“Little Keedai,” he remembered the chief saying as he lifted him up onto the steps of the stone monument in the middle of the worship circle. “This is a place of peace and harmony, the heart of Elia. Here is where your destiny lies. Here is where you will find your purpose.”
But Lugger knew how to play him, how to drown his logical mind in anger. The dog-soldier captain handed him the featherhawk that had killed his mother. He examined the symbol etched on the handle.
Kino. Blood brother. Betrayer. Murderer.
He gripped the handle until his knuckles went white. “I will tell you everything.”
The others tried to talk some sense into him as Reht tore down the hallways, yelling for his parents in every room he passed. When he found the gouges in the wall and the limp bodies littering the hallway, he sped up.
So close—if only I can reach them, he thought as the smell of something long past dead grew stronger.
“What the hell is this place?” he heard Ro say.
The Farrocoon, Bacthar and Agracia, a few paces behind him, followed the captain onto an interior launch pad.
Don’t stop—there’s still time—
“It’s a trafficking port,” Agracia commented to the others. “But I never been to one that stank this bad.”
“Mom! Dad!” Reht shouted.
(I didn’t know, I didn’t know!)
Only thirteen, he was oblivious to the workings of the real world. He didn’t know that Shandin had been specifically commissioned to eliminate any local interference with the mining operation destined for the Wiconte forests, or that he had hired Lugger to find a knowledgeable insider with access to the sacred grounds. He didn’t know of the Plunomanium that lay beneath the stone monument or why anybody would want it for experimental jump drives. And he didn’t think that the dog-soldiers, who had showed him so many of life’s pleasures, would abandon him in the ashes of Elia.
“Gods,” Reht said, holding his head in his hands. Don’t know what’s real anymore.
A familiar growl, a pitiful whimper. Rubbing his eyes, Reht looked up ahead to a staging area near the launch pad.
Is that Mom? he thought, seeing the giant warrior holding a human female in his arms. What the hell is he doing?
The woman, naked and grossly malnourished, pled to him in a foreign tongue. Her skin had been whipped and beaten, and her eyes bore the pain of her past. But Reht didn’t see the woman in Mom’s arms. He saw LaLanna, her braided hair burnt to a crisp, her eyes smoldering wells inside a blackened skull.
(I didn’t mean to hurt you—I DIDN’T MEAN TO HURT YOU!)
“Where’s Kino? Where’s the chief?” Reht asked frantically.
Bossy came screaming and hooting out of a storage room with about twenty or thirty heavy-arms strapped to her back. “It’s Christmas in there!”
Keeping her eye on Reht, Agracia jogged over and spoke quietly with her as the captain continued his rant.
“Where are they? Did any of them survive?” Reht said, hanging on Mom’s shoulder.
“Hey, Cap, I think there’s some human cargo,” Bacthar said. With a gentle shake of his shoulders, the surgeon tried to bring him back to reality. “How many people, Mom?”
Mom made a motion with his hands indicating in the thousands.
“We can still save them. There’s still time!” Reht said giddily.
“Captain, we really should be getting you back to the ship,” Bacthar said, reinforcing his bandages.
“Chakking no!” Reht said, slapping his hand away.
Not now. Not when there was still a chance to redeem himself. For his parents, for the Koiwros and all the other tribes of Elia—for Diawn.
I bear the blood of my family.
“There’s still time!” he shouted.
Mom set the woman down and led him to the holding cell amphitheatre just off the launch pad ramp. Limping onto the center platform, Reht looked down, gazing at the thousand or more skeletal humans huddled together in a pitiful, moaning mass. Some were already dead, most not too far behind. At such a close proximity the smell overpowered him, and in his debilitated state he felt bile rise in the back of his throat.
So many, he thought, seeing not the humans, but thousands of Koiwros, their bodies twisted and charred by Shandin’s weapons, scattered across a decimated Wiconte forest.
“Help them,” he pleaded, reaching dangerously over the railing.
