[Shira Calpurnia 02] - Legacy

by Matthew Farrer - (ebook by Undead)

  There was no sign of him in the gallery, nor in the central passenger alley as the little ship turned and accelerated up and away from the base. She could not hear him over the soft sound of the ship’s systems, and when she made her quiet way through the forward compartments to the cockpit there was no sight nor sound of him. She felt the absence of the needier at her arm, but she was not totally defenceless: she reached up and pushed the hood back from her high-browed head and loosened the headband that bound her warp eye shut.

  “Rikah?” she called as she padded along the gallery that ran down the port side of the ship. “It’s over, Rikah. You lost. Come out. It’s all done. Just you and me now.” No answer. She wondered if he had taken refuge in the cockpit or the enginarium, but no, she had ordered the crew to seal themselves in.

  “We’ll be back at our own ship soon, Rikah, and Cherrick is waiting there. You do know you’ve failed, don’t you? Whatever you were planning, I can stop it. Give it up, Rikah, it’s over.”

  No answer. Domasa shrugged the tension out of her shoulders, looked forward and back, and stalked carefully on through the softly-lit corridors.

  Docking level, Adeptus Arbites Fortress

  of Selena Secundus, Galata

  Zanti had barely survived the dromon’s takeoff, scurrying backwards as the sirens went off and the docking seal cracked. She could see the Navigatrix freak silhouetted in the cockpit dormer as the gravity plates powered down and the Dart began to withdraw its prow from the docking socket—a dromon was too big to fit in a hangar. The dropping gravity and growing tide of air gave her a moment of utter terror and then she was through the portals and gripping a safety rail as the seals thundered closed.

  Zanti didn’t bother trying to get to the window to see it climb away. She hung onto the railing, breathing in hoarse gasps, until her heart slowed and her head was clear.

  She didn’t know how many of the rest were alive, so she didn’t think about it, her thoughts stripped to the most simple and brutal. Survive and get out of the fortress. Survive and get to the Callyac’s Promise. Survive and get to the flotilla. After that there were too many variables. She would deal with it when the time came. And deal with it she would. By then there Would be arguing and second thoughts and the kind of woolly thinking that would give Zanti all the opportunities she needed.

  She had been too intent on chasing Kyorg down the switchbacking passages between the main hall and the dock to have remembered her way, but it wasn’t hard to find her bearings once she concentrated. She hurried back to find her ride back to the Promise, the little shot-caster gripped in her hand, and after a few more turns she was close enough to the boat to vox out the name and vector of the Omicron’s Dart for forwarding to the gunnery officers on Promise and the Bassaan. She grinned savagely as she ran on towards the boat. See how far the little milksop heir got with his Navigator sidekick dead and his dromon destroyed.

  Ecclesiarchal dromon the Omicron’s Dart,

  En route to the Gann-Luctis

  The cat-and-mouse could not have been going on long, but long enough for Domasa to be struck by the silliness of the image in her mind: the dromon speeding through space, a handful of crew sealed behind blast-doors in each end, and in the long central corridors these two enemies stalking round and round and round. She had found Rikah’s cast-off boots in one of the lower galleries—he must have shed them to try and be quieter—and she saw the occasional footprint marked out in sweat, but she hadn’t been able to close with him. It had taken effort to keep her mind sharp, to push away idle thoughts like the picture of them chasing each other in circles or the growing temptation to just start stamping down the corridors and galleries yelling his name. That would be the way to walk into an ambush, and yet she had been too keyed up to want to simply wait in ambush herself.

  That was when she heard him in the communications alcove. For a moment her heart froze, and then she licked her lips and went towards the sound, tugging the bandanna away from her forehead. Her unveiled warp eye glistened in the low light, looking out into blessedly calm space. Domasa licked her lips as the noises became louder: Rikah’s voice and the chitter of message tape. She almost held her breath as she closed on the doorway and then almost laughed when she stood in it.

  The idiot must have decided to die. He was turned away from the door, pistol dangling in his hand, the ridiculous silver ruffs on his head quivering as they communicated with the comms panel.

