by Hugo Huesca
Edge of Conquest
The Restaration Armada book 1
Hugo Huesca
To my father.
Hugo Huesca © 2017
Illustration © Tom Edwards
Tomedwardsdesign.com
Contents
1. Chapter One
2. Chapter Two
3. Chapter Three
4. Chapter Four
5. Chapter Five
6. Chapter Six
7. Chapter Seven
8. Chapter Eight
9. Chapter Nine
10. Chapter Ten
11. Chapter Eleven
12. Chapter Twelve
13. Chapter Thirteen
14. Chapter Fourteen
15. Chapter Fifteen
16. Chapter Sixteen
17. Chapter Seventeen
18. Chapter Eighteen
19. Chapter Nineteen
20. Chapter Twenty
21. Chapter Twenty-One
22. Chapter Twenty-Two
23. Chapter Twenty-Three
24. Chapter Twenty-Four
25. Chapter Twenty-Five
26. Chapter Twenty-Six
27. Chapter Twenty-Seven
28. Chapter Twenty-Eight
29. Chapter Twenty-Nine
30. Chapter Thirty
31. Chapter Thirty-One
32. Chapter Thirty-Two
33. Chapter Thirty-Three
34. Chapter Thirty-Four
Acknowledgments
Also by Hugo Huesca
1
Chapter One
Alfonso
The woman winked at Alfonso Petras as the nanobots entered his bloodstream.
“Please,” Alfonso begged, “I’ll tell you everything I know.”
“Yes, that’s the entire point.”
She hunched over a holographic screen, green light and numbers dancing on her pale face, casting green shadows on her lab coat. Alfonso’s forehead burned with fever. Inside his body, the nanobots skittered on his brain and scanned his neural activity.
“From now on, darling,” the woman said, “don’t you dare tell a lie. The nanobots won’t like it.”
A woman was strapped to a similar chair next to Alfonso’s. She was dead, her body barely recognizable. The tools their captors had used were still lodged in her torso cavity.
“Please!” Alfonso begged. “Don’t do this…”
The doctor calmly readied her tools at a spot just outside his field of vision. Alfonso could hear the tinkling of the metallic instruments hitting the tray as she lovingly ordered them. She ignored all his complaints and pleading until she was done. Then, someone else entered the room.
The man wore a standard-issue gray jacket, white shirt, and gray trousers, the same clothing all mid-level bureaucrats in the station sported. But by his posture, it was clear he was in charge. His features were hidden by the darkness of the room, but Alfonso could feel the man’s dispassionate stare, and the sting of his mint aftershave, which clashed with the situation like a sledgehammer to the teeth.
He sat next to Alfonso and rapped his knuckles against the chair the port worker was strapped to.
“Alfonso Petras,” the man finally said. “Aged twenty-six. Pilot. Two children, residing at planet-side. Confirmed EIF relations.”
Alfonso almost nodded to show his willingness to collaborate, but he realized that the man wasn’t talking to him at all, but to a tiny black camera he was holding between his fingertips.
“He’s accused of collusion with John and Jane Doe in the ongoing Newgen case—”
That was the first hint Alfonso had about what he was doing here. “I don’t—”
The man’s glacial stare shut Alfonso up, and the man continued his speech to the camera:
“Interrogation and sentencing is performed by Colonel Nicholas Strauze, forensic examination by Doctor Angelique Kircher.”
“Forensic examination—” whispered Alfonso, eyes wide.
“Careful,” said Doctor Angelique Kircher, “with your words. Speak without thinking, and you may tell a lie. The nanobots will catch it whether you lied on purpose or not.” Going from her tone alone, Alfonso may have thought she was genuinely concerned for him.
“Three months ago,” Strauze started, “you accepted the bribe offered by a couple, man and woman, to smuggle a piece of unregistered hardware for them into planet Dione.”
“Everyone does it,” Alfonso said, not bothering to deny the charges. He barely remembered the people Strauze talked about.
A man and a woman. John and Jane Doe. Alfonso looked at the dead corpse next to his own chair. The memory had faded, but she could easily have been one half of the couple who boarded his freighter.
Alfonso had thought of them as just a pair of down-on-their-luck prospectors, same as anyone who had the misfortune of ending up in a dead-end Star System like Elus.
How was he supposed to know?
“Those two you helped were rogue agents,” Strauze mentioned, like a normal person may talk about the weather.
It was then that Alfonso realized he wasn’t going to get out of this one, no matter what he did.
So he started fighting back against his restraints, hoping against hope that he would be able to beat the plastic material. The struggle barely earned him a glance from Nicholas Strauze. The man produced a small, black cube from the pocket of his jacket and held it in front of Alfonso.
“Do you know what this is?”
“It’s a Shota-M,” said Alfonso in a barely audible rasp. It was the same computer the couple—the agents—had bribed him to smuggle into the planet. For what little Alfonso knew about computational gizmos, people had used Shota-M’s as the computational equivalent of a safe before newer technologies rendered them obsolete. “It’s like a decade old, man. What’s the big deal? Just get someone to crack it.”
