Keltan's Gambit: Chronicles of the Orion Spur Book 2

by Michael Formichelli

  Nero frowned. “Why would you do this?”

  “Well, at first it was because I just thought it the right thing to do, but now that I know you’re an Abyssian, well, it pays to have powerful friends, yes? Wait right here.”

  “I don’t know about this.” He scratched his chin.

  “Just, trust me. If I wanted to turn you over I’d have done it already, right? Wait here.” Garghth stepped back, opening the old-style latch door and vanishing through it.

  Nero wondered if he could trust the Achinoi. True, instead of turning him over to the Brogh, he healed him and offered him valuable information about the generator for the aegis field around the Akanda. It would make things easier, though he wondered if the information was correct. Should he really be trusting a strange being he just met? Probably not, but—

  The door clicked and swung open. Garghth smiled, four eyes and sharp teeth gleaming. He gestured for Nero to follow him into the main area of the club. The room was broad, spanning from one side of the building to the other. A central area of cloudy hexagons served as a recessed dance floor beneath multi-colored glow orbs. A few couches and chairs were scattered about the chamber’s perimeter, and across from the entrance a half-moon bar counter with eight shelves of brightly colored bottles behind it dominated the wall. The stepped ceiling made him feel like he was looking up the inside of a hollow version of those VoQuana ziggurat buildings. From each of the three levels hung a catwalk interconnected with its neighbors by metal stairs and ladders. A wheeled robot with an oval head straddled the catwalk’s railings with four arms extended from its box-like body.

  “Here,” Garghth offered Nero a red plastic card about the size of his palm.

  “What is this?” He frowned, wishing that Prospero was online to scan the device.

  A slow grin formed on Garghth’s face. “I’m not surprised you don’t know it. This is a pass card, works by radio signal. The Broghites gave it to me so I can fetch supplies from the warehouse on the edge of town. I’m the only one in Sanakrat who has one.” He snorted. “I guess not even the Brogh can do without their liquor. I’ll loan it to you, but only because I’m stocked right now. I’ll hunt you down myself if you don’t return it.”

  “You’ll hunt a man you think is an Abyssian?” Nero couldn’t believe it. Not even barons were so brash with him.

  “This thing is my livelihood. I hope you realize the favor I’m doing you. You’ll owe me big, understand?”

  From the look in Garghth’s eyes Nero thought he understood perfectly. Taking this card would let him slip out of town without a problem, but the Achinoi wasn’t giving it to him out of the goodness of his heart. There would be a price to pay later—but only if he came back to this planet. Garghth had to realize that, unless he really thought Nero couldn’t escape the Broghite blockade as he said earlier. In either case he couldn’t turn something like this down. Not having to face more Broghite soldiers was worth owing a backwater bar owner he’d probably never see again.

  “Understood,” Nero nodded and took the red card. He stared at it between his fingers for a moment and something occurred to him. “I can use this to go anywhere in town, right?”

  Garghth’s eyes narrowed. “As long as you are headed in the general direction of the warehouse. It’s by the spaceport, by the way, so you can check on your ship on the way out. Just remember, I’m only giving this to you so you can leave town and come back later to return it to me.”

  “You mentioned a radio tower.” Nero cocked an eyebrow up. Freeing the Akanda from the shield was only one part of the equation. To open his ship without Prospero they would need a powerful radio source to penetrate the Brogh jamming signal. Hopefully Agent Khepria’s skills would be enough to hack in and fly it since he couldn’t. The only thing going their way was the large communications tower in the center of town that could serve to establish a link. “I need information on the comm tower. Can you show it to me with this?”

  “That might be difficult. The tower isn’t in the direction of the spaceport. The Brogh are forcing citizens of the town to register with them.” Garghth put a claw to his pants leg and lifted the hem, displaying the small box strapped to his calf. “They’re tracking us all. If we head over there without a good excuse we’ll be in trouble.”

