“Drop now,” Bel called.
“Dropping the bay,” Lanjer said. Sal felt weightless for a split second, reminiscent to his time in orbit, as the loading bay dropped. Then there was havoc.
“Go! Go! Go!” Lieutenant Quan shouted, and the platoon rushed forward, howling like hungry wolves with the scent of blood in their noses. Yuki killed every man waiting outside for them, but there were plenty waiting inside, and the bolts were flying almost before the bay dropped.
This was insane. They had a ten-meter mad dash with not a scrap of cover larger than his head between him and the palace. Yuki kept firing, but he didn’t have an angle into the palace, so all his shots could do, besides glassing the patio, was scare the men inside, and to limited effect.
Several of Quan’s men lit up personal energy shields and ran out first. A few others behind them shot grenades from underslung launchers. Explosions caused the ground to rumble and the enemy fire died. Still, Sal saw five of Quan’s men fall. One managed to unintentionally take a bolt for Sal, rushing into the line of fire. His breastplate must have been older, it split in two at the site of the hit and he fell screaming.
“Cease fire, Yuki,” Sal called. “Cease fire!”
Yuki stopped firing and Quan’s men finished their run, hugging the remaining walls of the palace.
Sal stood next to the Kid, his hip to the palace wall where there were still bricks over the palace’s nano-carbonate endoskeleton. He looked with something like awe at the molten bricks and bubbling mortar.
Quan pointed at two men and made a pulling apart gesture. The two men each pulled a plasma grenade, furnished by Sal, the last of Lekem’s grenades. They activated them and tossed them into the palace.
Sal would already have been deaf had he not been wearing his helmet. Thanks to its noise-filtering qualities, the explosions were only movie theater loud as bits of wood and marble splashed out of the hole that used to be a doorway.
Quan pumped his fist and his men leapt into the hole. The first one fell, his face a blackened mess that reminded Sal of a burnt steak. The second staggered back holding his shoulder. The others didn’t come back out. Maybe they got through, maybe they died inside. Bolts were still flying.
Another squad entered. More bolts flashed and crashed like thunder going off right next to his ears. Then Sal and Vance followed, weapons up.
Sal found himself in a wide foyer that must have been magnificent once. Marble tiles of white and black made up the floor, but those that weren’t smoking were covered in blood and particulate. Brilliant striped wallpaper hung in ribbons on the wall, blackened. A pair of lavish, carpeted stairwells spun upwards to the floor above. A statue was ripped off its podium at the ankles, the pieces lying everywhere. Its face looked upwards at the ceiling with the blank eyes of a corpse.
Men carpeted the floor and Sal had a hard time picking out friend from foe.
“Goyo,” Quan said, pointing at a lift door to one side. “Tag the lift. First squad, hold here. Stay sharp.” He looked at Salazar. “It should be safe enough to start moving the wounded.”
Sal nodded. He switched to the ship channel. “Dr. Jens,” he said, you guys can start fixing our messes, over. Yuki, keep an eye out in case someone gets in their way.”
“We’re coming down,” Aylie said in response.
“Solid copy, Cap,” said Yuki.
“Second and third squads,” Quan continued. “We’re moving up. Weapons hot.”
Sal followed Quan’s men up one of the two stairwells. They met in the middle at a landing that spilled out into a balcony area. Huge windows looked out over the destroyed garden below. The second floor was mostly quiet. Sal hoped this was because the decoy attack had drained the palace of its guards, and no more fighting needed doing here.
The popcorn rattle of small arms fire told him his hopes were in vain. One of Quan’s men, a woman, actually, with fair skin and dark hair staggered into Sal’s view, clutching her chest, her grasp on her weapon tentative. She fell to the floor and one of Quan’s medics ran up to her.
“Stairway, sir,” called another. Sal looked. Indeed, another stairway rose up to the third floor.
“That’s where we’re headed,” Sal said.
Quan nodded. His face was stern but with a hint of worry. He was losing a lot of men.
“Second squad,” he said. “Hold here.” Then he looked at the medic. “Raz, status.”
