Books One to Three Omnibus (Armada Wars)

by R. Curtis Venture

  Eilentes’ voice crackled over the comm. “Heads up, this is going to get rough.”

  Sure enough, the forward deck bucked hard as the nose of the lander rammed into a bank of high pressure, and the aft compartment immediately followed suit. Caden was glad for the padded restraints and headrest.

  The blast shields were down over the view ports in the rear compartment of the MAGA lander, and in some ways he was glad of that too. With Eilentes at the controls, the traversal of Aldava’s violent atmosphere was intimidating enough even without a good view of the approaching ground.

  “If we survive this,” Bro shouted, “I’ll never step foot in another lander again.”

  “What makes you think this is survivable?” Daxon shouted back.

  “Hope. Pure hope.”

  “She’s just showing off her skills,” Norskine yelled.

  “Showing off? Skills?” Bro shouted. “You can’t polish a turd, sister.”

  Caden saw that Throam was grinning at him, and smiled inwardly. They both knew the troops had certainly experienced much more violent descents than this one; the banter must have been for their own benefit, seeing as Eilentes could not hear them from the separate flight compartment.

  The only one of them whose expression of consternation looked entirely genuine was Bruiser, and he could be easily forgiven for it. His size made it impossible for him to fit into the standard safety seating, and he had lashed himself down with the same webbing that secured the cargo crates.

  “Bruiser, you good?” Caden yelled it over the din of rushing air and vibrating bulkheads.

  The Rodori bared his rows of sharp teeth and approximated a thumbs up. “Still here.”

  The angry roar of atmosphere faded away without warning, and Caden felt the seat pushing against him momentarily. The lander had decelerated hard.

  “Ninety seconds to ground,” Eilentes said over the comm.

  “Thank fuck for that!” Bro said.

  A grinding noise rang through the outer hull, and Caden saw that the blast shields were retracting from the view ports. He unbuckled his restraints and carefully made his way to the port opposite, holding on to the safety bars to keep himself upright.

  Outside, the dismal grey skies of Aldava stretched as far as he could see. Only when Eilentes banked the lander did he see anything of interest, and it had barely been worth getting up for. Beneath them, on the floor of a wide valley, the city of Barrabas Fled pooled and sprawled like mould. Clusters of low buildings hunched together, separated only by virtually unmarked roads. Even allowing for the morning haze, there seemed to be almost no underlying order to the conurbation.

  The city was pale, drab, and seemed almost totally colourless, even more so as the lander plunged into the shadow cast by the valley wall. The closer they came to the ground, the worse the visibility seemed to get, until finally on the approach to the outlying starport — such as it was — the air seemed to hang thick with dust.

  When Eilentes delivered them safely to the ground, Caden did not bother waiting for the sergeant to get his men organised; even the prudent Lieutenant Volkas had agreed that a squad of four fire teams was more than sufficient for this visit, and that they would accompany Caden’s team only as a precaution. He had already spoken to the sergeant — a grizzled lifer called Chun — before Hammer had dropped the lander into Aldava’s atmosphere. Chun, as it turned out, was the same squad sergeant who had so loudly declined to stop Bruiser following Caden across the surface of Echo, even after ordering someone else to do the very same thing. He had the same view of the situation as Caden: his squad, Bullseye One-Three, would keep a low profile unless and until they were needed. That is, he had suggested, as low a profile as could be achieved with a Rodori and a bunch of excitable children in the mix.

  Caden disembarked with Throam and surveyed what apparently passed for an arrivals and customs terminus; a long spur of a building stretching from the central hub all the way out to the landing area. Most of the walls were glass, and he could see that there was nobody inside. Nobody was waiting at the entrance to the terminus either, nor at the edge of the landing field itself. He wondered what was to stop anyone from just walking off in another direction. Looking around, the explanation was probably that Barrabas Fled was marginally more interesting than a wasteland full of scrub. Nobody on Hammer had been able to explain to him why the capital had been built in a dusty and unappealing part of the planet, when this continent supported a perfectly good tropical band just below the equatorial. He did not quite care enough to go find out whilst they were on the surface.