  Nero frowned. “Point taken. I’m ready to go now.”

  “What? I just told you we’ll get in trouble.”

  “I need to see that tower before I head out. I’ll do it with you at my side to make good excuses, or without you. If I get caught I won’t talk, but I’ll have this card on me which I’m sure the Brogh will find curious.” Nero trailed off, putting the card into his pocket.

  Garghth’s mouth fell open revealing rows of small, sharp teeth.

  “I’d rather not play it that way. I’ve got to get back to my people as soon as possible, and I think things will go faster if I avoid trouble. I think I’ll need your help for that.” Nero put on his best, threatening smile.

  “So, you are not alone? How many Abyssians are with you?” Garghth’s green, reptile-eyes narrowed.

  “Just show me to the radio tower.”

  “All right, all right. You win. Give me a moment to get my coat.” He hurried through the door behind him and returned a moment later wearing a brown jacket cut to allow his shoulder-quills to protrude through the sides. “I’m crazy to do this, but we should just get it over with. You owe me really big now, Abyssian. I’m too frail for a Broghite work camp, so if we get caught you made me do this.”

  “Thank you, Garghth. I appreciate it.” Nero smiled, happy that something was going right.

  Outside the sunlight stung his eyes, but it was good to feel the cool air on his freshly healed skin. Garghth led him from the Wall down a dirt road and into the town proper where one and two-story houses made of gray stone with wood-shingle roofs lined either side of the street. They were built with space between them, and many had air-cars parked in the dirt alleys. The road they walked ran towards the center of town where the massive communications tower rose up towards the sky. It reminded him of the first time he saw frontier-style living. At the time it amazed him that people weren’t dwelling on top of each other. He grew up in a city, and it was bizarre to see people living in such openness—

  I grew up in a city? He shook his head. He didn’t grow up in a city, he was made by Daedalus on Deep Hydra. He had a sharp memory of his first activation, running through the self-diagnostic before floating out from the fabrication tube to where the Praetor-Prime, a tall woman with black and silver irises waited for him. She extended her hand out to him, taking his and guiding him through the endless corridors of Deep Hydra to his ship. The memory was crystallized in his mind almost like he was watching a playback—and yet the feeling that he grew up in a crowded city on some planet, somewhere, persisted.

  Up ahead a group of Broghites stepped into the empty road from a side-street. They were followed by two of the shorter, tail-possessing soldiers who trudged along with carbines in their hands and swept the road with their huge eyes.

  “Stay close,” Garghth warned as their trio approached the group.

  They were about ten paces away when they turned their heads and saw Nero. A burst of Broghese came from the lead Brogh’s mouth. Her tone was deep and authoritative, the voice of someone who knew how to wield authority. Garghth responded in the same language and gestured for Nero to show the red card. During the exchange there were several looks that went Nero’s way culminating in an armor-rattling laugh by the Brogh in the other group.

  “What was that about?” he asked in a low voice.

  “One of those females was present last night,” Garghth muttered.

  “Is that so?”

  The female Brogh stepped in front of her group, and removed her helmet. “Human, you heal fast. Interrogating you would be fun.” She smiled in a flash of small teeth between big canines.

  “You got a mean punch there Brunhilda.” Nero rubbed his jaw, feeling a dis
tant ache beneath his fingers. “I’d respect that if it didn’t take three of you to beat up just one little human.” What’s wrong with me? He thought almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Again he felt Prospero’s absence. His machine-half would have warned him he was about to say something terminally stupid, though he probably would say it anyway. If it only took three of them to down him before, then these five were going to really clean his chronometer.

  The Brogh he called Brunhilda caught a gleam in her blue eyes. “Are you ready for round two?”

  “What are you doing?” Garghth whispered. “They’ll arrest us!”

  “I don’t know,” he responded. To the Brogh he said, “I’ll be ready for round two when you’re ready to fight like a real warrior—no help, just you and me.”