  “Sir, you are going to have to change course closer to the formation! They’re coming around Galata and from what I can tell they’ll be in range. No, not good enough, we can’t evade them for long enough to get to the Gann-Luctis! Are you even listening to me?”

  “Rikah.”

  He spun around, eyes wide.

  “Domasa, please you have to help, we have to cooperate now.”

  “Do we? No we don’t. Ask your master about cooperation, Rikah. Do you know what he did? Don’t even bother answering, you revolting little insect. Do you know what’s going to happen to me? Answer: nothing that can be worse than what I’m about to do to you.”

  “LOOK!” Rikah shouted into her face, and despite herself she glanced over at the message tapes in his hand. Most of it was gibberish to her, but she knew enough to pick out authorisation codes for the Phrax flotilla and the Imperial Navy.

  “They’re going to fire on us!” Rikah yelled at her. “They’re coming around Galata, the whole bloody lot of them! They think Varro’s on this ship, or the charter is. They are armed and they are going to try to destroy us! There’s a Navy squadron covering us, we need to get into their range! Are you listening to me, you stupid woman?”

  As they glared at each other there was another chitter from the panel and another tongue of creamy-white tape spewed from an engraved bronze dispenser as the words crackled out of the panel.

  “…Kovash Venator, ordering you to power down your weapons immediately and redirect to the vector our astropaths are providing. I say again to the Phrax flotilla, this is the Imperial Battlefleet Pacificus warship Kovash Venator, ordering you to power down your weapons immediately and redirect onto the vector we are transmitting.”

  Domasa leaned over and snaked a long finger out onto the internal vox switch.

  “Maintain course, pilot. Just bob and weave a bit.” They felt the floor start to gently undulate under them as the crew obliged. “If you can plot a fast course to the Gann-Luctis that takes us through Navy cover then do it. If you can’t, then don’t. We’re not going to lose any time.”

  “Ships of the Phrax flotilla,” came another crackling voice, “this is the Battlefleet Pacificus warship Voice of the Seraph. Power down your weapons now!”

  “You heard, Rikah,” said Domasa, turning to face him. “The Navy are moving on them. We’re in the middle of Hydraphur, you stupid man, did you think they would get away with this?”

  “We’re going to turn in and head for the Navy squadron,” said Rikah, his voice trembling. He had remembered the pistol in his fist and was aiming it at her chest. “I can tell you what’s happened on the Gann-Luctis, we saw to you. We had it all worked out before we even reached Hydraphur. So you can, you can just—”

  “Did you work out this?” asked Domasa, and looked at him.

  To Rikah, it suddenly seemed as though a freezing wind laced with sleet and vapour was scouring at him. There was roaring white noise in his ears, and the metal ridges on his head seemed to burn. The augmetic receptors buried in his ears burst into life, registering static that sounded like keening voices, and in his vision the woman’s warp eye grew and grew until it filled his sight with purest blackness—

  It took a second and a half for her gaze to blow out every synapse in Rikah’s brain and send him spasming to the floor. She put a foot on his wrist to make sure the gun could not flail up at her and go off, and waited for the last twitches to subside.

  The chatter between the ships had fallen silent, or switched to a different frequency that the Dart c
ould not pick up, and there was silence in the alcove now. Domasa grunted to herself and stepped into the corridor. There were viewing ports studding the outer wall of the highest of the galleries, and she headed there to see what she could see.

  Just as she was emerging from the stairs all the viewports were lit up with a dazzling yellow-white light as the plasma shells from the Bassaan’s cannon began to burst around them, and the ship shuddered and bucked under a miss so near that Domasa was catapulted down the corridor.