All but Mom looked at him with confusion. The Talian warrior found a control panel and ripped off the plating. In seconds he had disengaged the prison doors and unlocked the entire warehouse.
“You’re saved!” Reht shouted over the railing. None of them moved. They looked at him with wide, frightened eyes, unsure of their mysterious rescuer or his true intentions. “What are you waiting for? Don’t you see? I’m helping you. You’re saved. Get out of here! Go! Run! I’m helping you, I’M HELPING YOU!”
THAT assino is going to fall off, Agraica thought as Reht shouted and screamed at the human cargo. After nearly tipping over the railing, Mom finally pulled the captain back onto the platform. As Reht tried to scramble back, Bacthar came from behind and injected a yellow cocktail into his arm. Seconds later he was dozing in the giant Talian’s arms.
Shifting the load of heavy-arms on her back, Bossy elbowed Agraica’s side and whispered: “What a weirdo.”
“We’re going back to the ship,” Bacthar said, turning to Agracia. “What’s here is yours. Help the humans if you want, or don’t. Once I stabilize the captain we’re leaving. You’re still welcome to travel with us. We’re at the south port near the Crazy Horse bar.”
Bossy let out a long-winded belch as the dog-soldiers left the amphitheatre. “Ugh. Glad they’re gone. I didn’t like their stink.”
Agracia said nothing, watching the dog-soldiers in contemplative silence. Something didn’t fit. Those dog-soldiers ain’t right, she decided. At least not like the usual crop of crotch-scratching space jockeys. More like a bunch of tripped-up souls that happened to collide, trying to survive in a Universe that refuses to give them a break.
It felt a little too familiar.
“Hey,” Bossy said, rolling her lollipop around in her mouth and tapping her on the shoulder. “What’s your deal? You wanna help these suckers? They’re just Lurchins.”
“Don’t use that word,” Agracia snapped at her.
Bossy chuckled. “Come on, Grace; I ain’t gonna waste my time on these ratchaks. Look at them—they’re dead already.”
Agracia knew what the Scabber in her would do, as well as what the military experiment would decide was the most logical course of action. But another urge, one much stronger than both, pulled at her heart.
Agracia was careful how she presented it to Bossy. “Someone would pay big money to know about this little operation, dontcha think?”
Bossy shrugged. “Yeah, maybe.”
“Look, Victor’s the one tuggin’ all the strings around here, right? He’s gonna be pissed we thrashed his men. We gotta get the digs on him and then sell it to his enemy. Only way we’ll piss out of this one.”
Appearing disinterested, Bossy worked on her lollipop and twirled one of her pigtails. “Eh. We’ve gotten outta worse.”
“No way. Victor’s big time. ’Sides, we’re not in great shape,” Agracia said, wiping the sweat from the back of her neck and forehead to prove her point. “Gonna need to get some meds in us soon. We’ll need a solid trade.”
All she got was another shrug. “Whatever. Anything to get out of this stink.” Then her eyes lit up. “The Mississippi Diesel!”
The pigtailed warrior ran off, back towards the distillery. Agracia followed, winding back toward the entrance, trying to keep up.
Bossy looked like a kid in a candy store. “We gotta take some of this with us!” Agracia watched Bossy open all the spigots, collecting as much of the brew as she could in discarded containers.
Sighing, Agracia turned around. Might as well check the storage rooms f
or new biosuits since the old ones are trashed.
As she rounded the corner, she ran into one of the captured humans limping his way towards the exit.
“Whoa,” Agracia said, grabbing his bony arm to keep him from toppling over. Even with gloves on she retracted as soon as he steadied himself, fearing whatever sickness he might harbor.
He’s too old to be a living carrier, she told herself, looking over his wilting body. No, he couldn’t be transporting a contagion for some bioterrorist. Fourth-class humans are too fragile and weak.
At least she hoped.
“Thank you—thank you for saving us!” he said with a toothless smile, reaching for her hand.
Agracia pulled back farther. “Beat it, old man. You ain’t got much time before the next chakker tries to capture your assino.”