  The hatch popped in the side of the cockpit, and Eilentes swung herself out of the lander, using the recessed rungs in the hull to climb down to the ground. She jumped the last metre and grinned at Caden and Throam. “On the ground, safe and sound.”

  “Had every faith you’d keep us safe.” Throam smiled back at her.

  “But you might take some flak… from those in the back.” Caden kicked himself for rhyming.

  Chun appeared, circling around from the rear of the lander. He left his troops checking over the first of two Kodiak armoured vehicles they had rolled down the ramp.

  “Might as well take Charlie fire team,” he said.

  Caden was happy enough with the suggestion. “Good idea, we’re already acquainted.”

  “Well yeah, but what I meant was that you can take them off my hands. DAXON!”

  Brokko Daxon was there in an instant. “Sarge?”

  “Corporal, take your clowns and accompany Shard Caden into Barrabas Fled. I’ll be holding this position. Any problems, you shout up immediately.”

  Daxon saluted in an almost comically sloppy fashion, before moving off to round up his team. “Yo Bruiser,” he shouted, “saddle up! Norskine, where the fuck has Bro gone?”

  • • •

  It was very easy, as conspicuous as the group was, to forgive the locals for staring. But no matter how many times Caden saw someone stop and gape slack-jawed at the passing soldiers, the feeling of being watched stubbornly refused to go away. It was not just that they were being watched; no, as crazy as it sounded even in his own head, he had the peculiar sensation that they were all of them being subjected to cold, calculating scrutiny. Something did not feel right about this town.

  “These people are creeping the fuck out of me.” Throam muttered in his ear as they walked.

  “So it’s not just me then,” Caden said. “I can’t put my finger on exactly what is wrong here.”

  “It’s literally too quiet, for starters.”

  Caden realised the counterpart was completely right. Barrabas Fled was for all intents and purposes a combination of frontier town, transit hub, and trading centre. By all rights it should have been a boisterous and obnoxious calamity of sound and shoving and sweat. But the people on the streets seemed mute and evasive, and they were surprisingly few in number. Most of the shops and houses Caden and his companions passed had shutters or curtains closed across the windows and entrances. Instead of an ever-changing nebula of charcoal smoke and perfumes and the scent of cooked food, there was a moist, dirty odour, hanging in the air like a thin musk, the smell of mould and stagnation.

  “Stay alert buddy. I don’t like this any more than you do. Something is telling me we shouldn’t be here.”

  “You and me both.”

  Apparently sensing the tone between Caden and Throam, Daxon leaned in. “What’s going on?”

  The corporal had been keeping pace with them both. Bro had taken point out of habit more than anything, with Norskine between him and the others. Bruiser trudged along in the rear, somewhat predictably drawing the lion’s share of the stares and undeniably holding them for longer.

  “This place is fucked up,” said Throam.

  Caden rolled his eyes. “We were just discussing the oddness of the locals.”

  “Yeah, I’d noticed. I don’t think this place gets many visitors.”

  “It’s supposed to be a gateway planet
.” Caden made it sound more like a question than a statement.

  “Once upon a time maybe,” said Daxon. “I guess demand for stopover towns ended real quick when the gate initiative ran up against the Deep Shadows. A lot of the planets along the edge are like this; only the systems with busy prime gates seem to attract new people.”

  “Doesn’t explain why these people are all so weird,” Throam said. As he spoke, a woman carrying a bundle of blankets hurried out of their path and into an open doorway. Once over the threshold she turned and stared at them for a moment before slamming the door closed.

  “They probably get left alone, for the most part. We march through the town with our big-ass guns and our big-ass Bruiser; that’s bound to draw some attention.”

  Caden grunted his agreement, and stared at an elderly man who sat on a stone bench encircling a fountain. He was tanned and leathery, deep wrinkles lining his mouth and eyes while he squinted at the outsiders and smiled pleasantly. As they trudged closer, and began to pass by, he started to hum. Slow and mournful, the tune seemed to tug at something in Caden’s memory, something which refused to surface. It was not a melody he remembered ever hearing, but somehow it was one that he knew.