  Ship’s boat from the Callyac’s

  Promise, Galata space

  Zanti reached the boat from the Callyac’s Promise at the same time as Calpurnia, Varro, Odamo and half a dozen arbitrators, and suddenly the plan was in her head as though she had known it for a decade. She made herself nod and smile and bob while they made all their pompous tikk noises about “by authority of the Adeptus”, and let them think they were commandeering the boat to take them to the Baron Mykal. She acted horrified by the carnage in the courtroom. It sounded like Gait and Halpander had gone first. Behaya and Trazelli might have had a chance if they hadn’t gotten stupid. And D’Leste, D’Leste had deserved every scrap of it.

  She fawned and scraped and agreed that of course they must fly to the Mykal and then she used her flotilla seal to let herself into the boat’s cockpit and told the crew, The Promise. Dock anywhere but the Promise and I gut you.” She knew they would obey, and she knew that once they were back aboard the Callyac’s Promise things would be different. She knew that once the heir was aboard she could get him into the charter shrine and then who would know, really, what he had to say? She would carry his words out, his orders that the Arbites leave the ship, the orders that the flotilla form up and leave the system, and if he were alive to deliver those orders then fine, and if not, fine too. And then there would be the matter of selecting a new team of flotilla masters, and she had just the people lined up…

  “Reverse the order, please.”

  Zanti was not used to being in a reverie, let alone having to come out of one, and it took her a moment to realise the green-eyed scar-headed arbitrator woman was standing in front of her, one hand on the butt of her pistol. Varro stood behind her, framed in the arch that led to the boat’s main compartment, clutching the charter to his chest and staring. With an effort Zanti pulled her gaze away from the little book and looked the other woman in the eye.

  “I gave no order, my esteemed lady justice,” she said, bowing even lower than her stoop normally made her. “I was ensuring that the crew had the wherewithal and the experience to dock with an unfamiliar craft such as your illustrious warcraft to which you have so wisely redirected—”

  “You gave an order for the crew to fly us to the Callyac’s Promise. Reverse it and maybe I’ll try you after this is all over rather than executing you where you stand.”

  Zanti stared at her. She could kill the woman easily enough, and then all she had to do was keep Varro from raising the alarm for a ten-minute trip to the Promise. Once they were there she would have the resources to take care of the rest. These thoughts took about a second to go through her mind, and then she stepped forward.

  Varro saw the grim-faced woman in the cloak-gown grasp the hem of her garment in an odd, tense way and start to move it up and forward, then a pistol-shot made him start. Zanti, pop-eyed with astonishment, doubled over and skidded backwards into the red stain that had appeared on the cockpit doors behind her. As she fell forward onto her knees Calpurnia stepped forward and fired another round into the back of her head, bursting it and sending the metal augmetic plugs popping out of their mounts and scattering across the floor.

  As Varro looked on, his face stricken, Calpurnia stepped over to the body and nudged the cape-hem with her foot. It writhed and straightened itself as she pushed a curve into it.

  “Memory-wire and weights,” she said. “Popular blue-blood weapon on Hazhim. You can put a pock-mark into steel plate if you’re good enough with it.” She sighed. “For nothing, too, that was. There are far more of us aboard the Promise than I think she knew about.”

  She turned back to Varro.

  “Make sure the crew get the order that our destination is the Baron Mykal. This is your ship now, after all.”

  Near Galata space, Gyre Aurucon,

  Inner Hydraphur system

  The flotilla had come around the curve of Galata, blasting itself forward and out of proximity with its Navy and Arbites shadows. The Bassaan and the Magritta’s Arrow, the two most powerful ships with the most aggressive commands, were the first to surge away after the fleeing Omicron’s Dart.

  The slowest, the Sounding of Aurucon and the Proserpina Dawn, had it worst as they lumbered about to follow. The Navy had not forgotten the flotilla’s conduct on its arrival and when the Bassaan powered up and discharged its first burst at the Dart, that was enough. The Voice of the Seraph, a Furious-class grand cruiser whose gun batteries rivalled those of some battleships, opened up first, using barely half its firepower to cripple the Proserpina Dawn outright. As the sleek container craft that had been Halpander’s home for nineteen years coasted away from Galata at a drunken angle, bleeding burning air from the wounds in its hull, the light cruisers which made up the Voice’s squadron-mates equally deftly scythed through the Sounding of Aurucon’s enginarium with a co-ordinated lance salvo that sent plasma from its drive room coursing through ruptured bulkheads and incinerating three-quarters of the crew.