“Where are we to go?” he asked. “We are not welcome on any world.”
Grimacing, Agracia fell against the wall.
“Death is a part of war,” Unipoesa said, circling the gaming consoles.
Terror ate at her bones. Another battery of tests didn’t bother her as much as the handful of students that remained. Every day another candidate got iced or left the program, all without explanation from their teachers.
I know why, she thought, glancing over at Li. Dark eyes looked back at her with steadfast contempt. And soon it’ll just be me and him.
Unipoesa continued: “You will make decisions that will kill soldiers and civilians. You must do everything you can to avoid unnecessary loss, but at the same time, you must accept that sacrifices must be made to achieve victory.”
Stopping at her station, Unipoesa put a hand on her shoulder. “To be the best, you must be able to make the hard decisions. You must know when to cut your losses. You must know what—or whom—to sacrifice.”
Her memory zipped forward, slogging through the military years before settling in an underground bar in the rotten heart of Paradise City. Without her consent, her mind replayed one of her first times teaming up with Bossy as they ripped off junkies just to survive.
“Just leave ‘em,” Bossy said, tossing away the bum’s empty wallet and kicking over his cart.
Agracia remembered the homeless man’s open but vacant eyes, the way his hands shook as her companion frisked him for anything valuable. Survival instincts allowed her to steal from him; after all, a man in his condition wouldn’t need his shoes or his blankets for very much longer. Kill or be killed—the only rule of the street, the only rule she played by anymore.
“You okay?” the old man said, tapping her shoulder.
Agracia came to, disoriented and leaning heavily against the wall. “Sycha...”
“God bless you, friend,” the old man said, hitching up his tepper-cloth pants. “I pray to God to heal your ailment, and to forgive your sins.”
Can’t go on like this, she thought, pressing her knuckles into her eyes. Gonna lose myself.
Shoving herself off the wall, she resumed her search for biosuits. But as she took her first step, she felt a hand on her shoulder.
“Look, old man—” she started, turning on her heels.
Spring-blue eyes caught her off-guard, stealing the words from her mouth. Agracia held her breath, captivated by something she hadn’t seen before. A spark, something alive, a light that refused to die in that old man’s expression. “I know my life is not worth much in this world, but I thank you for the chance. The last thing I wanted was to end up as feed for the Deadwalkers.”
“What?” Agracia said. Grasping him by the knobs of his shoulders, she shook him until he cried out. “What did you say?”
“Please!” he protested, falling to his knees.
She kept her hold of him, not easing up her grip. “How did you know that?”
“It’s what the guards said,” the old man said, holding his hands over his face. “We were nothing more than feed.”
“Shandin was a Joe-boy for the Deadwalkers?” Agracia mumbled to herself. No. There was more to that, and she felt it, like a hot coals in her stomach. “Tell me everything you know.”
A few more humans dragged by, casting her downward glances, too weak or too numb to interfere in her interrogation of the old man.
“Please,” the old man begged, reaching up to her with excoriated fingers. “That’s all I know.”
Fearful of his open wounds, Agracia let him go and watched him stagger away. This is really chakked up.
Bossy came up from behind her, firearms still strapped to her body, towing several gallons of booze behind her in plastic jugs. “Muscle and Mississippi Diesel! It’s like heaven! Now all we need is some fresh assino.”
“Oh no,” Bossy said, seeing her expression. She plucked out her lollipop and waved it in Agracia’s face. “What chakked-up plan you got now?”
I can’t lose myself, she thought as the wise-cracks of the Scabber Jock and the cutthroat tactics of the military cadet fought to decide her next action. As she suppressed the opposable forces in her head, Jetta’s last words rang strong within her heart: That mind of yours won’t let you forget.
New dimension to Jetta’s words unfolded, revealing a more complex meaning behind her phrasing.
“I know what we have to do,” she whispered.
She looked at her hands and clenched them tight. When she let them unfurl again, she smiled.
“You’re gonna love it.”
EVEN THOUGH REHT HAD locked himself away in his den and refused all visitors, Mom still found his way in.
