The Long March (The Exiled Fleet Book 2)

by Richard Fox

  “You’re starting to bore me.” Eubulus grabbed the other prisoner and gripped them both by the throat but not tightly enough to choke them.

  “I know you lack finesse, but I have a plan to retrieve the Crown Prince alive. Ja’war?”

  The unarmed Daegon behind Tiberian raised a hand in front of his face, and the blue-skinned man’s face shifted to match Eubulus’, then to one of the officers’ caught in the commander’s grasp.

  Eubulus’ guards jumped in front of their commander, weapons raised.

  “Ha! What toy is this?” Eubulus knocked one of the guards aside.

  “A Faceless, a caste of assassins and thieves. We found him in the prison beneath the castle. He’s agreed to help us. Knows wild space well. Not as loyal as our specter infiltrators, but the explosive charge I had implanted on his heart will keep him focused and motivated,” Tiberian said.

  “Clever…clever. Gustavus!” Eubulus raised the two prisoners in his hands up to shoulder height and choked off their air.

  A slender Daegon dropped down through a hole in the ceiling and rolled forward, one hand on a sword at his hip.

  “Father?” the new arrival said.

  “Which, my son, will win?” Eubulus asked. The prisoners gasped for air, their feet kicking.

  “The one who survived the game four times already,” Gustavus said. “He knows if he passes out first, he dies.”

  The new prisoner in the tattered uniform slowed down, his face a sickly blue. He went limp and Eubulus broke his neck. He let the other man take a final breath, then killed him too.

  “My boy learns fast, doesn’t he?” Eubulus asked Tiberian.

  “I would not say your lessons are difficult.”

  “Gustavus will accompany you. Learn from you. That is my only condition,” Eubulus said. “Return him and the 2nd battle group from my fleet when you have the Prince. Now be gone.”

  “May you find glory for the crusade,” Tiberian said as he waited for Gustavus to saunter over. The younger officer drew his sword and saluted, the guard raised to just below his eyes.

  “Uncle,” Gustavus said.

  “Come, child. I will teach you how to hunt.” Tiberian turned and marched away.

  Chapter 3

  Wisps of super-heated air flitted past the shuttle’s view ports as the craft descended into Sicani’s atmosphere. Thorvald stood near the cargo ramp, his boots locked to the deck, one hand gripping an empty cargo bin over his head.

  He looked over the other passengers—Bertram, Tolan, Wyman, and Gage—as his armor took their heart rate, temperature, and dozens of other biometric readings. The Commodore’s physiology was near exhaustion, his state unchanged since the Daegon attack on Siam. The rest read with varying levels of anxiety, with the exception of Tolan.

  The spy held a mirror in front of his face, changing his features from one visage to another, his hair growing and shortening, the color altering in waves of different hues. Part of Thorvald detested the Faceless for butchering his God-given form. While Thorvald’s body had undergone some enhancement to wear his armor, every implant could be removed. The Genevan doubted Tolan even knew what his own true face looked like anymore.

  Thorvald flexed his arms, and the modular plates shifted over his body before locking down and forming a more rigid barrier. He shifted the plates across his body, a pre-battle check he’d done every single day since he first wore his armor nearly two decades ago.

  Almost every day. Captain Royce, commander of the Genevan Guard contingent on Albion before his death, had stripped him of his armor before throwing him into the palace’s dungeon. Thorvald had plenty of time to consider which aspect of being in prison was worse—the separation from his armor or the humiliation of what he’d done.

  Thorvald ran a baseline diagnostic…and the results came back slightly better than marginal. Being in armor that was barely functional was not how he wanted to protect Gage and Prince Aidan.

  Turning away from the other passengers, he spoke beneath the roar of engines. “Ticino, our link suffers,” Thorvald said to the gestalt within the armor. The artificial intelligence had yet to fully bond with Thorvald since he donned the armor, taking it from Captain Royce’s dead body in the middle of the Daegon attack on the Albion palace. The gestalt had yet to share its name with Thorvald, and he could only address it by the name of their Genevan House.

  +I hate you,+ pounded into Thorvald’s mind.