  The Gyga VII, the fat nugget of a ship that had housed Magos Dyobann’s secret chambers, wrapped itself in layers of void shields that not even the flotilla masters had known it possessed and opened its engines, trying to accelerate through the middle of the flotilla formation and past the Navy ships. But by putting up its shields it made itself a target to one of the few vessels that could both keep pace with it and do it damage. The Kovash Venator, a spear-slender Long Serpent-class cruiser with powerful engines, sped out to intercept the Gyga and flanked it for another hour, battering at its shields with plasma and macroshells. Finally, its hull crumpled and drives damaged and with another Navy squadron closing in from its patrol route on an intercept course, the Gyga accepted its fate, burned retros, dumped off its velocity and prepared to be boarded.

  The Magritta’s Arrow tried to ran too, followed by the little escort-sized Kortika that had been Zanti’s home and domain. Kortika, not built for speed, tried to skim over the surface of Galata to hide behind the moon’s curve, Her captain realised that Galata was as fortified as every other body in Hydraphur when a great battery of plasma silos in the surface swatted the shields off his ship with contemptuous ease and a trio of giant lance turrets came to bear to finish what the guns had started. Kortika blew out in a storm that sent static and interference screaming through unshielded systems for twenty kilometres around.

  On the other side of the planet, torpedo bays had slid open their shutters in artificial rift-valleys and six mammoth spikes of adamantium tore through space after the fleeing Magritta’s Arrow. Two burst as they tried to fly through the heat of its exhaust, and another disintegrated under fire from the Arrow’s point-defence arrays, but the final three plunged into its hull like lethal hypodermics, exploding deep in the layers of decks they had torn through. The dark, smouldering hulk that had been Magritta’s Arrow tumbled on through space for another seventy thousand kilometres before four Firestorm escorts drew alongside it and methodically broke the wreck down with their batteries into fragments no bigger than the pulpit Calpurnia had stood on in her courtroom.

  Last was the Bassaan, which at least had the minor victory of smashing Omicron’s Dart to pieces with its second and third salvoes before answering fire from the Baron Mykal and Voice of the Seraph stove in its shields on both sides and left it crippled and fighting to stay functioning.

  Aboard the Callyac’s Promise, stranded above Selena Secundus and cut off from the flotilla, there was a brief and abortive straggle as a third of the crew tried to fight their way through the tikks and
get the ship out to join their fellows. The Arbites put it down without mercy, and the summary execution of every rebel crewman and the news filtering through of what was happening to the rest of the flotilla was enough to put pay to any more ideas.

  There was mopping up, of course, salvage and arrests, damage control around Galata and the recovery of a saviour pod from the Omicron’s Dart containing a badly injured and barely conscious Navigator who was hastily collected and spirited out of the system by agents of House Dorel. This was generally considered to be the end of the Phrax Mutiny, and that was how it was entered in most of the Imperial records. For Shira Calpurnia, it didn’t end there.

  The sanctioned liner

  Gann-Luctis, outer Hydraphur

  The charter lay on the table, unheeded. Varro Phrax knelt on the floor, Ksana cradled in his arms as Dreyder was cradled in hers. The blood from their death-wounds mingled and pooled under them, and slicked Varro’s chest and arms as he tried to hold them both to himself at once. Tears trickled from his face and mingled with their blood.

  Shira Calpurnia stood a few paces behind him, hands laced respectfully before her, head bowed. They had passed signs of the fighting, where staff and crew loyal to Varro had tried to wrest the ship from Domasa’s agents and the delegation of Gunarvo’s governor; that was as much as she had been able to piece together. For the most part they had succeeded, and the Gann-Luctis had let the Baron Mykal close and the shuttle carrying Calpurnia and Varro to board with no resistance.