The medic looked up at him with dead eyes. “She’s gone. This G-3 armor is gat-wat.”
Quan nodded. “Third squad let’s move.”
Sal and Vance followed third squad up. It occurred to Sal that the squads matched the numbered floors and wondered if Quan had intended that for ease of remembering who was where.
More crackles sounded, too loud to be the sound of someone dropping something heavy. Too loud for firecrackers. Not ahead. The sound came from below. No one was talking on the comms, so it couldn’t be that bad, he hoped.
As the squad fanned out down more divergent hallways, Sal crept deeper into the palace. As third squad thinned out to cover an increasing number of intersecting hallways, he helped clear a few himself.
“Captain,” someone called over the comm. The last voice he expected to hear from. It was Dothin.
“I’m a little busy, Lanseidis,” Sal said.
“It’s Niko. He’s not in the life pod. He isn’t out there with you, is he?”
Sal looked at Vance and his eyes narrowed at the Kid’s nervous expression. Sal switched off the ship comm and looked at the Kid. “What?”
“He’s with the girl,” Vance said. He put his shoulder to a corner and then pied the intersection. He waved with his left hand as if to say “clear.”
“How do you know that?”
Vance shrugged. “Now’s not a good time for explanations, Cap.”
Salazar felt himself seethe. He reopened the channel with Dothin. “I have just learned that there is a reasonable bet he’s with Ms. Vares.”
“And she flew the coop, right?” Dothin asked.
“Afraid so,” Sal said. “If I see him, I promise to let you know. Kol out.”
They came to a set of wooden doors. The meticulous carvings in the wood were familiar. Dothin had carved them and was able to present the original drawings. Ashla said they were the doors to her father’s office. Anatheret had made all his announcements from there.
Sal lifted his hand and snapped. Quan looked at him and Sal pointed at the doors. Quan made more gestures, and the squad formed up at the door.
“Our high-value target is likely on the other side of this door,” Quan whispered. “Breach and clear.”
Sal raised a finger. The man with the flashbang grenade froze.
“And anyone who shoots the greasy guy with the black suit loses a trigger finger,” Sal said. “Because I’m gonna cut their whole sawking arm off.”
Nobody smiled. They were all still business. Maybe they would make jokes when the battle was over.
Sal wondered what they were waiting for. He wondered if, maybe, they were waiting for him. He turned and found they were waiting for Quan’s man running a bypass on the door console. He finished tapping something on his bypass kit, then stuck his thumb up.
Quan counted on his fingers and Sal remembered the Almighty Zed.
Three, two, one. The console guy tapped the button, the doors unlocked. Quan’s man with the grenade pushed the door open and dropped the grenade into the room. Sal had the ridiculous idea that the man might have forgotten to activate the grenade and that was his last one. There was a flash and a bang, like a bolt of lightning struck the room, and Quan’s men rushed through the doors with Sal right behind them. He had slung his repeater and pulled his silver-plated laser pistol. It was more appropriate for close quarters anyway.
Three men lay on the floor, APC military police. Sal scanned the room. It was a huge office, almost the size of his loading bay. Huge shelves sat against the finely papered walls, laden with fancy and expens
ive curiosities. There were a few upholstered chairs about and a couch against one wall. The room was flooded with morning light from the massive windows. A huge carved desk sat in the center of the room and behind it an empty chair.
“The void is Anatheret?” Vance asked.
Sal strode further into the room, checking behind furniture a man couldn’t hide behind. He stepped around the desk. The screen was up, a communication’s window showing. It flashed. Was there a face there the second Sal looked at the screen, or was it his imagination?
Sal crouched, and felt his eyes go wide.
Salazar had expected to see this puppeteering defense minister to threaten. He’d expected him to bribe or bargain. He never expected him to cower.
Defense Minister Tanno Anatheret moaned a cry when he saw Salazar and, from the new smell emanating from him, emptied his bladder.
“P-p-please,” Anatheret stuttered. “Please, don’t kill me. Don’t hurt me.”
