Books One to Three Omnibus (Armada Wars)

by R. Curtis Venture

  If he took the ball from her and scored now, it would only be an imperfect delivery. But the longer she had custody in this zone, the more points she accrued.

  He kneed the outside of her thigh.

  She swore under her breath and glared at him, but kept the ball in the air. He grabbed her arm and bent it down, so she moved the ball from one hand to the other. The glow vanished.

  Rendir grabbed for the other arm, and she pushed his face away from her. Her fingers clawed his face like talons, scraping across the sensitive, swollen cheek she had punched earlier. He gritted his teeth and bore the pain, still trying to reach her arm.

  Someone grabbed his legs and pulled them from beneath him. As he fell, he saw Puno’s face grinning down at him. Puno grabbed Chiclayo by the neck, threw her to the floor, and took the ball.

  “Pyuuuuu-nnnnooo!”

  “You okay?” Rendir shouted. “That was a foul.”

  She gasped for a second, then shouted back over the noise of the crowd. “I’m good.”

  Rendir got to his feet and looked around. There was no sign that the marshals were going to take any action.

  The crowd roared, and he saw Puno punching the air and bellowing ‘Come on!’ to the crowds. He had delivered the ball back to the hopper.

  Imperfect, Rendir thought. Only three points, you cheating dickhead.

  The cannon fired.

  Rendir was moving again, thundering across the arena. The ball was coming down on an arcing trajectory, and he was not far from where he expected it to land.

  He was vaguely aware that Chiclayo was lagging behind him, and Puno had set off far too late, a victim of his own pride.

  Movement to the side; Pucallpa bearing down on him.

  Rendir threw out his arm as the Pucallpa player reached him, smashing it across his chest. Pucallpa’s legs carried on, and he flipped onto his back, hitting the ground hard.

  Rendir plucked the ball from the air, netting a few bonus points.

  He glanced towards the goal — too far, and Puno was coming from that direction. There was a scoring zone just a few dozen metres away.

  He hurled the ball towards the outer wall, aiming it so that it would bounce off and roll into the scoring zone. He set off at a run, making for the zone directly, knowing that any less experienced player would waste time following the ball instead of him.

  Pucallpa was back on his feet, and ran for Rendir. Damn.

  He reached the scoring zone just as the ball entered it, and picked it up. He jammed his thumb into the single hole, and the ball glowed with the colour of the Chimbote team.

  Pucallpa was still coming, running hard. Beyond him, Rendir could see the Puno player was not far behind.

  One point for every second, he thought. Make those moments count.

  Pucallpa leapt at him, and Rendir grabbed one of his arms with his free hand. He yanked on it, and stamped on Pucallpa’s foot at the same time. Pucallpa stumbled back, but launched forwards again immediately, grabbing for the ball.

  Rendir was the taller player, but he strained to keep the ball far above Pucallpa.

  Puno entered the scoring zone, lowered his head, and charged Pucallpa. When he connected, Pucallpa was thrown aside like a rag doll.

  Here it comes, thought Rendir.

  Puno balled his fist, advanced, and drew his arm back.

  Chiclayo appeared from nowhere, and smashed her knee up between Puno’s legs. The big teen collapsed on the ground.

  A piercing whistle cut through the crowd’s roar, and a marshal jogged over to them. Boos and hisses came from the closer stalls.

  “Foul!” The marshal shouted. “Penalty against Chiclayo team.”

  “Are you kidding?” Rendir said. “He fouled her.”

  “When?”

  “He grabbed her throat.”

  “It wasn’t seen,” said the marshal “If it wasn’t seen he can’t be booked.”

  “You have got to be joking.”

  “Play will resume in ten seconds.”

  The marshal took the ball from Rendir, and tossed it carelessly across the arena. Rendir and Chiclayo looked at each other.

  When the whistle blew again, only Pucallpa set off at full sprint. Rendir and Chiclayo followed as if their hearts were no longer in the game.

  Puno was back on his feet by the time Pucallpa scored, and he lumbered angrily towards the others.

  The cannon fired once more.

  Puno kept coming, ignoring the ball, and Rendir recognised the look on his face. He too ignored the ball, and chased down Chiclayo.

  “I think you pissed him off,” he yelled.

  Chiclayo glanced at Puno, and yelled back. “Yep. He’s got it in for me all right.”

  Pucallpa had the ball again, and stood holding it in a scoring zone. He looked around, confused by the lack of opposition.

  With Chiclayo locked in his sights, Puno charged.

  Rendir smashed a fist into his nose, as hard as he could, and down Puno went, blood splattering over his face and the floor of the arena.

  The crowd fell silent.

  “Oh dear,” said Chiclayo.

  A whistle was being blown repeatedly, and Rendir struggled to calm himself down. Adrenaline had started to flood his system the moment that first klaxon sounded, and it was difficult by this point to ignore the effects.

  “You,” a marshal shouted. “This is a game, not a battle.”

  “It’s maulball; what’s the difference?”

  “You don’t fight each other unless it’s for the ball.”

  “He started this, not me.”

  “I’m finishing it. Either you substitute, or your team forfeits the match.”

  Rendir glared at him, seething.