  “I know, Ticino, I know, but the regent will enter a hostile area soon. We must protect him. Stop fighting me.”

  +Traitor. Oath breaker.+

  “No. My oath to Albion remains. I serve to my last dying breath. The same as Captain Royce,” Thorvald said as the armor constricted around Thorvald’s chest and a sense of grief flowed into Thorvald’s mind.

  The bond between armor and wearer grew stronger over years, and that gestalt had been bonded to Royce for almost four decades. For Thorvald to abuse the armor’s spirit by donning it so quickly after Royce’s death would have been forbidden on Geneva, where each House treated their suits as near-priceless relics and forging the AI within the armor took years of work by hundreds of artificers.

  +You are not Royce. Traitor.+

  “We serve, Ticino. We serve the royal family and Albion. The regent is in danger. I need you to trust me. Deepen our sync for Gage, if nothing else.”

  +You are not mine. I am not yours.+

  The armor loosened slightly around Thorvald’s body. The Genevan moved easier, feeling the AI’s resistance waning…an improvement Thorvald knew would end the moment they were safely back aboard the Orion.

  “Thank you. May I have your true name?”

  The AI didn’t respond.

  ****

  “They’ll sell me into slavery,” Bertram said. The steward pressed a knuckle against his mouth as his eyes darted from side to side. “I’ll spend the rest of my days on some ice ball of a planet, chained to a dozen other stinky, starving men…” He put his hands against his stomach, a hair’s breadth away from busting the navy’s body-fat limits. “No need to worry about frostbite. I won’t last a day when those poor wretches see me. ‘Hello, Bertram. Welcome to the salt mines. Step into this lovely bath we’ve for you. Ignore the bits of carrot and smell of broth.’”

  Wyman, sitting to the steward’s left, rolled his eyes.

  “Ten minutes ago, you were convinced the pirates were going to sell off your organs,” the fighter pilot said. “Now you’re a main course in a salt mine. What’s next?”

  “Perhaps I can convince some pirate lord that I can make a good spot of tea.” Bertram tapped a fingertip to his lips. “Yes, add a bit of manners to these barbarians. Teach them the wonders of a warm cup at teatime while I woo the captain’s daughter to escape with me to some garden world that’s not on any star chart.”

  “For the love of…Tolan, you’ve been to Sicani,” Wyman said. “Will you tell him that nothing’s going to happen to us. There’s a parley; means we’re not to be bothered, right?”

  Tolan pulled the skin back on his left cheekbone, twisted his head in his mirror’s reflection, then the other side of his face shifted to match.

  “The Commodore’s protected, not us,” Tolan said. “But I doubt anyone will want Bertram’s liver.”

  “There’s that,” the steward said.

  “But the market for Albion blood and marrow is booming,” Tolan said. “Our vaccine program is one of the best this far from the core worlds. He’d be a golden goose for years.”

  “Wait…what?” Bertram went pale.

  “Now just a damn minute.” Wyman shifted against his restraints. “Bertram and the Commodore have Thorvald to watch over them. I’m supposed to go with you into the city and now you tell me all these pirates wouldn’t mind turning me into a blood bank?”

  Tolan’s skin darkened a few shades and freckles emerged across his nose and beneath his eyes. He set his mirror onto his lap and looked at the pilot.

  “Sicani is a fr
ee entry world,” Tolan said. “No customs to declare or passports checked. So long as you keep your mouth shut—our accents are a bit distinctive—no one will know you’re from Albion. We go down there and I’m a malware exporter from Tirana’s World. You’re my dimwitted hired help.”

  Wyman looked down at his outfit: worn khakis and a beat-up flak jacket the spy scrounged up from his own ship, the Joaquim. The pistol strapped to his thigh had several notches carved into the handle.

  “Why do I have to be dimwitted?” Wyman asked. “I still don’t even know why the hell you want me with you for this.”

  “You think I want you with me? You’ve the field craft of a lumbering ox. The man we’re going to see has his own set of rules, ones we have to follow,” Tolan said.

  “But you’ve been to Sicani before,” Bertram said. “How bad will it be?”

