Edge of Conquest (The Restoration Armada Book 1)

by Hugo Huesca

  Delagarza noted how she dropped the ganger-speech the instant she was alone with him. “Wage-slave” was inner-system slang, straight from Earth, outdated long before the space age. Nowadays youths had stumbled upon the word and adopted it.

  So, you’re a tourist that settled in, just like I am. It was funny how the world worked.

  “I had a deal that went awry. With the enforcers. They’re trying to mop up the loose ends. I’m trying to buy my way out by giving them what they want.”

  Lotti sighed and passed a gloved hand across her neon hair, which appeared on fire under the glow of the reg-suit hood. “You’re trying to get out by diving deeper than you were? Shit, Delagarza, I thought you were smart.”

  “And I thought you were a violent sociopath,” he said. “What else am I supposed to do?”

  “Walk away,” she told him, “go hide in a friend’s house and wait until they forget about you.”

  He considered it. It wasn’t a bad suggestion. Enforcers had a lot on their plate already. Keeping an entire star system under the control of the SA was a tough task. If he waited long enough, there was a chance Krieger would forget about him, when the next fool in need of mopping-up came along.

  Kayoko’s grim visage flashed across his mind. If she was right, the enforcers were looking for Isabella Reiner, and racing against time to do so.

  If Delagarza had been in their shoes, there was nothing he would’ve allowed to get in his way. If Kayoko’s group found Reiner first…it could mean the destruction of Tal-Kader. But demolishing a giant, evil tower usually meant rocks would rain on the populace below.

  Was the Edge ready to survive the upheaval?

  “I don’t think they’ll be forgetting about this one,” he told her.

  The ganger considered this. “Well then,” she said, “you paid for a Lotti-level quality gig, and that’s what you’ll get.”

  The gangers hideout had been a homeless shelter, once, before life-support upkeep had run too high on the expense chart of Alwinter’s governor. The gangers had reworked it using poly-plastic sheets and cardboard and furnished it with stolen items and sofas dragged straight out of a dumpster. The industrial life-support system ran on God-knew-what, but it smelled of spaceship fuel. Delagarza hoped it was his imagination.

  Lotti made good on her word. It wasn’t the end of the sleep cycle when she and her gangers were back at their hideout, carrying a black garbage bag in a mechanized service kart. At first, Delagarza almost had a heart attack when he saw the bag, but relaxed once he saw it move, quite forcefully, while whoever was inside struggled to get free.

  “Express delivery service coming through,” Lotti’s second-in-command cheerfully announced. He smacked the bag, hard, and pushed it to the grated floor. There was a metallic clunk accompanied by a muffled scream.

  “Thanks, Nerd,” Lotti said. Delagarza caught a glimpse of her bloodied knuckles while she labored over the garbage bag with a knife. A slashing motion later, and Bruno Choffard came out, gasping for air.

  The gangers grabbed Choffard by his arms and shoulders and forced him upright, eye-level with Lotti, who was staring at him with a playful grin.

  “Are you insane?” he roared, sending specks of spit in a shotgun spread out of his mouth. “Do you have any idea who I am?”

  Delagarza had. Bruno Choffard worked tech, mainly for other tech companies who couldn’t be bothered to make the sub-routines Choffard sold. Compared to Delagarza, or even Charleton, Choffard was rich and powerful. No doubt, he had friends in powerful places, and contacts with Alwinter’s government.

  He didn’t look the part. Someone had smashed his lower lip to a pulp, and both his eyes sported purple bruises that would become black pretty soon. His executive reg-suit was ruffled, torn in some places, and hydrogen and coolant leaked out in a stream, like green blood.

  Lotti cleaned specks of spit from her face. “Do you have any idea who I am?” she asked.

  “No, you bitch!”

  “Good.” She punched him in the kidneys. Choffard folded over his belly. Delagarza could almost see the bravado abandon his body.

  To add insult to injury, Lotti took out Choffard reg-suit’s battery pack and handed it to Delagarza, who exchanged it for his own. Lotti returned to Choffard, who was still retching, and calmly installed Delagarza’s old battery pack.