“Diawn was right about me,” Reht said, tipping back the bottle of Redfly and gulping the last of its liquid fire. He slouched lower in his chair, hoping the sea of garbage at his feet would swallow him up.
With a low growl, Mom took away the bottle. He pulled up a stool to sit by his captain, his silver eyes searching his face.
She was right, Shandin was right, he thought as the ship’s engines rumbled and groaned. At some other time he might have reconsidered speeding across the wasteland and searching for a suitable place to jump, but not now. He didn’t care about firestorms, or ripping a hole in some part of the dead world. Not that any governing body would enforce intergalactic transportation law on Old Earth anyway.
“Diawn was chakking crazy, but she was part of this crew, yeah? It shouldn’t have ended this way,” Reht said quietly.
Sebbs found the bodies first. After returning from his shopping trip, he discovered the bloody remains of Vaughn painting the mid deck.
How did Femi break the arms and legs of an ex-con who could take down a Toork? The question didn’t bother him as much as the fact that Mom and Bacthar had cleaned up the mess before he could see it. He was my crewmate.
They couldn’t hide from him what had happened to Tech. Despite being stabbed over twenty times, his scrappy engineer had survived thanks to the little-known blood-saving organ behind his primary heart. Bacthar put him on ice in hopes that they would be able to find a treatment off-world, but the longer he spent in stasis, the less likely his chances of making it.
Reht recounted the losses in his head as he had been doing for the last hour. Vaughn and Diawn: dead. Tech: on ice, probably wouldn’t make it. Triel: gone, dead to him. Ro, Cray: would probably defect or murder him in his sleep.
(As they should.)
Mukrunger.
As a new round of tears threatened to fall, Mom laid his giant hand on Reht’s shoulder and squeezed. Disregarding his first mate, Reht reached for another bottle but found it empty, and tossed it atop the clutter on the floor.
“Quit it, Mom,” he muttered. He tried to shove him off, but Mom held him down so he couldn’t scavenge for more. With another growl, the Talian nodded at his neck wound, but Reht didn’t care about letting the site heal, or Bacthar’s advice to avoid booze.
“Chakking Gods,” Reht said, staring at his naked hands. He flexed and relaxed them, watching the angry mass of scarred pink flesh blanch and perfuse, the carved letters of mukrunger winking on and off like flashing
lights.
Mom grunted. “That isn’t you,” he said, revealing a fresh roll of bandaging. Taking the captain’s hand, he weaved the white cloth around his fingers and across his palm.
Reht looked into the shining silver eyes of his Talian and saw a different truth.
Mom’s voice, deep and baritone, rattled his bones. “I know who you are.”
Chapter X
Chapter X
Damon Unipoesa couldn’t remember the last time he had slept, only that he had blown through a full carton of cigarettes, and it would be several days until he could get another shipment past the health marshal. On some level, his body rejoiced. His throat and lungs already felt as if they had been raked from the inside out, his mouth full of ashes.
Now, alone in his quarters and short on smokes, Unipoesa found himself doing what he always did when he was strung out: He picked up his personal interface tablet, one that he had purposely refitted so it was privately linked outside the Alliance network, and gave the command under hushed tones: “Show me Maria Unipoesa.”
The tablet projected the image of a blue and green planet with the seal of the Republic stamped across the satellite feed. Victor’s forces would not let him get through.
“Chak,” he muttered, taking a fistful of his hair. “Fine,” he said through gritted teeth, “show me the last known images of Maria Unipoesa.”
The tablet cycled back a few weeks and pulled up the image of a gray stone house in a field of wild roses. He zoomed in on the house and centered on her image as she tended to the white Catheilia bushes framing the patio in her favorite gardening hat. It was hard to see her face from the satellite images, but every once and a while she’d look up to the sky, as if she was looking back at him.
Sitting back in the chair at his desk, he absently traced the outline of her face with his finger but stopped when he saw a shadow move across the front door. Someone’s in the house. Why hadn’t he noticed it before?
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