Edge of Conquest (The Restoration Armada Book 1)

by Hugo Huesca

  He made it halfway to Taiga’s exit before realizing he was being followed. At least three adult males, fifty meters away from him at all times. If he walked faster, so did they. If he slowed down, they did the same. Fifty meters, every time.

  Enforcers? It couldn’t be. They looked like off-worlder thugs, their clothing barely adequate for Taiga’s climate. Delagarza bet not one of them had spent more than a couple of months down Dione.

  Hired muscle, he decided. What the fuck do they want with me?

  It didn’t matter. Once he reached the trolleys, he’d lose them in the sewers.

  The industrial lamps that substituted for Taiga’s lack of sunlight shone at the archway that marked Taiga’s exit. A crowd of people of all social classes flowed out. They made Delagarza think of blood leaving an artery.

  Except not everyone was leaving. More off-worlders stood by the archway, scanning the crowd, talking among themselves via cochlear-implanted radios.

  A couple of them noticed Delagarza and pretended not to see him. He read their lips and turned back. The three men that followed him had gotten closer, thirty meters now. One had a plastic gun halfway out of its holster. The stream of evacuating people stood between them and a clear shot at Delagarza.

  Shit, he thought. He glanced around, feeling desperation pool in his chest. If Taiga’s tourists were running rats, he was the one rodent trapped as the ship sank.

  Exit’s blocked. Thugs are rounding me up like cattle. Keep calm, Del, you got this.

  He needed an escape route. Back and front were blocked to him. A quick glance to the right showed him a passageway blocked by confused tourists. Left side, on the other hand, was empty and dark, a blind spot between the industrial lights.

  Left it is.

  He walked away from the exit, trying his best to pretend he hadn’t noticed the thugs. The thugs followed, trying their best not to act like they were shadowing him.

  The passageway was cold and abandoned, a corner of Taiga perused by drug addicts and the Russian-roulette kind of prostitute. Delagarza delved deep into it, making all the turns that’d bring him deeper into the darkness. There were men and women here who made no attempt to leave. Laying against the rusty wall sheets and in piles of ragged cloth and trash, they were well past caring about an enforcer raid.

  Delagarza lost sight of the three men (now five), behind him after he took a sharp right. His eyes saw only black after that, and the smell of human waste and cheap, burnt drugs got overwhelming.

  Behind him, the thugs cursed, and he heard their footsteps shoot into a run.

  He turned on his wristband’s flashlight and ran like the devil.

  They’ll follow the light, he thought, as he vaulted over an overdosed corpse and pushed a trashcan out of his way. He shot fast glances behind his back and saw the thugs’ own wristband flashlights. They were too close, there were too many of them, and they were rounding him up.

  Good. Delagarza took another sharp turn, lighted his way into the corridor for a second, memorized it, and turned off the light. He jogged to a corner and dropped next to a moaning woman covered in piss-soaked coats. The faint orange glow of stolen heaters surrounded her like an aura. She looked at him with a spot of alarm in her eyes, but he took away his own coat and tossed it in her pile. She looked away, and Delagarza relaxed all the muscles in his body. He gave his leg a twitch and a tremor to his hands and grimaced. He became the living image of a man addicted to liftoff, the nastiest drug around.

  When the group of five thugs passed by, their flashlights scanned the pair of huddling hobos and the end of the corridor. One of them cursed, complaining about the smell, and the five kept going. All of them carried plastic guns.

  “Thanks,” Delagarza told the woman, who said nothing. He left the way his pursuers had come from.

  That little trick had earned him a couple minutes. Enough to check out his route of escape.

  He returned to Taiga’s downtown, to Cronos’ ‘ware shop. It was deserted now, not a single soul around, except those past caring.

  Past the ‘ware shop waited the private part of Taiga, the mob’s territory, where people like Nanny Kayoko made deals with each other without interference from enforcers or security. It was a lawless place, where not even a connected man, such as Delagarza, could survive alone.

  But everyone was hiding behind their beds, right?

