Exile (Tales of the Acheron Book 3)

by Rick Partlow

  She was gathering a breath to yell at him when a badly-aimed burst of KE-gun fire stitched across the cockpit of the ducted-fan helicopter, punching through the polymer with little effort, and she realized that he was right. There was no way they could have gotten the hopper’s fans spun up in time to take off before the troops inside reached them. She followed the bounty hunter to the small groundcar, throwing open one of the rear passenger doors and laying Kan-Ten’s prone form out across the seat, shoving his feet inside and pushing it shut.

  Another burst of tantalum shards from the fire escape platform chewed away a rear corner of the rover’s roof with a sharp, ripping crack, and she felt the vehicle beginning to surge forward before she even had the front passenger’s side door open. She put a foot on the running board and yanked herself inside, feeling the seat moorings creaking at the impact of her weight as the door slammed shut from the sudden acceleration.

  Singh ducked instinctively as another burst of gunfire bit into the front corner of the hood, but then they were on the road, bouncing along the ruts and cracks with the wild abandon of a stolen car. She settled back into the seat, trying to catch her breath while she cursed in four languages, including one that technically had no swear words.

  “Is he all right?” Singh wondered, his eyes fixed on the road as he guided the battered old vehicle with its manual steering wheel.

  She suppressed an amused snort, wondering why the hell Singh would care. She checked on her friend, anyway, and saw him moaning softly, his head lolling, still semi-conscious.

  “I think so,” she estimated. “Tahni have thick skulls.”

  She looked down at the pistol still in her hand, considered holstering it, but decided against it; given the events of the day so far, it seemed smarter to hold on to it for now. She looked over at the bounty hunter, deciding that he looked pretty good with his bionics replaced. Maybe she should consider doing it…she certainly had enough money now, stashed in accounts all over the Commonwealth. She hadn’t bothered to check the balance on most of them in twenty years.

  I’ll think about that if I live through this.

  “Where are we going?” she asked him.

  “My place,” he told her. “We can hold up there and wait this out.”

  “Wait what out?” She shook her head.

  He looked at her with an eyebrow cocked in obvious disdain.

  “Jordi has all the weapons he wanted now,” he reminded her. “What the hell do you think he’s going to do with them?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Reality swam into focus behind a haze of intense pain, and Kan-Ten thought for a moment that the dim light from the apartment’s rickety lamp was a laser beam boring into his optic nerve and turning his brain into an expanding ionized gas. His hands went to the sides of his head and he moaned with the misery of a dull ache that seemed to come from everywhere.

  “Where am I?” he asked, unthinking. If he were in the hands of his enemies, it might have made more sense to remain silent.

  Korri Fontenot loomed over him, hands on her hips, and what he’d come to know as a relieved expression on her face.

  “About time you woke up,” she said. “I was beginning to think you had a brain bleed, and we’re fresh out of auto-docs.”

  “I used my portable medical sensors on you, but they’re not calibrated for Tahni.” That was Singh, standing just behind the woman, gesturing with the small device. It wasn’t something most people would carry around, but it made sense that he would.

  “Where am I?” he repeated, slowly pushing himself up. He was on a rickety, narrow bed in a small, one-room apartment, dingy and poorly appointed even for the Periphery. “What happened?”

  “Jordi Abdullah has made his play,” Fontenot told him, grim-faced. “Watch.”

  She pulled out her ‘link and propped it up on the small table, setting its internal projector to display on the wall, a white rectangle of light that highlighted the web of cracks in the old plaster. Jordi Abdullah’s face replaced the bare white, his coldly savage visage broken by those same cracks and split by a fierce scowl.

  “Citizens of Gennich, I am Jordi Abdullah and I am in control. For those who doubt that statement, allow me to demonstrate.”