  “My friend here was running low. I’m sure you don’t mind,” Lotti said. “If we don’t take long here, you can go and buy another.”

  “Where are my bodyguards?” Choffard asked, after he recovered from the hit.

  “Enjoying some well-earned sleep,” Nerd said. He was the one holding Choffard’s arms. “If you answer Boss’ questions, you’ll nap too, like a good boy, and wake up all refreshed tomorrow.”

  The ganger left the “if you don’t…” unsaid, but the message was crystal clear.

  Choffard’s eyes flickered around, trying to get a hold of his surroundings. Delagarza finished his cheap protein bar and walked over.

  “What do you want from me?” Choffard asked.

  “My friend here, the regular and all-around top-notch guy, Mr. Johnson,” said Lotti, gesturing at Delagarza, “is wondering about your recent string of meetings with a not-so-regular crowd. Ring any bells, Bunnie Brunie?”

  “Don’t know what you’re—”

  Delagarza sighed and looked away while the gangers hit the man again. When they were done, Choffard’s face was a mess. Broken nose, blood sprouting as if from a leaky pipe, a couple missing teeth. He struggled weakly against Nerd’s hold on him.

  “Please,” he begged, “I can pay you.”

  “Your company had two visitors, didn’t it?” asked Delagarza. “The second one was enforcers. The first one was a certain revolutionary group that operates in Taiga Town.”

  Choffard forgot he was in pain as a new kind of fear settled in. He examined Delagarza head-to-toe, taking into account his ragged reg-suit, the pistol on his belt, the way he stood and carried himself.

  Delagarza knew exactly what Choffard was trying to figure out. Which of those groups he belonged too?

  “I’m with neither,” he said.

  “Fuck, man, you’ll get your ass killed!” Choffard said. He winced, like expecting a punch.

  “I can take care of myself. Now, about those meetings—”

  “They found nothing! ATS corp is squeaky clean, there’s nothing to see. They came, asking all kinds of questions, and then left.”

  “Of course they did,” said Delagarza. “Neither knew where to look, did they, Bunnie Brunie?”

  Kayoko’s database, which she claimed came from the Shota-M in the enforcer’s possession, had a long string of almost unintelligible interstellar travel-logs and coordinates, no doubt pulled from a ship’s flight computer. Delagarza suspected Kayoko’s efforts were focused on translating the travel-logs, hoping to track Isabella Reiner by following her path to Dione.

  The last file, though, mentioned a scheduled meeting with Alwinter Travel Services, Choffard’s company. They updated ship databases between trips.

  This clued Delagarza in that Choffard had given both Kayoko and the enforcers the slip.

  “People always forget that corporations are made of people,” Delagarza said. “And that those people can act behind said corporation, while enjoying its resources at the same time. Right, Choffard? Yes, you know what I’m talking about. See, people talk in Alwinter. Oh, they don’t talk to people like you, or the enforcers, or even Taiga Town’s revolutionaries. After all, you all mean trouble, and everyone knows it. People talk to me, though, their good friend, top-notch guy Mr. Johnson. Wonder what they say about you?”

  Choffard’s deer-in-the-headlights expression gave Delagarza all the confirmation he needed.

  “That if anyone wants to leave the planet, but is in trouble with the authorities, they can come to you for a new identity, one good enough to fool Outlander’s security. This, of course, for a price.”

  It hadn’t been
hard to figure out how Choffard did it. Contractors died during trips. Accidents happened, pirate raids happened. Shit happened.

  Some of those ships used ATS services to keep their databases updated, and ATS bought the ships’ databases in exchange for a discount. Add a backroom deal with Alwinter’s authorities, and ATS updated those databases, which included ID recognition. It was all a huge data orgy, with Choffard at the center, spewing strangers’ data-emissions everywhere.

  And to make a quick buck in his spare time, Choffard sold dead contractors’ IDs and reported them as alive.

  “Sweet fuck,” whispered Nerd, “that’s some useful contact to have. I’ll keep you in mind, Choffard.”

  “No!” Choffard said. “It only works because people don’t know the personal ID software can be gamed. If word spreads, they’ll plug the bug…”

  “Shut up,” said Delagarza, “I don’t care about your grave-robbing shtick. I care about this.”

