by A. D. Bloom
Biko shakes his head. "I can't transmit on the effing thing and Anton Cyning won't help me. He's sulking at the back of the bridge about all the money he just lost."
That made Chun laugh.
"Tig Meester had showed me how to work it earlier," Ram said. "But I can't do it now and Mister Meester's still on Guerrero." Dana filled Captain Chun's glass again as Ram continued. "So Hive Kesik keeps calling from the planet and saying, "Help! Taipan! Surrender no!" and "Alliance help!" and we think we know what's going on. There's no comms with Taipan still because the bugs are jamming locally and I can't figure out how to tell them to stop in Shediri. So no comms with Taipan. We finally get to the planet, launch junks, come down through those shit-ugly pink clouds, descend into the palace complex, and land in a plaza of some kind almost 60 meters away from their landing zone. It was too tight in there right up close to Taipan. So we've got to approach on foot. It's paved sort of, like cement, but not stone...like something that came out a bug's ass and dried hard. We can see the ship between the weird towers and the Shediri have all these ground vehicles parked in the street with frontal armor plates like giant beetles and they've got barricades set up. The Shediri have put barricades up all the way around the landing zone where the streets run in. And they're all hiding behind them in their stripey dazzle armor, twitching all those arms and hissing like they're mad. Pretty soon, we can hear the MA-48s whumping and we're thinking oh, no, here we go again, but the bugs just stayed down and clattered those limbs because they had orders. When we get to the barricade, they move out of our way so we can peek over. I guess Dana must have seen us land because I looked over this barricade and running across this red leafy lawn in front of Taipan screaming "Die, bug, die!" out the speakers in her suit is none other than Captain Dana Sellis. Her crew is charging behind her with rifles and they're all screaming mad murder, too. Including Margo and my young son - all of them - screaming like they're trying to scare the Shediri out of their way. I notice something weird about Dana's MA-48. It's too long and it's lit up on front. When I lock on her, zoom, and look, I see it's because she's got a plasma blade fixed on the end of it like a tiny, 15cm plasma bayonet."
She said, "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
"Dana was ready to gut some bugs," he said. "So she's charging their barricades with the bayonet, firing..."
"I didn't know the Shediri had orders to disengage from us," she tried to explain.
"Don't ruin the story, Captain," he said. "Dana here and her crew don't know anything about the new alliance with Hive Kesik. They don't like bugs much after that day and they think this is an extraction under enemy fire so they're making a break for the junks they saw come down and they're throwing grenades and firing rounds liberally as they charge at these barricades. The hundred or so Shediri right there are waving their arms around and running away because they've got orders to avoid all contact and the Taipan crew just keep chasing them and chasing them...past the barricades, down the avenue screaming, "Die, bug! Die!" shooting at them and missing, mostly, since they were running. They got a few, but the bugs that didn't get hit kept going."
"Nobody told us it was over," she said. "I shot that stupid translator bot an hour earlier and they were still jamming our comms."
"And the bugs keep running and the crew of Taipan keep chasing them, screaming until they'd driven about two-hundred stripey soldier bugs past the junks. They're waving a thousand arms and clacking and hissing and whistling like cracked steam pipes trying to get away. When we got back to the junks ourselves, Dana was standing near the airlock like she was waiting for us to come out. She sees me and she shouts, "Ram! Come on! We've got them on the run! We've got them on the run! Let's take the whole bug-fucking palace!"
The UN captain laughed with the Privateers, but he exhaled slowly as Dana filled his glass with another finger of scotch. His eyes rested on the liquor without drinking, eying it now with suspicion. "I will not lie to you. I will not say I don't enjoy your pirate hospitality, but why...why all this pleasantry, Commodore Devlin? Why does the lovely Captain Dana Sellis pour me glasses full of your expensive liquor while you entertain me with amusing stories?"
Ram's and Biko's and Dana's smiles didn't fade completely, but self-consciousness flattened their expressions as silence fell across the foursome. Captain Chun looked to Ram for an explanation.
They sat on the observation deck, not in the counter-surveillance cage, so when Ram answered the UN captain's question, he chose his words carefully. "We need to be friends. It's that simple. We're going to have to rely on each other in the future, Captain Chun. And no one else. After all, we're very much on the same side now, aren't we?" He could tell Chun took the less-obvious meaning of his words to heart by the distaste on his face. Anton Cyning could never have had his way without help from inside the UN. Ram said, "The arc of history will not bend itself. If we want to see our vision of Humanity's future be more than an idealist's dream, then we must rely on ourselves and each other to make that future happen."
Chun raised his glass. "Action is truth," the UN captain said before he drank.
Ready Room
Ram Devlin closed the door on the counter-surveillance cage in his ready room, locking himself inside with Anton Cyning. The company man withdrew a matchbox computer from the pocket of his wool suit and placed it on the table in front of them. He gestured through documents until he found the one he was looking for. The translucent ghosts of Ram's own bank accounts floated in the air between them. "Staas Company's Board of Directors now claims you were following their orders," Cyning said. "Note the current balance of this new account, if you will."
When he saw the new account and the number Cyning gestured to and how enormous it was, his first reaction was alarm. It flashed hot over his face. "I didn't open this account. It isn't mine."