  He walked right in, like he owned the place. Downtown was richer than most of Alwinter up there, and it showed. The streets were better lit, with neon signs everywhere, showing promises of sex, food, and other recreations, the best that money could buy.

  While Delagarza passed a nightclub, he saw the bulky frame of a bouncer behind a window. The man squinted at Delagarza and then closed the curtains. Judging from all the stationed mini-cars outside, the place was packed. Probably filled to the brim with mafiosi waiting out the storm.

  Assholes, Delagarza thought.

  But their cowardice was his salvation. One of the bikes was unlocked. It probably belonged to some guy thieves were too scared to steal from. Delagarza hopped on.

  His plan involved reaching Taiga’s personal exit tunnels. He had never seen them before. Actually, he never thought about their possible existence until now. But they made sense. No way Nanny Kayoko left for Alwinter breathing the same shit-infused air as the normal populace.

  So he bet his life on being right.

  An hour later, with his reg-suit working overtime to handle the sweat pouring down his body, he found what he was looking for. Rusty stairs connected to the walls, rising a hundred meters and ending next to a single door.

  Manager’s personal service tunnels, Delagarza thought. He knew it was the place because someone had installed new, modern lifts next to the stairs, and they seemed well-used.

  And guarding those lifts were two men, almost invisible in their black reg-suits, but the plastic glint of their guns was unmistakable.

  Delagarza saw them before they saw him. He jumped off the bike and sprinted for the cover of a nearby alley. A second after he reached cover and ducked down, the wall behind him racketed as two impacts peppered it, one after the other.

  When Delagarza peeked out, the thugs shot again, but Delagarza had anticipated this and dived as they aimed. The bullets went wide, and without getting up, Delagarza took out his gun and fired three times in quick succession.

  The pistol was silenced. He saw the flashes of exploding gas as the bullets exited the chamber, felt the kickback against his wrists travel down the bones of his arm like an electrical current, heard the muffled explosion. One of the thugs wailed and went down as two black, humid flowers spread on his reg-suit, chest-high. The third bullet hit him squarely in the forehead a quarter of a second later. Delagarza caught a glimpse of brain matter spattered on the lift’s machinery. The thug collapsed, dead before hitting the floor.

  The remaining man took a look at his partner, aimed at Delagarza, and pressed the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  “Seriously,” Delagarza told him, “can’t you count? You shot twice already. That 3D printed gun holds two rounds.”

  “Fuck you!” the thug said. “I’ll fucking kill you!”

  The man ran for cover, fidgeting with his gun to reload it from the rounds in his pocket. Delagarza shot him in the back. The man fell. His plastic gun broke in a thousand pieces as it hit the ground.

  Delagarza rushed to the thug who whimpered as vapor rose out of his wound and drops of his blood froze on the floor panels.

  “Don’t fucking move!” Delagarza roared. His veins pulsed with such violence he thought he may burst at any second. His throat tasted of adrenaline and fear, but his aim didn’t falter one bit. He kept the gun’s barrel trained on the man’s torso.

  “Please!” the thug begged. “Don’t shoot! I’m just doing my job, man.”

  Delagarza took a good look at him. Twenty something, barely a man by any standards, fresh out of some Backwater Planet and looking for some
easy cash. Working for the enforcers was dangerous, but profitable. Delagarza himself knew that well.

  “Why are you and your pals chasing me?” he asked the thug.

  “The security lady paid us a lot of credits, yesterday, to silence you,” the thug said. “She didn’t tell us why and I didn’t ask.”

  Krieger. Delagarza described her to the man, and he confirmed his description. “What’s your name, buddy?” Delagarza asked him.

  “Rex,” he said.

  “Today’s your lucky day, Rex,” Delagarza said. “You go and tell that lady I don’t give a shit about her business, and I won’t tell anyone about it, so don’t bother coming after me.”

  “Fuck! Can you repeat that?”

  Delagarza left Rex there. The lifts required a special code to operate.

  Stairs it is.

  The rusty steps creaked under his weight, and after he passed the halfway point, the entire structure started to sway.