  “Substitute,” the Chiclayo player whispered. “If someone else from your team finishes this match, your coach can stack another sacrifice later in the tournament.”

  Rendir looked at her, smiled a quick smile, and walked away, ignoring the marshal

  The crowd cheered him off. To a maulball audience, the only thing better than tactical violence was unwarranted violence.

  “Ren, are you okay?”

  Hitami called out to him, waving from the edge of the crowd that clustered around the main entrance to the stalls.

  He smiled half-heartedly and waved back, then realised it was Josué who stood next to her. The smile vanished.

  Josué was wearing his Navy Cadets jacket, a set of wings pinned to the lapel. His face was smug.

  “You’re an animal, aren’t you Throam.”

  “Fuck off, Josué.”

  “Ren!”

  Hitami looked shocked, and Rendir realised it was the first time he had sworn in front of her.

  “Going to smash my face in too?”

  “Seriously, Josué. I’m this close.”

  “Leave it, Jos,” said Hitami. “He’s all fired up from the game.”

  “Yeah, the game he blew for himself.”

  “I said leave it.”

  Josué turned his attention to Hitami, and looked at her as though she were a disobedient slave.

  “Don’t tell me what to do. You give me your opinion when I ask for it, right?”

  Hitami looked even more shocked.

  “Not a bully, huh?” Rendir said. “Enjoy your life together.”

  He walked away, and saw that Peshal was waiting for him at the exit. She joined him as he left the arena.

  “Don’t you start,” he said.

  “Rendir Throam, you don’t speak to your mother that way.”

  “Sorry. I’m… still mad.”

  “I saw what happened, Little Man.”

  “Please, mum, stop calling me that. I’m not little any more. I’ve not been little for a long time.”

  “Okay. Sorry.”

  “Go on, tell me how disappointed you are.”

  “But I’m not.”

  “Aren’t you going to tell me I should have bent in the wind? ‘Be the reed’, and all that?”

/>   “During a maulball match? Don’t be ridiculous. Metaphors have their limits, Rendir.”

  He was surprised. It was the sort of thing he would have expected from Lamis, not from Peshal.

  “Anyway, he clearly deserved that.”

  Rendir smiled.

  “I wanted to talk to you about this military thing,” she said.

  The smile faltered. “Right now? Not again. Lamis already had a go at me about it last night.”

  “Well, I talked with her,” she said.

  “And?”

  “To be honest with you, I think you should do it.”

  He stopped walking, and his mouth dropped open. If he had been able to convince either of them, he had assumed that it would have been Lamis.

  “Your mother doesn’t agree with me, of course.”

  “But will she let me?”

  “We both said a long time ago that we would let you make your own choices when you were old enough. I told her that time has arrived.”

  “Why? Why now, I mean.”

  “Listen Ren. You’re born, you grow up, and one day you have children of your own. You raise them, you nurture them, you teach them right from wrong. And if you’re lucky, you get to die before they do. If you’re very, very lucky — one of a tiny minority — you get to die without seeing them crushed under the weight of life.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “If we stop you being who you want to be, then we’re the ones who started to crush your own life out of you.”

  He started walking again, with her by his side, and fell quiet as he considered what she had said. It sort of made sense, but he did not quite understand.

  “I wonder… did you ever consider becoming a counterpart?”

  “A counterpart?”

  “Yes. If that match was anything to go by, I think you’d be rather good at it.”

  “You mean, the bit where I smashed someone’s face in to stop him hitting someone else?”

  “Yes, that bit.”

  “I only meant to keep her safe.”

  “Exactly, Rendir. That’s exactly it.”

  “And you say I could do that as a career?”

  She laughed. “You really are your mother’s son, aren’t you Rendir?”

  — 15 —

  These Old Scars

  Limping, an injured lion, Love Tap burst from the Laearan wormhole, followed closely by the remains of his task force. The giant ship was riddled with damage, as were his companions.

  Admiral Betombe paced back and forth on the auxiliary command deck, impatient to arrive at Fort Laeara. He had so much information to share, and the sooner Command knew about it the better.

  What had happened at Blacktree was mystifying and edifying, both at the same time.

  It was not yet clear to him exactly why, but he was beginning to suspect that the hostilities with the Viskr were a mistake. Something else had been out there at Blacktree; something the Viskr had committed a small fleet to fighting off, despite the fact that the Hujjur system was not even theirs to begin with.

  That had set him thinking about the odd fleet deployments monitored by Eyes and Ears. They might make sense, if the Viskr border worlds were being harassed by another force. Those ship movements could have been reactive, rather than random patrols.

  It was, he admitted to himself, a little too late to be solving that puzzle — especially now that the Empire had committed dozens of battle groups to the same border systems at which the Viskr fleets were rallying.

  “Ten minutes to the fortress, Admiral.”

  He looked up and acknowledged Commander Laselle. She stared back at him quizzically.

  “Are you all right, Sir?”

  “Fine, thank you.”

  “You’re quite sure? You gave us a bit of a shock earlier.”

  “You’re not really a proper flag officer until you’ve fainted on the command deck,” he said.

  His XO continued to look uncertain.