"Of course you didn't and of course it is. It's yours. Staas Company stands to profit substantially from the rights granted us by Hive Regent Kesik with regard to the Shediri Cynium."
"The what?"
"The indigenous element used in the fabrication of the shield penetrator device, named after me. Cynium. It will be in anything made to breach an Imperium shield and who knows what else. Because the Board of Directors said so, you're going to get .004375 percent of Staas Company's Cynium profits. It's a very generous deal. What you see in that account represents money the company has already made here. More will come."
"We haven't exported a gram of anything yet."
"We will..."
"I don't want this money," he said.
"Of course you do. Take the money, Commodore. Mind you, it's not nearly what we would have gotten if I had my way in this process. But you'll still be able to use it. Repairing Taipan will cost a literal fortune. Believe me, Staas Company will bill you. All those redsuit teams are working overtime."
He all but groaned when Cyning said that. The company man would make sure he got billed for repairs of a personally owned ship.
Cyning finished his glass of Ram's scotch and stood up. "As long as you're spending in the billions, I hear Staas Company is offering some spectacular deals on used escort carriers from the last war."
"Why would I want to personally own more carriers?"
That polished face cracked with his last smile. Anton Cyning knew something he wasn't saying. "I'll be going now, Devlin. I've already said my farewells to the Hive Regent."
"I'm surprised she'll talk to you. And Hrt'ee? Any communication since the double-cross?"
"She says she's no longer talking to the barbaric and untrustworthy humans." Cyning shrugged. "My personal yacht, Aquitaine, is about to depart. I've got a breaching ship and a company cutter waiting to escort me home. Next time, Devlin, I won't make the mistake of assuming you're something you're not."
Ram doubted there would be a next time. He doubted Anton Cyning would make it all the way back to Earth. Captain Chun had generously offered the company man a UN destroyer for transport, but Cyning had b
een smart enough to decline. He'd never make it home alive if Captain Chun had anything to say about it.
As the ageless company man opened the door to the cage and stepped out, Ram wondered what the chances were that another Imperium ship might be lurking and lying in wait along Cyning's route home. They were good enough, Ram figured, that anyone who wanted to kill him wouldn't have to make it look like an accident.
Bridge
"Contacts are changing vector, now approaching with maximally diminishing range and bearing," Dolan said.
"Not again." His XO had the bridge and he sounded like he'd had enough excitement. "What the hell do the Shediri think they're doing?"
After he got off the lift, Ram looked them over from the Ops console trying not to cramp Lt. Dolan next to him. He saw small Shediri ships, war-painted and closing fast. "There must be nine hundred of them."
"960," Biko said. "They're about ten minutes out at this speed."
"Did we call the Hive Regent?"
"Not answering."
UNS Guerrero held station nearby like a scarred-up moon, but the bristling boar's hair coat of her point-defense guns had been flayed off in the impact with the Imperium ship. Those little guns were all gone now and her sixteen main guns weren't going to be any help.
Only half of Hardway's small guns were currently operational.
"Launching alert Sky Jacks and gunnery junks," Pardue said.
The swarm of painted ships came at them too slowly and practically abreast as if to show their numbers. It wasn't how they attacked before.
"Incoming message on the diplomatic console," said the comms officer on duty. "It's from the Hive Regent." His pause went on so long that every face looked up and away from their stations in a complete abandonment of discipline.
"Don't keep us in suspense, Briggs."
Briggs read it slowly even though the message was simple. "Approaching now. These Shediri follow Devlin. Success to Devlin Liberty Fleet. Hive Regent and Human alliance. Action is truth."
Biko said, "It wants to contribute forces to your fleet?"
"Action is truth. She's putting her money where her mouth is."
"Are they coming with us to fight the Imperium?" Biko said, "I mean... if they come with us, Pardue can't fit all those ships in the bays. What are they going to fly off? And the what hell are we supposed to feed them?" He sounded worried like a carrier XO always does. "You're going to need more ships, Ram."
"I hear escort carriers are on sale," he said. "And I just came into some money."
Sub-tower
He knew it was almost as easy for someone to get to him as it was for someone to get to Anton Cyning, so Ram had already put Company Marines on guard duty outside his quarters in the sub-tower. He'd told them not to let anyone inside. When he got there and they told him Captain Dana Sellis was already inside waiting for him, he didn't want to chew them out for letting her in. All he wanted now was to see her in private.
Dana's eyes burrowed into him as he entered. "Commodore, when the hell were you going to tell me?" She practically shouted it at him before he could get the hatch closed behind him. Once he did, she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "I know who those two psychos on my ship really are, you lying bastard. I know everything. Were you ever going to tell me the truth?"
He wanted to say that action is truth, but she'd never buy that. Instead, he pulled her close enough that maybe the secrets couldn't get between them.
2166 - Battle of Shedir
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
1
Out the arrow-slit windows of the Endo Bar, the battleship Guerrero hung over the Deimos Lagrange Orbital Shipyards like a battered moon. Her aegis of a bowplate and armored flanks had flashed with welding sparks for weeks during her repairs, but now that great hull had gone dark. Tugs assembled nearby to guide her out soon. She was bound for Shedir.