  He opened the Shota-M file with the ATS receipt on it.

  “Sixteen years ago, you handed a woman a new identity, didn’t you? Only that, instead of going out of Dione, she wanted to stay in.”

  Choffard paled. “You really think I remember? I’ve sold hundreds—”

  Lotti softly caressed Choffard’s cheek before clenching her hand into a fist. Choffard gulped and shut up.

  “Thanks, doll,” Delagarza said. Then, he told Choffard, “Send me the file you kept on her. Don’t bother denying it or my friend here will hurt you. Of course you keep a file on your clients, Choffard. Where do you keep it? Your office would be too risky. A warehouse? I don’t think you’re that smart. Maybe your house?”

  The last one got a visible reaction from Choffard. Delagarza nodded, like the man had confessed, and went on:

  “Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll let you go, right now, and pretend this never happened. In exchange for this favor, you’ll go to your house, to your wife and your children, and will send me the file I want. If you don’t, if you even try going to security, we’ll show everyone the video of this meeting. I wonder what the enforcers will think about your side-business then. Wanna know what I think? They’re not going to like it. You know what a loyalty test is?”

  Nerd and Lotti exchanged a glance. “Buddy Johnson is good at this,” Nerd whispered to his boss.

  Choffard was too busy being scared shitless to hear them. “Please, there’s no need to…”

  Behind him, a couple gangers approached with a new garbage bag. At a gesture from Lotti, a third one approached Choffard and waged a sonic baton next to his ear. The man’s eyes rolled up, and his body fell like a rag-doll into the waiting bag.

  “A bit too soon,” Delagarza complained, “I want to be sure he’ll do it.”

  “Believe me,” said Lotti, “I’ve done this a hundred times, and that man is not a fighter. You’ll get your data, dear Mr. Johnson.”

  Sixteen hours later, the information came through. Delagarza was alone in a capsule motel since he didn’t dare return to his apartment with Krieger’s thugs looking for him. He unpacked Choffard’s file after scanning it for viruses and finding it clear.

  He also took care to not look at the data directly. It was text, not an image file, but he wasn’t keen on getting Kill Virus-ed twice in the same week. He looked at the holo from the reflection of a pocket mirror, and once he was satisfied, he started reading.

  Got you, he thought, one hour later, with his eyes half-closed from sleep deprivation. The woman in the image was sixteen years older today, but he was sure he’d recognize her anywhere. She had been thirty seven, now fifty three, which matched Isabella Reiner’s current age. Auburn hair, an air of grim elegance, brown eyes hard as steel. The perfect image of a princess in exile.

  Isabella’s new identity was Edith Sharpe. Sharpe’s career had been all over the place these last sixteen years, never leaving the planet. She had worked in a non-profit—a foster home, then done a full-switch into a financial institution, then back to non-profits, including a ganger rehabilitation center (now closed), a homeless shelter, even a free emergency clinic, which was her current place of employment.

  Sixteen years of fighting poverty and suffering. Failing over and over again, having all her ventures foreclosed, or running out of funds, or raided by gangers.

  The woman was a saint, Delagarza decided, looking at her long list of well-intentioned failures. When the Edge got a hold of her story, they’d fall madly in love with her. He could see it already, the story of the exiled princess, fighting for the people even while hiding, not once giving up her father’s mad quest for a free Edge. There’d be movies about her. Scratch that. They’d hand her the presidency, if she dared ask for it. A princess in all but name, then. She only needed to get off planet.

  Whoever is coming to save you, Edith, I hope they’re one hell of a fighter. Tal-Kader isn’t surrendering you that easily, thought Delagarza right as he fell asleep.

  He woke up in the middle of the work-cycle. His first thought was:

  I have to meet her.

  16

  Chapter Sixteen

  Clarke

  “There’s a targeting laser bouncing off the Beowulf’s hull,” said Captain Navathe.

  Few words could curdle a man’s blood as well as those.