  The view shifted from the closeup of his face to the exterior of the planetary Constabulary headquarters, its fortress-like lines presumably intimately familiar to anyone who lived in the city. The front doors were open and two dozen men and women in the characteristic dark blue uniforms of the Brigantian Constabulary were lined up single-file a few meters from the entrance, on their knees, hands clasped behind their heads. A couple looked as if they’d been beaten, while another had a makeshift bandage tied around a wound in her upper arm, the white rag soaked with red. Jordi’s hired muscle guarded them, most holding Tahni KE-guns, but a couple armed with weapons seized from the police armory.

  Another line of deputies was arrayed a few meters ahead of the captives, this one unguarded and unmoving. There were ten of them, some torn to pieces by explosions but most shot down, their uniforms and armor stained with drying blood. Kan-Ten didn’t see Constable Freeman among them and he wondered if that was because he had yet to be captured or he’d left no intact body behind to display.

  “My forces occupy the planetary Constabulary,” Jordi’s voice spoke over the images, “as well as the fusion reactor complex.”

  The image shifted again, this time to the bulging white curve of a dome somewhere outside the city. The cooling towers and steam pipes that ringed the building were typical of the sort of cookie-cutter fusion reactor that powered cities on dozens of colony worlds just like this one, slapped together a century ago from fabricated parts by the old Colonial Authority. They were easy to build, easy to maintain, and reliable as the tides. There would be some isolated homes and businesses and planetary services that generated their own power through solar panels or handy hydroelectric or geothermal units, but nearly everyone in this city and the next two settlements over would rely on the fusion reactor.

  Jordi’s men patrolled the outside, making a show of manning the guard station, and when the broadcast traveled inside to one of the control rooms, the technicians there were also under the watchful eyes of the cartel troopers.

  “We also hold the water treatment plant and the data center,” Jordi continued, the image shifting back to his face. Kan-Ten thought he was trying to appear confident and satisfied, but the effect was lost on him. “Things do not have to be unpleasant. All business can carry on just as before.” He smiled. “In fact, I expect the economy to experience a sharp upturn in the near future. Just go to your jobs, stop at the local bar, relax in your homes, everything as usual…but do not attempt to interfere with my people.” The smile disappeared. “Individuals who try to disrupt the smooth and orderly transition of power will be dealt with harshly. Anyone who gives aid and comfort to my enemies will be put in a cell, their goods and their businesses forfeit. Any attempts to organize a resistance against me or my people will be put down; you’ve seen our weapons, but that isn’t the half of it.”

  This time the image in the projection was a view of the sky over the plains outside the city. A pair of shuttles screamed overhead, low enough that Kan-Ten could make out the hardpoints where weapons had been affixed.

  “We have armed air support, and if there is any show of armed resistance, we will use it. I’m sure you all believe that the government will come along and set everything right soon. Good. Go on believing that, let them take care of it. That way, whatever happens, you’ll be alive to see it.”

  The man was oily and persuasive when he wanted to be; Kan-Ten had seen it before, back when he and Fontenot had been in his service.

  “As for the non-human residents of this city,” Jordi went on, “I have a special message for you from my newest lieutenant, whom I’ve appointed as your representative.”

  Kan-Ten leaned forward, his fingers clenching in the surface of the bed, pulling himself to his feet.
The view on the screen had shifted to the right side, away from Jordi’s face to Vala-Kel. He stood beside the cartel kingpin, in Constable Freeman’s office, his stance a Tahni reflection of the smug confidence on the human’s face.

  “My people,” Vala-Kel began, speaking Tahni, and Kan-Ten wished a thousand times that he’d killed the male when he had the chance, “Jordi Abdullah is our ally and friend. He seeks to free us from the oppression of the Commonwealth military, and has begun this by deposing the planetary government. Now that the shackles we wore have been removed, we can begin to build a home here, a place for others to come and join our struggle.”

  He shifted his shoulders, moved his hands in a way that would be meaningless to most humans but spoke volumes to Kan-Ten and other Tahni watching. It was a subtle hint of threat, a promise of punishment.