Strauze nodded, more to acknowledge Alfonso’s words than to answer him. He looked back at the camera.
“Of course, the agents’ device has been heavily modified. We can’t get what’s inside without compromising the data. Given the implications, we believe the expense of a series of Alcubierre couriers with updates to the Capital are justified, with this information being in the first one. Until new orders are received, I will personally lead the investigation and ensure that the Edge’s best interest are maintained at all times. End of communication.”
The man got up. For a brief second, the faint glow of the corridor’s LEDs reflected the hard lines of his face and his powerful jaw. Without another look in Alfonso’s direction, he turned to leave.
It was too much for Alfonso. Until tonight, he had been a normal person. He had paid his taxes, dammit, he had done his job as best as he could.
“What’s going to happen to me?” Alfonso asked, knowing he was going to regret the question.
Strauze answered without turning back:
“The penalty for aiding EIF terrorism is the suspension of your human designation. As of right now, you’re no longer a person, Petras. Doctor Kircher will handle it from here.”
Alfonso felt the cold bite of a needle in his neck before Strauze had fully exited the room. The pilot’s body quickly lost mobility, but without sensation loss. His scream died in his throat.
“Don’t worry,” he heard Kircher’s half-purr at him while she toyed with her instruments somewhere beyond his range of vision. “You’re in loving hands.”
He could imagine those loving, pale hands working in the corpse next to him. The doctor would do unto him as she had done unto the dead agent.
Before the needle could fully paralyze him, Alfonso Petras too
k the last brave action of his life. He locked glances with Kircher, and said, “I do not hate you.”
The nanobots overloaded every nerve ending in his body with pain signals.
As Alfonso convulsed in a silent scream, Doctor Kircher’s surprised giggles filled the room.
Several hours later, a small, tube-shaped vent opened in the hull of an unnamed corvette spaceship orbiting Dione, black metal against the planet’s gray atmosphere. Alfonso Petra’s remains were ejected out of the vent unceremoniously. His body gyrated against the backdrop of space, with his dead eyes frozen in a pained, unheeded plea.
Not long after that, a courier ship began the months-long voyage toward planet Jagal, capital of the Systems Alliance and home to the Tal-Kader Conglomerate.
War raced at the ship’s heels.
2
Chapter Two
Clarke
All that Joseph Clarke wanted was to finish his whiskey without getting yanked away into the night by Internal Affairs.
While he watched at the small-timer gang drawing loyalist graffiti on the abandoned building across the street, he suspected his fated meeting with the IA’s detectives would arrive closer than he had hoped.
“It doesn’t concern you,” his waitress advised him, drawing Clarke’s attention away from the scene and back to his rugged table at his seedy bar of choice, Kozue Pub. “Don’t get involved.”
Clarke’s eyes flew to the waitress, a middle-aged woman with a face hardened by past mistakes. For all he knew, the waitress saw the same in him.
“Loud and clear,” he said, and waved his index and middle finger as one might gesture with a gun. “Just kids being kids, alright.”
The woman grunted and took away his empty peanut’s tray. “Just friendly advice, old-timer,” she said before she went back inside.
Clarke took a long swig of whiskey and let the burning sensation traveling down his throat get his full attention. He liked Kouze’s. The whiskey was barely tampered with, judging from the lack of chemical-tasting bite on his tongue.
And the employees were sensible people, just like his waitress, good folks who knew just how to survive in the cutthroat culture of Jagal Metropolitan City: by keeping their heads low and knowing when to act like you had gone suddenly blind.
Outside the bar’s window, the kids were drawing Commodore Terry’s face with his prominent, wedge-like forehead exaggerated at grotesque proportions. One of them wrote “Earth can go fuck itself” in neon purple, underlined, under Terry’s drawing.
It wasn’t that worrying, yet. It was a common misconception that Tal-Kader was the Commodore’s lapdog nowadays. They had signed the terms of surrender after all. In truth, old Kader hated Terry as much as the common man. Of course, UEF Mississippi, orbiting Jagal like a gunmetal moon for a decade now, forced the Conglomerate to watch their manners better than the kids outside. Clarke looked away.
His wristband computer had a voice note left from his boss, Julia Fillon, waiting for him. Knowing he could use the distraction, he listened to it while sipping his drink.
“Yo, Grandpa, don’t think we didn’t realize you missed the last five minutes of your shift today. Keep trusting the assembly line to run itself, and one day you’ll wake up to find that robots have finally replaced your ancient ass.”
The “Grandpa” talk was justified, since he was almost twice her age. Her tone wasn’t admonishing, though, and Clarke chuckled to himself. He could almost see Julia’s fake annoyance drawn on her face, trying her best to hide a conspiratorial smile. She’d be the death of him, one day, he was sure of it.
“Anyway, someone forgot to report your mishap to our benevolent overlords. Don’t get too comfortable, Grandpa, it’s going to cost you. I’ll have to see you in my office tonight, so you can make it up to me.”