  Clarke cursed under his breath and double-checked the straps to his g-seat and the oxygen supply of his pressure suit. Not that it’d help him survive a barrage from a patrol gunship, but it was all he could do. With the Beowulf burning as many g’s as it could without killing its remaining crew, he was struggling to remain conscious as it was.

  The hours-long slingshot around New Angeles’ outer orbit had been covered by angry demands of surrender coming from the garrison and the inner-orbit stations, all while peppering the ship with long-distance turret and railgun fire. So far, they’d avoided damage, as the unpredictable nature of the slingshot course protected them from the patrol ships as they struggled to accelerate enough to match Beowulf’s .05c velocity. Even with the military ships powerful engines, it’d take them several hours to do so, and Beowulf only needed to survive a couple more to reach the Alcubierre point.

  Beowulf had come under fire, true, but thanks to the extra distance to the planet and their mad acceleration toward freedom, those shots had missed their mark. Clarke had dared to think they could make it unscathed.

  Those hopes were now dashed by the blaring alarm and the intermittent red lights enveloping the bridge.

  “Return fire!” demanded Pascari.

  “Do it,” said Clarke. There was little else they could do at this point. If the pilot broke course to go into evasive maneuvers, they’d run out of fuel before reaching the Alcubierre point.

  Navathe activated a holo and entered the firing command. Seconds later, the ship rattled as the kickback from its turrets traveled down its structure. It was a constant buzz that seeped deep into Clarke’s bones.

  They wouldn’t know if they scored a hit for about two minutes. Compared to the vast distances of military engagements, two minutes were nothing. They still felt like hours to Clarke.

  “No hit,” said Navathe. “Navigation confirms the gunboat has opened fire. Hang on tight.”

  Forty seconds, Clarke estimated. Due to the distance between ships, the gunboat had fired a couple seconds before Navigation picked up the heat signature.

  Next to him, Julia closed her eyes and began to pray. Clarke had no idea what her religion was. He’d never asked her. He hoped her God was looking the right way and feeling charitable.

  “Be brave, everyone,” said Antonov, “we’re fighting for the future of the Edge. Keep a level head and do your best—”

  A bit late for that speech, Clarke thought, at the same time his personal countdown reached forty two seconds.

  Several things happened at once. Holes the size of coins appeared across the bridge’s walls, ceiling, and floor. The Beowulf trembled, hard enough that the g-seat straps pushed hard against Clarke’s
skin. The foam polymer of the seat kept his neck from snapping around like a whip.

  The bridge’s computers snapped in a shower of sparks and died: they’d taken a hit. All the holo screens disappeared from view.

  Power went off. Someone was screaming. Clarke felt the familiar sensation of zero g pulling softly at his body. In the dark, he felt as if floating deep inside the ocean, without knowing up or down.

  Sparks from the destroyed computers illuminated Navathe’s immobile form, still strapped in her seat. A trail of blood floated next to her, already spiraling toward the closest hole through which the bridge’s atmosphere was siphoned.

  The screaming ceased. In fact, a perfect silence engulfed the ship.

  Clarke cursed as the loss of pressure triggered his suit’s internal air supply. His fingers clumsily battled against the straps, undid them, and he pushed softly away.

  If power came back, and the ship accelerated again, he’d probably die.

  He turned his wristband’s flashlight on and took a look around. Antonov was dead. A bullet had hit him squarely in the chest. His remains floated in opposite directions, spreading like a red cloud through the bridge.

  A part of Clarke’s mind screamed. He forced that part down.

  Later, he thought. Survival came first.

  Pascari fought against the straps of his seat. Clarke saw the man’s lips moving furiously, probably still cursing. Pascari squinted at Clarke’s flashlight, a dumbfounded expression already settling on his face.

  Julia was alive, but hurt. Something had hit her leg. Not a bullet since the leg was still attached and shaped like a leg. But shrapnel was enough to kill.

  She was suffocating. Clarke kicked at the ceiling, forced his mind to see Julia’s position as down, and dove toward her as fast as he dared. He caught hold of her seat, broke his momentum, and looked under the g-seat with frantic, but practiced, movements. He took out the first aid kit, magnetized it to his suit’s arm, and took out a small aerosol bottle.