  “I know there are those who would seek to use this situation to further their own agendas, to spread lies about me or our new allies, but I trust that you all will do the right thing and reject these selfish and unworthy blasphemers who deny the True Emperor and oppose his will. Know that, in this matter, I have the complete support of the esteemed Matriarch.” He reached out a hand and pulled the old female into the frame of the shot, and Kan-Ten felt a jolt of shock go through him at the casual indecency of it, of a male touching a female in public, of any male touching the Matriarch.

  “The Matriarch is well, as you can see,” Vala-Kel announced, “and she will remain well as long as no one chooses to interfere and bring her to harm.”

  Kan-Ten could see the abject hatred in the old female’s body language, but she spoke not a word, and he wondered what threat they held over her to prevent her from condemning their actions. He felt himself begin shivering with impotent rage, and very nearly didn’t register Jordi Abdullah’s final word of warning for the citizens of the city to avoid congregating in the streets in groups of more than four until further notice. He barely noticed when the recording ended and the projector went dark.

  “We’ve failed,” he said, bitterness heavy in the words and in the center of his being. “With the life of the Matriarch at risk, the Tahni here will never risk opposing Jordi Abdullah, and he’s already neutralized the only other armed and organized resistance on this world by taking out the Constabulary.”

  “Yeah,” Fontenot admitted, putting her ‘link back on her belt. Her tone was quiet, her manner subdued. Kan-Ten couldn’t remember seeing her this way before. “Even if Ash and Sandi accomplish their mission and take out the Pirates in the belt, it’s a fait accompli now. Jordi owns the town and the Acheron couldn’t do anything even if they took down those shuttles. We don’t have a way to unseat La Sombra from the Constabulary building.”

  “Well, aren’t you two the cheery bunch?” Singh commented, leaning back against the wall by the bathroom door, arms folded across his chest. “So, we’re just giving up, are we?”

  “No one said anything about giving up, Singh,” Fontenot snapped, impatience writ on half of her face. “It’s just more complicated now.”

  “Killing Jordi Abdullah would uncomplicate it,” the bounty hunter said, stroking his beard with the fingers of his left hand, as if both were still novel to him.

  “You try to waltz in there and take him out, you’d better make peace with whatever gods you pray to. He’s a paranoid at the best of times, and you can bet your ass he won’t set foot outside the fortress until he has things well in hand out here.”

  “Then we’ll get into the fortress,” he suggested. “There’s got to be a way.” He grinned lopsidedly. “Perhaps I could turn you into him for the reward and regain his trust.”

  “I think I liked you better when you were trying to kill me.”

  The knock on the door was hard and abrupt, and so was the reaction to it. Fontenot and Singh drew their guns with a speed Kan-Ten wouldn’t have believed except that he’d seen it before, both of them moving out of the line of the entrance. Kan-Ten glanced around for a weapon and found a pulse carbine propped up in a chair; he grabbed it and went down to a knee, training it on the door.

  There was silence for a long moment, as the three of them waited for a boot through the thin door, or a shot, or a breaching charge.

  “Open the fucking door.”

  The voice was authoritative but also hushed and brittle, pained. Kan-Ten didn’t recognize it, but he saw in Fontenot’s eye that she did. She held up a hand to him and Singh, then moved slowly and carefully over to the door, her pistol held up at high ready as she reached for the latch. Kan-Ten saw her suck in a breath and grit her teeth before she yanked it open.

  A human nearly collapsed through the opening, stumbling into her supporting grasp. He was a big man, solid and brawny from the look of him, though Fontenot held him up as easily as if he were a child. His skin was coal-dark, his hair long and grey and tied into a ponytail down his back, and his tan jacket was stained with blood, at least some of it his own. A battered and well-used rocket revolver hung from the wounded man’s left hand, as if he’d forgotten it was there and only held onto it from habit. Kan-Ten rushed forward to close the door behind him, glancing carefully down the narrow stairwell to make sure the man hadn’t been followed.