Julia winked, and the message ended. Clarke smiled to himself. Julia was easily the same age as the kids outside, filled with rebellious energy, eager to defy The Man, and to prove to herself she wouldn’t end up like her parents.
What she saw in Clarke, only she knew, and she wouldn’t tell him.
The sound of glass shattering brought Clarke back to reality. The kids were burning a trashcan while one of them drew a caricature of Vagn Mortensen, Tal-Kader’s CEO, sucking off the Commodore.
Alright, Clarke sighed to himself. That’s bound to piss someone off, sooner or later.
It wasn’t that he was on Kader’s payroll—not anymore—or worse, that he was one of Commodore Terry’s few actual fans. Simply put, Internal Affair’s way of dealing with loyalists had the unfortunate tendency to splash on anyone nearby. There wasn’t such a thing as friendly fire in Jagal Metro City.
And what the hell, Kozue Pub’s crew were good people.
Clarke finished his drink, thumbed his wristband to tip the waitress, and left to stick his nose in business that didn’t concern him.
“Fuck off, man, this doesn’t concern you,” the kid said. His angry swagger made his bright Mohawk sway side to side like a peacock’s tail, which, for all Clarke’s knew, could be the entire point.
Clarke raised his hands briefly at the kid and the rest of his group to show them he was unarmed. “I’m just saying, you may want to take your art to another zone.”
One that lacks clear line-of-sight to the orbitals, he thought to himself, glancing up at the artificial sky above them. There was nothing strange in the pretend-night, but he knew the orbitals were there, always watching.
And, of course, there was the Mississippi, waiting in upper Jagal’s orbit, with sensors so powerful it could see a mouse take a shit in one end of Jagal and count all the worms inside.
“Oh no, we are staying right here,” said another one, androgynous and lanky, with that slight unevenness of proportions that were the result of an infancy of cheap stim juice’s injections. “We want Tal-Kader to see what we think of them. If you have a problem with that…”
The kids fanned out in half a circle in front of Clarke, some of them with their hands in the pockets of their jackets. There were five of them, all younger and hungry to vent their frustrations with a fight. Clarke grimaced. He regretted getting involved already, but he wasn’t in the habit of backing down.
“The only problem I have,” he told them, trying to inject his voice with authority. Once a time, it had come naturally to him, “is that you idiots are going to get me in trouble when the video-feed shows my ID close to yours after some IA grunt is investigating your drawings. The problem you have is that you’ll spend the next decade in some hole-in-the-ground jail if you stay here. You think that will show Tal-Kader who’s boss?”
“We’re not scared of Internal Affairs,” Mohawk guy boasted.
“That only means you’re an idiot,” said Clarke. He grimaced again. Now the fight was unavoidable. The fact he had a head over the tallest of them wasn’t going to deter them. Muscle mass and height meant little in a fight where firearms were involved.
That meant they were packing. At least one of them. Plastic, probably. One or two shots at most. The odds weren’t in his favor, but Clarke had survived worse.
“I know rats like you,” Androgynous told him, “always thinking of themselves. Edge’s freedom may be hanging by a thread, and all you can think of is not pissing of Internal Affairs.”
They were getting closer. Clarke gave them a wide berth, retreating where they advanced, but not back to the pub. Instead, he moved sideways, parallel to the kids, until his shoulder reached the same wall they were painting on. As a result, he ended completely surrounded and with all his escape routes cut, except for the dead-end alley a couple meters away from him, currently blocked by Mohawk’s bulk.
From the corner of his eyes, Clarke could see two of the kids had grabbed taut chains from their pockets and were tying them up around their hands. Another had a cheap mono-knife. Mohawk’s hands were still in his pockets, which meant he was packing heat.
“And I bet you love beating up random people on the street be
cause it’s your civic duty,” Clarke told Androgynous, voice dripping sarcasm, but his attention was on Mohawk. The kid had just made a mistake. Anxious to be the first to lay the beating on the old man, he was a couple steps further than the rest of his friends.
Well, no sense letting a good chance go to waste.
Androgynous began to say something angry and edgy when Clarke leaped into Mohawk’s chest like a cannonball. The kid managed to draw his plastic gun half-way before Clarke’s open palm connected with the kid’s throat. The strike made a dull sound and Mohawk gagged and stumbled backward while his friends roared and charged at Clarke.
He was already behind Mohawk, though. Clarke used both hands to twist Mohawk’s gun arm hard until the elbow made a crunching noise and dislocated. Mohawk screeched in agony and dropped the gun, right into Clarke’s open, waiting palm.
“Holy shit,” said Androgynous, when he was suddenly staring at the wrong end of the barrel.
“I’ll only say it once,” Clarke told him over the screams of Mohawk, whose arm Clarke was still twisting with his free hand, “fuck off. Go litter someone else’s level.”
Androgynous eyes’ flickered between the gun and Mohawk in such a way that almost let Clarke read his mind.
Don’t do it, kid, he thought. No one could out-run a bullet.
But was he really going to kill a kid over some stupid graffiti?