  At least it’ll fall over Rex. I’m sure he’ll mitigate the impact.

  More thugs trickled down the street. To Delagarza, they looked like toy soldiers in their cheap reg-suits. But they carried guns. Some shot at him from too far away, and he saw the bullets impact the industrial ventilators next to the stairs.

  The others waited until they were closer and took careful aim. Delagarza ducked to reduce the size of their target and rushed the rest of the way. In front and behind him, metal clanged from the bullet impact, leaving visible dents on the handrails.

  When he reached the door, one bullet struck it, so close to him, that a sliver of something hot cut his cheek. Delagarza cursed, considered returning fire, and hurried to get the damn thing open when another bullet hit his coat and missed his leg by a hair’s breadth.

  The door was locked. Below, enough thugs had gathered that the stream of plastic bullets was constant, but inaccurate. A couple men climbed the stairs, and the tremor of their steps threatened to tear the entire structure out.

  Delagarza aimed his gun at a spot under the door’s lock, keeping enough distance between barrel and lock, and shot once.

  The door opened, and he rushed inside and away from the line of fire. His face was red and sweaty, and his reg-suit had begun beeping that its batteries were low. A stream of blood trickled down his face from the spot where the sliver had nicked him.

  But he was alive.

  Delagarza laughed like a maniac, flashed one last look outside, saw the men were still after him, and ran like a devil’s forsaken soul into the darkness of the management’s tunnels, with only his lantern to light the way.

  “What a lovely day,” he told himself through gritted teeth. If Krieger had set these fools on his tail, the enforcers wouldn’t give up the chase.

  Any normal person would’ve surrendered to panic as they reaching that realization. Delagarza forced his pulse to remain steady as he ran, stumbling in the badly lit tunnels.

  He was a loose end, and the only way he’d be getting out of this one was if he made it not worth the enforcers’ time to take him out.

  And he had an idea about how to achieve that.

  14

  Chapter Fourteen

  Clarke

  “My mother’s gonna be pissed when I tell her I almost became pirate churn,” Mann told Clarke. “I already lied to her when she asked me about sailor’s accident rates per trip.”

  “Where does she live?” asked Clarke. Talking about a sailor’s family was a sure way to calm them down, and he was well aware the Beowulf’s crew needed some reassurance.

  Clarke and Mann stood in the crew’s lounge, a cramped room that mixed gym with cafeteria and entertainment center. About a dozen other contractors hung around, sipping drinks that, officially, were alcohol free. Many shared the same worried look and spoke only in hushed tones. Occasionally, one shot Clarke a glance or two.

  Captain Navathe shared an issue many other commanders her age shared. She expected her crew to be as professional as she was. After surviving the pirate attack, Navathe had barely explained the situation to the crew—enough words to let them know what was going on, but that did little to reassure their fears and concerns.

  “Ponterona Colony,” said Mann. “We spent our childhood there—my mother, my three sisters, and myself. It’s in the Nera System.”

  “I know Nera,” said Clarke, “the Fleet sent us there for a patrol stint, about a year of keeping an eye on its Alcubierre points.”

  “You fought any pirates, then?”

  “Not really,” Clarke said, with a shrug. “Pirates know they won’t survive direct confrontation with the Defense Fleet, so they avoid us like the plague. Anyway, Nera was a rather peaceful system, from what I can recall, so our presence was barely needed.”

  “Sure,” said Mann, “Nera is this close to being a resort system, let me tell you. A great place to let your children grow up, far from Edge’s politics.”

  “I believe that,” Clarke said.

  The contractor’s chest puffed with pride when he talked about his home system. Clarke nodded with satisfaction, and for a while, they talked about Nera and the high points of Clarke’s stint there. The women, the food, the music scene. Mann told the truth when he said Nera was almost a paradise system.

  Clarke remembered little of it, though, since he’d seldom left the destroyer during that time. There was no need to tell Mann that.

  “How about you, Clarke?” Mann asked during a lull in the conversation. “Any family waiting for you at the end of your contract?”