  A broad smile broke out on the Brogh’s face showing more sharp looking teeth behind the canines. “I can take a human any day. You will regret your words.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “No, you will see.” She pulled her helmet off, handing it to her nearest companion and moved her hands up to her shoulders. She did something with the armor that caused the back and chest plates to separate and fall to the ground with a thwapping noise. A sweat-soaked, sleeveless gray tunic was plastered to her chest revealing the reasons why female Brogh armor bulged so oddly. She looked like a nursing cerberai, with four bulges high on her chest that resembled two stacks of swollen water-skins lying one on top of another. He stared, trying to work out what the structure beneath the shirt would look like out of sheer curiosity.

  “My eyes are up here, human.” She took a long step towards him, her fists raised in combat position. Huge forearms bulged behind them.

  “You want to fight right in the middle of the road?” He glanced back and forth to either side of the street.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that just shows what you know. Here—”

  She took another step forward and planted her thick fist across his chin. Sparks flew through his vision and the ground rushed up to catch him.

  “Get up,” she demanded.

  He spit a red-tinged wad of saliva into the dirt and shook his head. His ears were ringing but he had an idea of how he could turn this situation to his advantage.

  “Here only your friends and a few scared colonists can see us. Why don’t we fight over there, where I can show your friends what a human can really do.” He pointed down the street at the tower as he struggled to his feet.

  Brunhilda looked down behind her at the black monolith then back at him. “I don’t need an audience to beat you.”

  “So you’re scared I’ll win?”

  “I—” her eyes went up and to the side like she was thinking hard.

  Garghth said something in low Broghese. Whatever it was, it inflamed her. She gritted her teeth and jabbed a thick finger at him.

  “You’re dead, human!” She shouted something in her native tongue, and her companions surrounded his group. One of the little ones picked up her armor and helmet and fell into step.

  “You’ve done it now,” Garghth said as they were marched to the communications tower. “Clever, but stupid, too.”

  “You’re not the first person to say that. It seems to be the story of my life.”

  “She might kill you this time. If we wind up in a prison camp I’ll shiv you myself.”

  “You seemed to help a bit,” Nero responded.

  “I did say it was clever.” Garghth snorted through his scaly nostrils.

  Nero glanced up and saw several human and Cleebian faces in windows gazing down at them. They looked scared and sad, as though they knew what fate awaited him at the end of the walk. He wondered how many the Brogh arrested or executed to make examples in the last few days.

  The tower was a monolith, rising up into the blue sky several times the height of the tallest buildings near it. He counted four groups of the short troops stationed around its base where a barricade of wooden slats and metal debris blocked access.

  “What are the little ones called?” He asked, noting the creature just out of arm’s reach on his right. Up close he could see its fur was thin, showing the gray skin beneath in patches on the unarmored tail. It had long fingers on human-like hands, a broad, fang-filled mouth, and huge maroon eyes beneath the bubble-like faceplate. The thing licked its thin lips with a dark-purple tongue when it noticed him looking.

  “They are called Greeba. The Brogh subjugated their species about a century or so ago.”

  He nodded. “Anything I should know about them?”

  “They have a taste for sentient flesh and will eat any species on two legs or four, even their own. You see their fur?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s not fur. That’s a symbiotic fungus. Its spores are found in their saliva. Don’t get bitten. It can grow in almost any tissue.”

  Nero’s face scrunched up. “Are you serious?”

  “Very. I watched a human die of a bite once. It took a week and he raved crazy-talk the whole time. Like I said, nanomeds are hard to come by out here. It was very ugly.”

  “All right, got it. Ah, how do the Brogh control such creatures?”

  “They’re intelligent and know how to follow orders. They’re only a problem if you’re on the wrong side of the friend-foe line.”

  “Like I am now? Great.”

  “Like we both are now. I’m going to have to serve a lot of free drinks at my club to make up for this.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I’ll send you a bill. I’m starting to question the value of Abyssian friendship.”