  “It’s a planet of three billion.” Tolan brushed his fingertips through his hair, turning a tuft darker with each stroke. “The murder rate is astronomical compared to home, but I’ve been to worse places. With so many pirate clans in orbit, Derna will be a powder keg ready to go off—which suits me nicely. Last time I was here, this face took out a few loans that haven’t been repaid.” The rest of Tolan’s hair darkened.

  The spy took an injector from a silver case hidden in his coat and pressed it to his throat, then closed his eyes and tilted his head back against the wall. His face twitched for a few seconds before settling down.

  “There we are,” Tolan said and let out a euphoric sigh.

  “You can look like anyone in the galaxy and you pick a face that owes money?” Wyman asked.

  “This is the face my contact knows,” Tolan said. “Besides, old man Weissgerber is out of the loan-shark game by now. Probably. Maybe. It’s been years since the incident and it’s not like he was the friendly type that had others willing to carry grudges for him.”

  “I’m not sure which of us has it worse,” Bertram said to Wyman. “Me going with the good Commodore to the belly of the beast or you going to the city’s rotting core with that one.”

  “Do you want to trade?” Wyman nudged Tolan. “Can we trade?”

  “No,” the spy said. “Only one of you was on Albion when the Daegon attacked.” He sat up and blinked at Bertram, his eyes changing color each time. “When you’re with Gage, don’t eat anything, drink anything, or accept any offer. The parley protects your life. That doesn’t mean your hosts won’t find some gray areas to tinker in.”

  “Lovely,” the steward said. “Right lovely.”

  Chapter 4

  A trio of Daegon fighters ripped overhead. The sonic boom of their passing rattled the crumbling building where James Seaver and his squad hid. He heard the crash of glass up and down the street as remnants of already broken windows came loose or broke apart. After days of fighting, nothing in the city of Ludlow was still whole.

  “Why do they keep doing that?” Morton asked as he brushed dust and tiny shards of glass off his uniform. He and Seaver were both nineteen, but after days without sleep and the accretion of dirt and pulverized buildings what youth they had was buried beneath grime and exhaustion.

  “To mess with us, I think,” Seaver said. “Haven’t seen any of our fighters in days. They fly low and loud, telling us they’ve got command of the air. No one’s sleeping through a pass like that.” He checked the battery on his rifle. At thirty percent charge, he was better off than most of his squad, but he’d still run out of ammunition before his pulse rifle’s power ran out.

  Sergeant Hagan came over to Seaver and Morton, staying crouched to keep himself below the line of broken windows.

  “Got a signal from our spotters.” Hagan wiped grime off his mouth with a shaking hand. “Drone sweep’s coming. The lieutenant’s getting the civilians ready to move. He wants us to pull any Daegon away. Standard bait and switch. Single shots. We hit them hard enough to wound a couple, then we fall back before the big guns and show up. Got it?”

  “Spotters see any walkers? Or golems?” Morton asked.

  “One golem.” Hagan swallowed hard. “Bravo squad’s got our last anti-armor grenades. Don’t waste your shots on them. You know the fallback position?”

  “Tech school on Derider Street,” Seaver said.

  Hagan gave him a quick pat on the shoulder, then hurried over to the next pair of fighters crouched against a broken couch against the wall.

  “If there’s golems…there’s walkers,” Morton said. “We should leave now. To hell with the civilians. Not like they can make any difference now. Just sit down there, eating all our food and drinking all our water.”

  “Shut up.” Seaver kicked Morton’s shin. “Militia only protect civilians. You want to go run away like the rest of the army did? Should’ve joined them.”

  “Did you get a different recruiting pitch than me?” Morton asked. “Seem to remember all of us Youth Corps being told to report to the local constabulary when we got to Ludlow after that giant ship showed up over New Exeter. Then…” He squeezed his eyes shut for a second. “How long ago was that? I don’t even know what day it is anymore.”

  “It’s Saturday,” Seaver said. “Positive. My mother’s birthday. Easy to remember since it’s a week after the prism whale festival.”

