for leniency. If that same ship had busted us on that run, we would be on our way to Rhodia right now. To begin our complimentary decade and a half of leisure time in a high-security detention arcology.”
“We could have dumped it,” Maya said.
“Out in space? Like a bunch of galley trash?” Tess shook her head.
“There’s a lot of empty space between the regular transfer lanes. That thing would be floating out there for ten thousand years before someone came across it. Maybe forever.”
“I am not dumping a half-megaton warhead for some scrapper to stumble across.” Decker’s tone made it clear that she wasn’t even slightly entertaining that argument.
On the plot, the icon for Minotaur disappeared off the edg
e. Aden let out a little puff of breath. He had come very close to being in the brig on that ship right now even as Zephyr went on her way with the rest of the crew, and he was still amazed at the completely unexpected act of mercy from the Rhodian commander.
“And of course we had to get the biggest hard-ass in the Rhody fleet,” Decker continued. “I was hoping to run into some patrol corvette. Some green lieutenant on his first tugboat command out of space warfare school. Instead, it’s a seasoned frigate crew, with a craggy veteran in charge. I had to really lay on the contrition.”
“That jug-eared asshole,” Maya grumbled.
“I don’t know, I thought he was kind of handsome,” Tess said. “Nice blue eyes.”
“Captain made the right call. So did the Rhody,” Henry said with finality.
Tess got up from her acceleration couch and walked over to the ladderwell.
“I’m going to check my stuff in the workshop again. I hate that those people had their hands all over the ship. It feels like getting felt up without permission while you’re asleep. I want to scrub all the bulkheads with antiseptics now.”
She climbed down the ladder and disappeared from view.
“If we don’t have any more zero-g adventures planned in the next hour or two, I want to throw together some dinner,” Tristan said.
“Go ahead,” Maya replied. “We’re going to stay at acceleration until we get to the turnaround point for Acheron.”
Tristan nodded and peeled himself out of his harness, then went over to the ladderwell and followed Tess down.
Aden stifled a yawn and got up to stretch his limbs. After the encounter with the Rhodian ship and the tension of being found out as a Gretian by the Rhody commander, he felt drained. The navigation plot was empty now, but he almost expected to see the icon for Minotaur pop up again on the fringes of their sensor range any moment, burning in pursuit at ten g because the commander had changed his mind. Whatever tint of romance and excitement the notion of the smuggling job had held was now thoroughly extinguished in his brain. Maybe he really wasn’t cut out for this new career, and this was the fates telling him to go home again. However hard it would be to build something new out of the bits and pieces of his old life, at least he wouldn’t have to look over his shoulder like a thief in the night every time a Rhodian warship popped up on the navigation screen.
He glanced up at the command platform to see Decker watching him.
“You look like you could sleep for a week,” she told him. “You all right?”
“I’m okay,” he said. It didn’t seem to convince Decker.
“Go get some bunk time before dinner. Half an hour of sleep. You’ll feel better. And maybe you won’t plant your face in the meal tray.”
Aden nodded and went to the ladderwell to climb down to Crew Deck B, where his berthing compartment was located, next to Tess and across the ladderwell from Henry.
His berth was as clean and neat as any room he’d had in the military. Other than a few sets of clothes and a comtab, he had brought nothing with which to clutter up the space. Even his locker was mostly empty. He had gotten glimpses of Tess’s berth whenever they got out or went to their bunks at the same time, and he knew that her space was personalized just like the workshop deck, drawings and sketches all over the bulkheads. As long as he felt like a temporary addition to the crew, it didn’t seem right to him to claim his space in that fashion. If they got rid of him again, he didn’t want to leave behind anything, least of all intimate glimpses into his personality. Unless he could be sure that day wasn’t likely to come, he wanted to be able to pack everything he owned into one bag and walk out with it. And as long as he kept his secret from the rest of the crew, he knew he could never have that certainty.
He took off his boots and crawled into his bunk. His tiredness was fighting it out with the residual adrenaline from their encounter, which seemed to refresh itself a little every time he thought about it. Aden closed his eyes to let the background hum of the ship calm his mind.
Enjoy your new life, the forger Henk had said when Aden had walked out with his new name and ID pass. But he hadn’t bought a new life, just a piece of polymer and a few database entries. A life was made of the thousands of little strings that tied people to each other and anchored them in their worlds. Those strings needed time and care to form. No ledger was big enough to buy any number of them, or hurry their connections along, not even all his father’s money. Seventeen years of Aden Robertson hadn’t managed to erase Aden Ragnar. Three months as Aden Jansen would not get rid of Aden Robertson.