  The crew of the Beowulf knew nothing of the EIF’s involvement or their plans. To them, this was a mere contracted trip like any other they’d done on the same ship. Clarke hoped they never knew about what the Beowulf was really doing this time around. It’d be safer this way.

  “My parents are gone, and I’m an only child,” Clarke told him. He dismissed Mann’s obligatory apologies with a gesture. “No need for that, it was a long time ago. They were good, honest people. Hydroponic farmers for a small corporation. I spent most of my childhood on one ship to another.”

  “It sounds like you’ve seen it all,” Mann told him. Clarke could see a hint of adoration on Mann’s eyes, and it made him profoundly uncomfortable. It was a well-known secret around the Beowulf’s decks that it had been Clarke’s advice that had got them through the pirate encounter without casualties.

  Compared to Captain Yin, I’m still a child, he thought. That woman had earned the right of calling herself an old space dog, aloud, and not get drowned by laughter. Thinking about Yin made him think of Broken Sky. Clarke’s mood sobered.

  Mann seemed unaware of the mood shift. “This ‘gravity assist’ shtick is your idea too, right? How does it work?”

  Clarke blinked and forced his mind away from the memories of death and destruction. “It’s nothing new. The Beowulf missed its window to brake safely and reach New Angeles’ orbit. Right now, if we burned the g’s necessary to decelerate us, the crew would be reduced to a pulp.”

  “Right,” said Mann.

  “We could keep going to the Alcubierre point opposite New Angeles, from our point of view,” Clarke went on, “but we need to buy fuel from New Angeles.”

  And get Antonov’s fleet coordinates.

  “So, instead of wasting fuel, we’ll use New Angeles outer orbit as a slingshot,” said Clarke. He opened a holographic screen and quickly drew the maneuver for Mann.

  The planet was a dot, the ship was another one. Clarke traced a line from the ship to the planet that missed it by an inch. “This is our current route. We can’t get any closer or the garrison will shoot us down. Don’t get alarmed, it’s a survival thing. A ship going at .03c can do nasty things to a planet. Nastier than a nuke.”

  “Same to the ship,” Mann pointed out. Clarke barked a coarse laugh, then continued his drawing:

  “Since we want to save time, instead of decelerating, passing the planet, and then accelerating (and decelerating again) toward it, we’ll use its gravity an
d our velocity to change directions.”

  He continued the line of Beowulf’s route, but instead of keeping it straight, he drew a quarter circle around New Angeles and then resumed the straight line. The new route was a full 90 degrees off from its original course.

  “During this maneuver,” Clarke pointed at the quarter circle, “we’ll be decelerating. Our end point will be much closer than without the slingshot, and we’ll save a lot of fuel and time.”

  Mann nodded, taking it all in. The man was new, but not an idiot, and he knew how gravity mechanics worked. “Thanks for taking the time to explain it to me. I can’t ask Gutierrez or he’ll make fun of me until we disembark,” he told Clarke.

  “Anytime, Mann,” Clarke said. He checked the time on his wristband and dismissed the holo screen with a gesture. “Don’t let him get on your nerves. Next contract, you’ll be the veteran.”

  Clarke left the other sailor and made his way to the rest of the tables around the lounge. Mann’s doubts had been assuaged, but there was still the rest of the crew, and Beowulf, as most independent merchant ships, lacked enough officers to check on them. It wasn’t acceptable. If the EIF was lying to them, the least Clarke could do was talk to them as if they were persons, not merely a convenient disguise.

  Hours later, Clarke returned to the bridge. According to his wristband, he was well into the second part of the internal ship cycle. As such, most of the scarce bridge’s crew slept in their quarters. Only Captain Navathe herself still manned the bridge’s computers.

  Clarke looked over her shoulder at the screen above her. Several forms and permits for tow ships and emergency landing fees. Just thinking of sorting out the bureaucracy gave Clarke a headache.

  “Still awake, Clarke?” Captain Navathe asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Clarke said. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “You’ve been busy, I hear,” she said, “talking to the crew. According to Lambert, you’ve done wonders for the ship’s morale, not even counting our daring fight against the pirates.”