Salazar grabbed the man by the collar of his expensive black suit, ripped him out from hiding and shoved him at the desk, then aimed his pistol at him, its muzzle inches from his nose. Quan’s squad surrounded him, as if he was a Shaumri and had to be covered from every direction or he might blur and kill them all.
Quan was talking into his comm. Sal lowered the volume of that channel, more interested in what the DM had to say.
“Please,” Anatheret said. “Please. How did I get here? I don’t know how I got here.”
“This is sawking dog scuff, Cap!” Vance said, aiming his repeater at Anatheret’s head. The defense minister squealed.
“Please,” he cried, hands out before him as if they might stop a particle bolt. Eyes squeezed shut as if he might make the guns disappear.
Salazar had seen many people lie. He’d sat at a thousand card tables and picked out hundreds of tiny tells in total strangers. He’d threatened lots of people at gunpoint. Some feigned fear to buy time, others to punctuate a trap or ruse. As much as Salazar hated this man, as much as he wanted to put a perfect hole in his head for instigating the double-cross that got Lekem and his people killed, that ultimately got Olo killed, he couldn’t. This man was pitiable.
“You don’t know where you are?” Salazar asked. He was still pointing his pistol at the man, but his finger wasn’t on the trigger.
Anatheret opened his eyes. He was sweating and shuttering like he was stricken by a palsy. Hope filled his expression.
“No,” he said. He looked around. “Are we still on Ios?”
“Ios?” Salazar asked.
Quan finished his call and stepped into the circle. He nodded at Anatheret but aimed his question at Sal.
“What’s going on?” he whispered.
“Yes,” Anatheret said at the same time. “I mean this place looks like it might be the Bastion, but I don’t recognize this room.”
Sal shook his head. He kept his gaze locked on Anatheret. “Do you know who you are?”
The man nodded.
“Assistant Secretary Tanno Anatheret.”
“Assistant Secretary?”
“Yes,” Anatheret said, “of course. Under Ramis Kyo, Secretary of the Small Arms Technology Division.”
A thousand questions flooded through Salazar’s head, but they were punctuated by an explosion in town. He didn’t have time for this. He had to stop the fighting.
“Stand down, Lieutenant,” Salazar said, holstering his own weapon. He stepped closer to Anatheret and the man bristled with fear all over again. Sal lifted him to his feet, and then set him in his chair. Then he pushed him up to the desk.
“Okay,” Sal said, pulling up the desk’s communications window. He looked for an administrative channel and then realized the Alliance’s comms would all be screwed up and he chose an open broadcast instead. “You’re going to broadcast a ceasefire order to this channel, do you understand? I want you to tell all Alliance forces in the AO to stand down.”
Anatheret paled. “What do you think I am? I’m not a defense minister,” he said. “I’m an assistant secretary. I don’t have the authority—”
Sal, despite his best judgment, went with his gut response. “A lot of people are going to die needlessly, if you don’t send that order. Today, you are a defense minister. Okay?”
Anatheret’s eyes widened but he nodded. He looked down at his clothes for the first time, with a brand-new surprise in his face. He straightened his tie and pulled his collar smooth. Then he combed his fingers through his hair and took a deep breath. He tapped the button and spoke.
“This is—” he looked up at Sal for a second, then back at the screen “—Defense Minister Anatheret. I am ordering all Alliance forces in the AO to stand down. Repeat, all Alliance forces are to stand down.”
Sal pointed at Lieutenant Quan and then tapped at his ear.
“This is Meritus Alpha,” Quan said. “We have secured a ceasefire order from the Alliance DM. Repeat; the Alliance is standing down.”
But the last was drown out by the chear of his men, pumping their fists in the air.
Chapter Fifty-Two:
To Every Season
Nix couldn’t help but be amazed. The room Ashla stuck him in was small. Maybe two by three meters. Its furniture consisted of a few chairs, a low table in between them, a wall screen and a shelf. It was all done in a style that appeared both fancy and, to Nix, foolish. The chairs had scrolling arms and backrest with exposed wood the color of potting soil. The table sat on a quartet of spindly legs carved out of the same almost-black wood. The tabletop was glass etched in some scrolling pattern that matched the curls on the chairs. The glass picked up the early morning sky in sparkles of every color. The feet of the shelving unit were scrolled that way too.