“Come on up if you want to try the special,” Tristan’s voice sounded from the comms panel. Aden opened his eyes and tried to focus on the time readout above his head. It felt like he had barely closed his eyes, but forty-five minutes had passed since he had put his head down on the pillow.
When he climbed up onto the galley deck, everyone was already sitting at the table and talking over food. For a moment, Aden felt a pang of longing, as if he were looking at the scene from the outside. Then Tess saw him on the ladder and gestured to the empty chairs between her and Tristan.
“Grab a seat. Tristan has actually managed to turn the number eleven into something edible.”
“Really?” Aden sat down and looked at the ingredients of the foil pan in the middle of the table. The unaltered number eleven was practically a veggie cake, but this looked more like a tagine, a mess of veggies and meat jumbled and coated in a red-tinted sauce.
“I took four number elevens and mixed them with two number threes and two number eighteens,” Tristan said. “Took a little experimenting. And a bit of vinegar, citrus juice, and Liquid Sunshine.”
“Citrus juice,” Aden repeated.
“Yeah, to cut down the salt. You want to add an acid or a sweetener. I added both. The beef from the number three is in a sweet sauce. The tomato sauce from the eighteen adds some more acid.”
“How many meal trays did you burn through before you figured out the right ratio?”
“Just what’s in the pan. I’ve been cooking for thirty years, you know.”
Aden put some of the pan contents on a plate and tried a bite. The salt was still unmistakably present, but it was no longer the overwhelming flavor.
“It’s good,” he said and took another bite to prove the sincerity of his assessment.
“Now that we’re all here, we need to talk about the delivery job we just flushed down the drain,” Captain Decker said. “I’ve had some time to look at the numbers.”
Henry made a face as if the bite he had just taken was mostly citrus juice.
“How badly did we get skinned?”
Decker sat back and flicked a comtab projection over the table, where it expanded above the foil pan with Tristan’s dish.
“We sent the deposit to the Rhodies with the rest of the data, so this run has us all in the red. We burned over five thousand in reactor fuel to get to the pickup point and then for working up ballistic speed. Add to that whatever we’re going to use up getting back to the shortest-time transfer route to Acheron, and it’ll be six and a half before it’s done. Plus our time, and whatever we’re out by not doing paid work for most of a week.”
She looked around the table with a frown.
“Can’t really put a number on the missed pay. But just to get the operating budget back to the way it was before I hit ‘accept’ on that fucking contract offer, we’re looking at twenty-five hundred ags per head. Sorry.”
They all digested the unwelcome news for a few moments in silence.
“I should cover it,” Aden said. “I got you all to listen to me.”
“Stop talking nonsense,” Maya replied. “Do you believe that these people said what you think they said?”
He nodded. “But if they were just joking around, I rang the alarm for nothing. Maybe I overreacted.”
“Best-case scenario, we would have gone through with the job and gotten paid. And there would be a half-megaton nuclear warhead
sitting in someone’s private arsenal. Not a great best case,” Henry said.
“Worst-case scenario, they were waiting for us with guns drawn,” Tess added. “Nobody gets paid, and we all die.”
“You did your job,” Decker said. “That’s exactly the sort of thing I want you to do. Keeping your ears open and letting me know when something isn’t quite right. That’s why I hired a linguist, not a comms operator. I can train any kid fresh out of merchant school to run that gear.”
“All right,” Aden said, feeling sheepish. “I’ll stop talking nonsense.”
“It wasn’t all on you anyway,” Henry said. “We put it to a vote. Everyone agreed to pop the lid on that cargo. And then everyone agreed to take it to the Rhodians.”
“So now we all get to pay the bad-judgment tax,” Tess said.
Decker waved her hand in front of the screen to shut it off.
“If Aden was right, it’s a small tax. And we’ll never find out if he wasn’t because we didn’t want to roll those dice. Fuck the odds. Stakes were too high.”
She shrugged and picked up her fork again.
“Besides, it’s not all bad news. I got in touch with the people at Tanaka and told them we’re free for the three-year overhaul a little earlier than we had planned. They said they can get us in a week ahead of time if we can make the slot. Someone else had to reschedule.”
“We’ll be done early,” Tristan said. “Way early. Are we going to spend an extra week? Because I wouldn’t mind that at all.”
“As soon as we have the ship back from the Tanaka crew, I’m looking for a new contract on the board,” Decker replied. “Something nice and safe and moderately profitable. You may be able to squeeze in a few extra days. But I wouldn’t count on it.”
“How long are we staying above the table with contracts?” Maya asked.
“That’ll be up to vote. But I think we ought to play it square on the board for a while. Until we can be sure that the Rhodies aren’t going to impound our ship the next time we dock at Rhodia One.”