  The man turned his head as they passed, continuing to peer at them, smiling his faint smile and humming the same refrain over and over.

  Caden was still feeling unsettled by the strange performance when they reached their objective, a large building on the edge of town furthest from the starport. It was what must have passed for a high class establishment on Aldava, the alcove-dotted walls lavishly festooned with conspicuously foreign display plants. The sound of gently dripping water betrayed an otherwise concealed irrigation system; expensive to run in this climate. A single portico entrance was walled on each side with elegantly wrought iron — not in a thousand years were those made on Aldava, Caden thought — and cornered with slender white pillars. A single step up into the portico area led onto a tiled mosaic floor, almost cold where the shade fell across it. As far as could be achieved in the city of Barrabas Fled, the premises were tastefully presented.

  As he walked across the portico, a soft chime rang out in the entrance lobby. Within moments, the sounds of fluster and hurrying began to approach.

  “Are these the premises of Joarn Kages?” Caden said, when the hurrier appeared.

  The man the chime had summoned was huffing and puffing across the lobby, overweight and red-faced, a sweaty sheen on his forehead and upper lip. His fair hair was cut very short, presumably to hide the enthusiastic spread of his bald spot, and his fat fingers were over-burdened with gold rings. But the neglect he showed his body was not evident in his dress; he was as tastefully presented as the front of the building, adorned carefully and without ostentation. The clothing spoke of money, but money spent in just the right way.

  He smiled expansively as Caden asked his question, threw his arms wide, and took a deep breath as he gave the shallowest of bows. “Welcome one and welcome all, indeed these are the premises of one Joarn Kages, and I have no doubt that you will find here everything you seek.”

  Caden raised his eyebrows. “Will I really? How very convenient.”

  “Why yes, even here in the doldrums of the galaxy there are answers to be had. Why go anywhere else?”

  “Why indeed. Tell me, where is Mister Kages?”

  “I myself am the dutiful servant of that particular obligation, Sir. And you… you are a Shard, specifically Elm Caden, the incarnate will of Her Most Radiant Majesty, the Empress Ecoria Faustrathes Maerane, may the light of a thousand suns shine down upon Her.”

  As carefully as he had selected the fine fabrics for his clothes, and the skilled people who had cut and stitched them, Kages did not seem to have the same aptitude for assembling modest sentences. Caden forced himself to be patient with the man. The dramatic affectation alone was worth a back-hander across the jaw, but he had never yet struck a man for being florid, and this was not the time to start.

  “You already know who I am?”

  “Anyone with any sense of self-preservation knows the faces of the Shards, Sir.”

  “I see. As it happens I have come here only for information, so there will be no need for self-preservation.”

  “But of course you have,” said Kages. “That is why everyone comes here. Why else would anybody visit an information broker?”

  “You had a visit from a human recently, a male. I need to know why.”

  “Ah, that is not the sort of information I sell. I simply can’t confirm anything like that.”

  “It wasn’t a question, Mister Kages. You did receive that visitor. Also I should probably mention at this point that I have no intention of buying anything from you.”

  “Sir, with or without payment, I do not provide information on my clients. In my line of work that would be suicide; in both the business sense, and the more obviously personal one.”

  “We didn’t intend to give you the option.”

  The smile finally dropped from Kages’s face, and he cast a belatedly wary eye over Caden’s companions. At Throam, glowering darkly with his arms folded; at Eilentes, hands on her hips as she tilted her head to eye him suspiciously; at Norskine, Daxon and Bro, all hanging back, their careless stances revealed as a sham by the way they held their rifles before them. And lastly at Bruiser, towering above even Throam and holding an enormous machine gun as casually as a child might hold a stick.

  Kages swallowed emptily. “Perhaps you would care to discuss this somewhere more private?”