  “She’s with the fleet, right?” Morton shifted in the spot he’d made amidst the rubble. “Not Home Fleet. Way out system to Caledonia or Usona.” Even under the grime, Seaver his friend growing red with embarrassment. Talking about family that were likely dead elsewhere in the war had become a major faux pas in the militia. Nothing of Albion’s Home Fleet remained. Seaver had watched it burn through the sky in the first few hours of the Daegon attack.

  “She’s with the 11th,” he said. “Some humanitarian mission on Siam. I was so pissed when she told me. This prism whale holiday was the last time my parents and me were going to be together before I shipped out for boot camp. Guess it worked out okay for her.”

  “Shit, Siam the vacation planet? All the way out on the edge of wild space? I bet she’s fine.” Morton fished a tube out of his chest armor and took a sip of water. “You good?”

  “Not sure.” Seaver stuck his fingertips into the seam of his uniform’s outer armored layer and pulled it open. The water tube had come off the clip and wedged into the sweat-soaked layer against his skin. He sucked on the nozzle and got nothing but the taste of salt and grit. He reached to his thigh and touched the water bladder incorporated into the armor on his legs, and found a rip.

  “Told you the walls of that last place were too thin to stop anything,” Morton said.

  “Yeah, figured that out when Janice got killed.” He touched his helmet, the only piece of gear the corporal left behind that wasn’t shot through or bloodied.

  “Here.” Morton offered his drinking tube and Seaver took a quick sip. “Ha ha. You drank my pee.”

  “Yeah, real funny. I know how our uniforms work.” Seaver leaned against a desk half buried in the remnants of ceiling tiles and closed his eyes. He felt every cut and bruise over his body, a dull pain that grated against the exhaustion that ran into the depths of his being.

  He thought of his father, who was far behind the lines at Camden. The older Seaver hated tourist crowds and had left New Exeter the day before the festival to their family vacation home just off the beach. The Daegon ground assault had overwhelmed the capital city in the first day, then radiated out to the Gable Mountains and to Ludlow, nestled between the mountains and a royal forest preserve.

  There’d been no word of other Daegon landings, but information had been spotty. Civilian telecommunications had gone down in the first hour of the Daegon attack, having been functional just long enough to spread word of the attack and whip the entire planet into a panic before shutting down. From what he’d gleaned from the militia officers, they were still in contact with other cities, but Seaver didn’t know how.

  Not that he wanted all the details. He knew the Daegon took prisoners, had found what was le
ft of them as the battle lines shifted across the city. If he was captured and tortured, the Daegon couldn’t tear out anything he didn’t know.

  His mother…the memory of her in her naval uniform, rank, and doctor’s pins glinting in the morning light as she boarded a shuttle was uncannily sharp. She’d tried to warn him away from the service, even as she prepped for a last-minute deployment on the Orion.

  He’d called her a hypocrite in their last conversation. That she’d joined the navy in the last year only to discourage him from doing the same. But her reasons for joining were different. His father needed extensive care for his Langfei syndrome, the expertise and expense beyond what his mother’s skills and the income generated by her medical practice could cover. Seaver had wanted to enlist for the adventure, for the veteran’s preference in all aspects of Albion society reserved for the common born.

  The whole last few hours he’d spent with her, the bitter arguments, the anger at her leaving before their last family trip…seemed so stupid now. What he wouldn’t give to know she was safe, to even talk to either her or his father again.

  Morton nudged him with the butt of his rifle.

  “Drone sign,” he whispered.

  Seaver’s eyes popped open and a chill spread through his chest as his body dumped adrenaline into his bloodstream. He remained perfectly still as conversations lowered to whispers throughout the room he shared with the other dozen men and women of his militia squad.

  Weak red light broke through the window over Seaver’s head. The temptation to bolt out of the room and never stop running tugged at his heart, but to do that was suicide. The Daegon trackers picked up motion easily; fleeing would put a giant target on his back.

  A steady rustle grew in volume, the rattlesnake-like noise of the drone’s repulsor engines. Seaver picked up on a slight discordance in the engine noise and in the angle on the searchlights. The drones always traveled in packs of two.