  Fontenot sat him down in one of the rickety chairs and it creaked dire warnings under his mass but somehow held. She pulled open his jacket, slapping aside his feeble attempts to stop her, and found what looked to Kan-Ten’s eyes like a through-and-through wound from a Tahni KE-gun just below his floating ribs on the left side. The shirt beneath it was soaked red and she ripped it free with a casual, impatient tug and tossed it away.

  “Get me something to stop the bleeding,” she told Singh, pulling the revolver out of the big man’s hand and setting it on the table. The bounty hunter nodded and began foraging through his medical kit. “I figured you were dead by now, Constable.”

  Constable, Kan-Ten thought, his suspicions confirmed. This was Freeman, the man Fontenot had visited upon their arrival. He hadn’t seen him, but he matched her description.

  “I figured I was, too,” Freeman rasped, eyes half-closed, panting softly, pain written on his face. “Turned out I was exaggerating.”

  “How did you know to find us here?” Singh wondered, leaning over the wound in the Constable’s side with a small medical device Kan-Ten didn’t recognize. Something flared at the contacts on the business end of the thing and the Constable gasped, then fixed his teeth in a snarl against the pain until he finally relaxed. When Singh withdrew the device, the slow flow of blood had ceased, and a line of charred skin and blood showed the wound had been closed. Then, before the Constable could pull away, he slapped a drug patch on the man’s neck, a painkiller, Kan-Ten guessed.

  “Shit,” Freeman moaned, slumping back heavily in the chair. Then he seemed to remember the bounty hunter’s question. “I’m the damned sheriff of this town.”

  Fontenot barked a laugh. “You’re a planetary constable and you’re loopy. I think you’ve lost too much blood.”

  “Whatever you want to call it.” Freeman shrugged, eyes blinking fitfully as the drugs began to take effect. “Someone like you comes around, Ms. Fontenot, practically announcing that you’re here to stick your nose into my business, I keep an eye on your comings and goings.” He looked at her sidelong, one eye closed as if it was an effort to keep her in focus. “Why do you think it was so easy to steal that hopper?”

  “You got away from Jordi Abdullah,” Singh said. “So why come here? You thought we’d be willing to hide you?”

  “No, Mr. Bounty Hunter,” the big man said, grinning broadly. “I came here so you could help me take back the Constabulary building and kill that cartel motherfucker.”

  ***

  “That son of a bitch,” Sandi slapped at the control to end the playback, freezing it on the smug, smirking face of Jordi Abdullah. “He played us, led us around out here until it was too late.”

  She wished she could hit something, but all it would accomplish in zero-g was to sen
d her floating across the cockpit, and the Acheron’s cockpit wasn’t that large; she’d wind up banging off the overhead and it would be embarrassing. She wiped Abdullah’s face off the viewscreen and the external camera view of the asteroid base replaced it, the glittering, silvery metal of the docking facilities reflecting the far-off rays of Belenus.

  “We should be heading back there already,” she told Ash, and she realized the words sounded like an accusation even though that wasn’t how she’d intended them.

  It wasn’t his fault that the Savage/Slaughter Captain had insisted on a detailed, recorded report of Benitez’s death. She fought back a muttered curse at the memory of exactly how painful and awkward that had been. And it had taken hours, excruciating and mind-numbingly tedious.

  “He can’t have more than a couple shuttles…we can take them out and blow that fucking ‘fortress’ of his to shit in a half an hour.”

  Ash was belted loosely into the pilot’s seat, and he looked handsome and intelligent and disgustingly reasonable, hands clasped in front of him, brows knitted in thought.

  “That would probably feel good,” he admitted, “but it wouldn’t solve the problem. He’s holding the whole city hostage, including the Tahni Matriarch, and we’d probably wind up killing them.” He sighed. “Not to mention the fact that he might have control of the defense lasers.”

  “I don’t think so,” she argued. “If he did, he’d have bragged about it in his little propaganda video.” She waved a hand demonstratively at the screen where they’d played the recording. “He can keep anyone else from using them, but the planetary government probably has some pretty strong biometric locks on the firing codes.” She pulled her hair out of her face with a sweep of her hands, wishing she had something to tie it back with.