"On that last shift we ghosted, I welded my name into that beast," Carnaby said. "Port side...aft of midships, up about ten degrees on the outer hull."
Captain Garlan Foet nodded to his XO. "Me, too. At least our names are going places." The crew of the Doxy had hoped to build an empire hauling the bounty of the new worlds back to Earth. But they no longer had a ship. It didn't matter to Garlan whose fault that was. A captain should be able to provide for his crew.
He didn't know whose stomach it was growled then. It could have been Wilks or Carnaby or Singh. The Doxy's powder monkey, a spacer named Bix who was years from shaving, looked up from the protein powder in the dregs of his grog. "We got any money left, Skipper?"
Debts were all the skipper and crew of the Doxy had left. The flash of heat he felt on his face then was shame maybe. The feeling got worse a second later when someone behind him called him out by name. He hated the way strangers said his name.
"Captain Garlan Fo-et..."
"No. No, not 'Fo-et'. You say it like foot. Captain Foot," he said before he turned over his shoulder to see if the woman who'd mangled his name was Shore Patrol.
She had a determined gaze like whatever it was she wanted, she always wanted it bad. Her exosuit wasn't standard. It was a new Privateer close combat suit made with integrated armor plates under the skin and a vanta black finish. She wore no rank or insignia that he could see, but when she stepped to his right and the light hit her features directly, he recognized her then. "I've seen you before."
"On vid," said Bix. "I've seen her on vid." The way she glared at the kid then, Bix probably wished he hadn't opened his mouth, but it didn't stop him from doing it again. "I saw you at the victory and remembrance ceremony with the VIPs after after the last battle of the war. You're from SCS Hardway."
She was the only woman on Hardway's original bridge crew and she was good to look at; they all remembered her. "I'm Captain Dana Sellis."
Garlan's eyes narrowed as he tried to understand why a war hero would be here talking to a marooned indie operator like him. That moment of confusion was when the company man with her chose to step out from cover.
His face was mature, but ageless. It was plump and polished smooth and shiny even in the dim light. The smaller muscles didn't move at all. It was a gene-cut liar's face. The business suit he wore draped stiffly like it was made with some kind of armor fiber mixed in the wool. Men like him had run the ancient East India Companies, the military-industrials, and the last century's Seed Consortium. Now, they ran Staas Company.
Garlan didn't see the tray of a dozen shot glasses until a barhop put it on the table and nodded at the company man. The whiskey spilled over the sides and beaded up like the good stuff does. Properly mature enzymes was what someone told him once. Young Bix reached for the gift without a second thought until Garlan caught his arm by the wrist and lifted it away. "Not so fast."
"That's good liquor," the company man said.
He nodded. "I'm sure it is, but the kid needs to learn that just because you can't see a price tag doesn't mean it's free."
She said, "Fair enough, Captain. Is there somewhere we can talk that's more private?"
He leaned back in his chair and shook his head. "Not unless you and your well-dressed friend there want to come back to my slumber-box in section-D."
"Excuse me?"
"Oh, that isn't a come-on. See...they deny it, but Staas Company seized my ship. A clamshell rent-a-coffin is the only place I've got to go now."
"I've got work for you and your crew," she said flatly.
"Did I mention we don't have a ship? Company agents put us off at gunpoint and stole her from the docks six weeks ago. Nobody will even tell us where she is. And since the ship is listed in the registry as active, the Staas payment system won't let us work anywhere else. For the last six w
eeks, we've been as broke as it gets. We've been ghosting welding shifts at half-pay."
Dana Sellis looked to the company man like Garlan was supposed to blame him for that.
"There must have been some crossed wires on the administrative end of the spectrum," the exec said. "It happens. As much as we try, we're not perfect."
"So you don't deny you have my ship?"
"We have your ship," she said. "It's at Shedir. Your ship is with Task Force Liberty."
He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly before letting his words out through his teeth. "Can we have our ship back? Please."
"We've got work for you and your crew," she repeated.
He said, "This is completely illegal. If I take this to the arbitrators, they'll order you to pay out the full percentage we own - all of it, not some bullshit 10%." He didn't like the way she looked at him then, like she was looking behind his eyes and she saw what she'd expected to see.
"Is that your plan? Let's say you and your crew get the payout on 53% of a 25-year-old vessel. Then what? It's not enough money to buy another ship, not a money-maker. And believe me, Staas will ruin your already poor credit no matter what your union rep told you."
"She's right," the company man said. "We've got to discourage that sort of thing."
"This is a screw-job, Skipper," said Carnaby.
"So what are you going to do with the big payout money anyway, Foet? Buy a little algae farm inside Chiba dome on Mars and watch the Squidy-chow grow in a puddle? Live the high-life? You and your crew aren't farmers or miners or welders or builders. You're spacers. That's what you and your crew are. And the Privateers need you. Devlin's Privateers need you."
Garlan nodded to the company man. "What's he here for?"
"That's Mr. Cyning. Mr. Cyning is a Staas Company Operations VIP with the very important signature required to approve the employment of your crew."