  They were marched right up to the barricade where the one he called Brunhilda exchanged harsh words with the guards. While they argued, he noted the sloping walls of the tower had sections that appeared to be made of stone squares alternating between protruding and recessed all the way to the top of the structure. Ladders and access points peppered the building up to the needles and dishes of the radio antenna at the top.

  The argument between the soldiers grew heated, resulting in shouts until Brunhilda spat into the dirt at the other Broghite’s feet and turned towards him. “Your lucky day, human, but don’t think you’re off the hook. You show up tomorrow evening just after sunset, right here, or I execute a human once every one of your hours until you do. Got it?”

  He felt his jaw slacken. Maybe I didn’t think this through. Aloud he said, “Oh, I wouldn’t miss the chance to beat some sense into you.”

  “Sometime, if you live, you must explain to me what your problem is,” Garghth said.

  There’s something really wrong with me.

  “We will see, human.” The Broghite woman accepted the armor back from her underling and her group moved on.

  Garghth said something to the lead soldier at the barricade and they both shared a chuckle before he led them away back down the street.

  “You better head back to your people now. You best be back tomorrow evening. I’m not watching my friends die for you,” Garghth muttered once they were a few blocks away.

  Nero breathed in and let the air out in a rush. He wondered if Agent Khepria might have had a breakthrough that could get Prospero online by tomorrow night. He agreed with Garghth; he couldn’t let others die to avoid a beating. He may have gained some valuable intel about the tower, but it seemed it was going to cost him more than he bargained for.

  “Garghth, thank you, and I’m sorry about the trouble.” He glanced between them.

  “Like I said, never hurts to have powerful people owe you, though I’m starting to doubt my own wisdom now.” Garghth’s eyes looked out towards the forest at the end of the road.

  “You never know, I might surprise you one day.” Nero saluted him and headed towards it.

  Chapter Seven

  Ikuzlu City, Kosfanter

  41:2:12 (J2400:3136)

  Cygni’s first thought the next day was to get in touch with her friend and start asking questions. Energized with equal parts fear and prof
essional excitement from the moment her eyes opened, she would have run out of the apartment without eating had Shkur not reminded her to have breakfast. She got as far as the lobby before realizing she had no real plan. With her investigation into Baron Mitsugawa’s death involving so many parts she was overwhelmed, but felt she had to do something. As far as she knew, she was the only one outside of Revenant’s conspiracy who knew at least part of the truth. She would have to proceed with caution and begin with what she could work on alone. With the job she accepted at Cosmos Corporation starting soon, she didn’t have much time left before her activities would be curtailed. She needed to choose something of importance that she could accomplish in a day or two.

  She sat down on one of the stone benches and crossed her arms over her chest. She knew that Baron Keltan had something odd done to him by that VoQuana, Sinuthros. She supposed it was likely a result of what he heard about this thing called “Siren” and the killing of an entire mining colony. The good news was that neither Baroness Altair nor Sinuthros knew that she now had that information. As far as she could tell, her spy-grains were never discovered. Baron Keltan seemed to be wrapped up in this Siren mess in addition to Baron Mitsugawa Yoji’s death, and was probably about to be used by Baron Revenant for some unknown purpose. She didn’t believe that Revenant was just trying to become the next Premier, there was something darker on his horizon. He didn’t need the VoQuana to be Premier. There was also that mention of Baroness Altair having a daughter with some kind of connection to the Gaians which—according to her—started the trouble between the Cronuses and the Revenants. This was an angle she might be able to explore in the time-frame before she started her new job since her best friend, Boadicea Euphrati, was the daughter of the local Gaian Mother-Priestess.

  She got to her feet, dialing her friend’s communicator with her cerebral computer implant as she walked out the door. Boa didn’t have an implant, her Naturalist Gaian beliefs forbade it. She wished her friend was more like her brother, Biren. Gaian Evolutionists, at least, embraced a modicum of cybernetic technology. When the line connected it was audio-only.