He looked at the furniture and wondered why. What was the use of the scrolly exposed wood and the spindly legs and the curling feet? It just made the items fragile. The second later, Nix realized this was the kind of thing Dothin made. In fact, Nix remembered carving with similar patterns, patterns supplied by Dothin. He’d never seen Dothin work with upholstered items, but the woodwork could have been his, might have been. It wasn’t anything like the furniture Dothin kept in his flat. Dothin’s stuff was all comfortable, but simple. Nix looked at the chair and thought he wouldn’t want to sit in it long, but he had slept nights on Dothin’s sofa, especially before Dothin could get him a bed.
But as Nix looked around the room, another revelation hit him. This stupid little room, probably the smallest room in the palace besides a closet or a bathroom, was filled with wealth greater than Nix could almost imagine.
He picked up a bust of a man in white marble that would probably cost Dothin a few years rent. He looked at his reflection in a mirror. Not a screen bouncing back the feed from its camera, an actual mirror made with glass and silver. The shelves were not cluttered, but they were tastefully filled with all kinds of strange and expensive-looking. items. He surveyed a lacquered ceramic decanter all creamy white with little creatures done up in curving lines of blue lacquer and matching cups. He opened a carved wooden box smelling of pine and realized it was a portable humidor for a set of dark cigars, fitted with little slots for silver lighters.
It filled him with a sense of awe. There was so much richness to the galaxy outside his cruddy little station. This was followed by scorn. People living in flats the size of Dothin’s bedroom on Lodebar were paying taxes to a government that spent their money filling stupid little rooms like this one with treasures. Finally, it filled him with shock. No matter how much Ashla seemed like a normal girl—not too unlike one he might have met on Lodebar but with better table manners and a greater vocabulary with which to be imperious—she was not normal. She grew up here, amidst all this wealth. And that thought made Nix feel a little dizzy.
A loud crack rang out in the hall followed by the sound of a body hitting the floor. Nix panicked and then realized the noise couldn’t have been a gunshot. It was only loud. Nix tiptoed to the door and pressed his ear to it. As
hla was talking.
“Tell me where my father is,” she said. She sounded stressed, nervous. Without thinking much of it, Nix pulled the silent pistol from its magnetic holster and lifted it, ready to fire.
“Okay,” said a man. “Just put the gun down. I’ll take you to him.” His voice sounded patronizing, the tone trying too hard to seem sincere or scared. Nix mistrusted it immediately.
“You’re lying,” Ashla said. Her voice was getting shrill. She was struggling to sound controlled which made her even more shrill. “Be honest with me. For the first time ever be honest with me. I promise I won’t punish you for bad news.”
Nix heard a pause and the same man started speaking again.
“Ms. Vares,” he said, and he almost seemed to draw the end out too long, hissing like a snake. “You put that weapon down right now. It isn’t ladylike for you to hold such a thing and threaten an old friend. And furthermore Nazeshon.”
Nix narrowed his eyes at the last part. Had he misheard?
Ashla’s voice went grave. All of a sudden, she sounded tired. “Don’t do that,” she said. “I’ll shoot. Don’t—”
“Nazeshon,” the man said again. Nix hadn’t misheard. What was he saying?
“No,” Ashla moaned.
“Nazeshon.”
Nix opened the door and stepped out. The door didn’t so much as peep as it turned on well-oiled hinges. Out in the corridor, an MP lay on the floor smelling of urine and shuttering like he had an electrical current going through him.
Ashla was on her feet but looking more asleep than awake. Her stunner hung from her lax fingers. Her eyes fluttered. Her shoulders slumped, and she looked like she might tip over onto her face.
In front of Ashla stood the man she must have been talking to. His head was shaven bald over his fat, jowly face. He wore ornate robes Nix had seen before during the Scions’ Processions on Lodebar. Before noticing Nix the fat man was surveying Ashla’s stooping form with the smug eyes of a predator who had trapped his prey.
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