  “Really, I’m fine. I had a long rest in sickbay, and I’ve been given a clean bill of health.”

  “If you say so, Sir. The final report on Blacktree is in your folder.”

  Betombe opened the report on his holo, and flipped through the various charts and tracts of text.

  “Still no idea what the Viskr fired those nukes at then?”

  “I’m afraid not. They worked a little too well; nothing left but a radioactive smudge.”

  “Damage to the colony?”

  “Serious. By the time help arrived from the nearest systems, we had already moved most survivors from the danger zone. But the after-effects are going to be very damaging indeed. Some of the towns farther out will need to be evacuated, long term.”

  “What have we got on the unknown vessel?”

  “Again, very little. It’s still being analysed, but all the holos can agree on firmly is that it’s a ship and not a station.”

  “Very helpful,” he muttered.

  “I’ve attached my own log to the report. I’m sure Command will just ask anyway if I don’t provide it myself.”

  “Won’t they just,” he said.

  • • •

  Caden walked through the hatch into Throam’s quarters and looked around. The compartment was neat enough that it might never have been used.

  “Cosy,” he said.

  Throam looked up from his kit bag, grunted, and went back to stowing his clean uniforms in the drawers of a small unit.

  “You okay?” Caden said.

  Throam continued to ignore him, moving things around as if he were trying to get it just the way he wanted it. Caden realised the counterpart had not spent a single moment in these quarters until now.

  “You know that was totally necessary,” he said. “Eilentes wasn’t just going to forgive you for that.”

  “You showed me up,” Throam said.

  “It was your own fault.”

  “Yeah, well you could have handled it differently, that’s all I’m saying.”

  “How exactly do you think that would have gone?”

  “I don’t know, like… mediation.”

  “Mediation? You do remember what you did, right?”

  “Of course I fucking do,” said Throam. “I’m not going to forget, am I?”

  “I should hope not.”

  Throam went quiet again and began pulling the foam liners out of his helmet. He scooped them up and took them into the wash enclosure. Caden heard the sound of water sloshing around in the basin.

  When the counterpart returned, he was still avoiding Caden’s gaze.

  “Are you going to let me talk to you about this?” Caden asked.

  “Talk, talk, talk,” said Throam. “All you want to do these days.”

  “Again, this was all your own damned fault. Stop acting like a child.”

  Now, Throam stopped moving around and looked at him. “Like a child?”

  ”You’re sulking. That’s what children do. You did something bad, got told off, and you don’t like it.”

  “Don’t tell me how I feel.”

  “It’s not like it isn’t obvious, Ren.”

  “Maybe for you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re Mister Perfect. Not a bad thought in that head of yours.”

  “Oh come on,” said Caden.

  “No wait: you’re not, are you. Having me kick a man through a window? Letting Prem kill Morlum, when he was trying to help us? Going off on your own on Woe Tantalum? And always telling me you’re fine when you clearly aren’t, like I’m just some fucking chump you can mug off when it suits you.”

  “I am fine.” Caden’s voice became low and steady. “It was just a wobble.”

  “A wobble, sure,” said Throam. “Why did I not think of that first. Maybe because it wasn’t just a wobble.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Caden said.

  “So tell me. You said you would.”

  Caden was aware the tab
les had been turned on him, that he was now the one being asked to give an explanation. But he could not bring himself to feel annoyed by that. Throam was right; he had asked Caden for them to have this talk, and Caden had agreed to it.

  “I’ve sort of been fighting with myself. Only… only it’s not me. It feels different. Like it has its own mind. Its own goals.”

  “Its own goals?”

  “It’s difficult to explain.”

  “You’re not going crazy are you? It’ll make me look bad if you go crazy.”

  “I certainly hope not.”

  “How would you know?”

  It was a good question, and Caden struggled to think of a suitable answer.

  “When I was a child I started burying bad feelings deep down inside. I called it the Emptiness, and its whole purpose was to be banished. Over the past couple of weeks it has been, well, struggling to get out. And then on Woe Tantalum it succeeded. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

  “So you are going crazy then.”

  “Maybe I am. I don’t really know. It was kind of intense.”

  “Intense how?”

  “Full-on hallucinations intense.”

  “Such as?”

  “I saw it. It was me, only… horrible.”

  Throam stared back at him blankly.

  “And it said things. Bitter, venomous things. It wanted me to be like it is. Wanted me to do all the things I know I shouldn’t do. Say the things I ought not say.”

  “Some of that has been getting out, hasn’t it?”

  “I guess it has.”

  “Don’t need to fucking guess, Caden. You’re not vindictive. You’re not callous. You’re fair and objective and honest. But the guy who’s been running with me this past week is a first class cunt.”

  Caden’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. He opened then clenched both hands, and had the strangest sensation that his mind had detached from his skull.

  “Go on, fuck off and go bitch with Euryce.”

  Caden gaped, and fought to win back the power of speech.

  “You listen to me,” he said. “You’ll do as you’re told, and I’m not going to tolerate any more of this insubordination. Make that the last time you call me a cunt.”

  “You know damned well I’m going to say it every time I think it needs to be said.”

  “You do that and see where it gets you.”