  — 14 —

  In Low Places

  It had been remarkably difficult to get to the surface without being detected, far more so than Castigon had expected. He could not for the life of him fathom why the Empire cared so much about security on this crowded and tedious planet. Surely they had far more people wanting to escape than they had people wanting to sneak in? Low Cerin was known as an unrepentant dump even across the foreign worlds of Lemba and Gomlic space.

  But he was here at last, and his major concern for the moment was only to put enough distance between him and the starport to guarantee that he would not be caught. When the tech he had bribed port-side finally got around to reporting he had ‘found’ a breach in the perimeter, Castigon intended to be very far away indeed. Sure, getting back into space might be a little trickier this time, certainly more difficult than it had been from Fengrir, but he would cross that bridge when he came to it. For the moment, he was actually doing quite well.

  That being said, Firenz had been relatively easy to despatch, and it would not be wise to get carried away with such an early success. Her youthful counterpart had been as green as green could be, and Ider herself had been taken by surprise. Word of her death would have reached other Shards by now; they would be much less easily ambushed. Kulik Molcomb, for example, was paired with a very capable counterpart, and he had always seemed ready for anything.

  Perhaps ‘ready for anything’ was doing Molcomb slightly too much of a service. Others might say he was constantly on edge — in fact they did say that — and those who were less polite would call him a crazy-eyed, paranoid stim junky. But none of the nicknames or whispered insults actually made him any less dangerous; he would be alert to threats and he would see Castigon coming. This one would need to be special.

  Once, a long time ago, Molcomb had told Castigon one of his war stories, a tale of the grim days he had spent on the Perseus Front. At the height of the war, Molcomb had been one of many Shards sent by the Empress to — in his own words — ‘royally fuck the enemy until they bled out of their asses’. As charming as the mental image was, it was not the reason why this particular story had stuck so stubbornly in Castigon’s mind. No, the reason it was so indelible was because it contained clues that might help explain Molcomb’s knack for survival; lessons for life and its preservation.

  “We weren’t expected to ever come back,” Molcomb had told him. “She knew what She was asking us to do, we all did. Me a
nd two others I know of, we came home. You know what She said to us? Nothing, the ungrateful bitch.”

  Castigon had been mesmerised throughout by the way Molcomb’s tongue appeared to be too big for his mouth — a remarkable illusion of proportion considering that his jaw must have been one of the widest in the galaxy — and his teeth were like tombstones. His eyes too; they seemed to bulge out of the sockets as if they were intending to venture forth on their own at any moment. The Shard always looked grubby, as though he had come directly from a hiding place in a ditch somewhere. Streaks of grime and dusty sweat emphasised the bright blue ice of his irises and the whites of his giant eyes.

  Distractions aside, Castigon had managed to pay enough attention to memorise the salient points of the tale.

  “Ressingale was the end of the line,” Molcomb told him. “We all knew it. Didn’t expect anything but a fucking quick death. Detachment of Tankers got dropped in before us: supposed to smash back through the lines from the rear. Poor bastards were pulverised. And I mean pulverised. The Viskr were using hordes of skulkers.”

  There had followed a short intermission in which the Shard tried to explain to Castigon how a skulker worked, and Castigon tried to explain that he knew very well it was an autonomous robot sentry designed to rapidly deliver traumatic wounds to as many moving organic targets as possible, thank you very much. Even though that was essentially correct, Castigon still had to sit through a detailed explanation with lots of wild gestures thrown in for emphasis. He had started to suspect at this point that Molcomb was a lot more drunk than he was letting on.

  “You can imagine what we thought when we ‘chuted in. Tankers are supposed to be the heavy duty beasts — were then, still are — and we were up to our ankles in what was left of them. What the fuck were we going to do that they couldn’t? We weren’t sappers and we weren’t human juggernauts either.

  “But we know there’s no way off-world, right — no air support at all, for them or for us; too dangerous — and we know we have to finish the job. Ressingale has the only xtryllium production facility for a hundred light years that we have a chance of taking back, and Command says we can’t win the campaign without xtryllium. As far as we’re concerned it’s liberate the planet, or die in the mud.