Edge of Conquest (The Restoration Armada Book 1)

by Hugo Huesca

  One by one, the sailors standing to his sides left. The ceremony had been short and sweet, led by Eagle’s quartermaster, who was trained as a priest of her religion before enlisting with the EIF. After her farewell speech to Captain Mather (who earned a promotion after her passing), Clarke’s own seemed, to him, dry and irrelevant. He had barely known Mather.

  A woman dressed in the same white uniform he wore approached him. It was Navathe. “Captain. I was hoping to talk with you if you have time.”

  Clarke nodded. There’d been little chance to talk since Sierra had left Elus Star System in a hurry. The funeral procession was the first time he and Navathe had met since the Elus battle. In truth, he had missed Navathe. The older woman wasn’t a member of Sierra’s hierarchy, so he could talk to her without his position weighing on his shoulders. He could’ve talked with Pascari, true, but neither man appreciated the company of the other and fighting and winning against Tal-Kader hadn’t changed that.

  Navathe was Clarke’s only friend.

  “Walk with me, Captain,” he said. “I’d like to hear your opinion on something.”

  They reached a part of the deck where a black tungsten sheet filled most of the wall. The names of the fallen danced in Clarke’s eyes as he read. Most of the names, he didn’t recognize. They were the Eagle’s crewmen who hadn’t made it to the escape pods or had died during combat. The escort crews who gave their life to defend their fellow sailors. Julia Fillon. Antonov. Mann and the other crewmen of the Beowulf. At the very end, the names Nick Cooke, Samuel Delagarza, and Nerd claimed his attention. Hirsen had asked for the first two to be added. The last one, Isabella Reiner added it herself. Her sloppy handwriting contrasted with the sober elegance of the machine engraving.

  Just like the name and the image of the girl clashed every time he thought of her.

  “I wish that avenging Beowulf hadn’t carried such a price,” Navathe muttered as she read the long list.

  “They died doing their duty,” said Clarke softly. “Now it’s our duty to make them proud as they watch us, from wherever they are.”

  It was his own duty to repeat those words until he was sure they weren’t platitudes, but the absolute truth.

  They kept quiet for a while after that as they left the plaque behind and crossed Hawk’s passageways and carpeted corridors. Now and then they passed a group of sailors. Clarke saluted everyone, and they returned the salute. The young sailors’ expressions, when they saw him, ranged from fear and nervousness to admiration.

  The very idea made him squirm. He was the opposite of a role model.

  “You led them to Sierra’s first victory in a long time,” Navathe told him. “It shouldn’t surprise you that they like you.”

  Clarke shook his head and said nothing.

  Finally, they reached their destination. The medical bay. Two marines in active powered armor stood to each side of the hatch.

  “He’s still here, isn’t he?” Navathe asked.

  Clarke nodded. The marines saluted him and then examined his ID and made him enter a bio-locked password.

  “Still under medication.”

  Dove’s medical personnel still claimed they had no idea how the man had survived such abuse. The bullet that destroyed his shoulder had perforated the artery, but during surgery the medics discovered coagulation coating most of the damage, somehow undeterred by the blood flow.

  Clarke and Navathe entered the bay. It was filled half-to-capacity with wounded sailors, most of them from Eagle’s escape capsules, but also with turret-fire survivors. A couple were missing limbs. They’d have to wait until they reached a better medical facility to replace those.

  Hirsen slept in the middle of a sea of IVs and monitoring equipment. His body was covered in bandages and casts, his face a bloated mess of purple and red. The man was short and wiry, all skin and tendons with little muscle or fat. A mess of scar tissue covered his body like a grotesque map. Knife wounds, bullet wounds, burns, scratches, plus assorted damage.

  “Hard to think he’s the most wanted man in the Edge,” said Clarke. He looked like a guy with terrible luck.

  Navathe chuckled. “You haven’t watched the news, have you?”

  Clarke raised an eyebrow at her.

  “We just got a courier ship from Dione with updates. SA propaganda is calling you the second most wanted in the Edge. Isabella is the first. Hirsen’s in third place. The rest of the positions are taken by the EIF council. Congratulations, Captain, seems like promotions just rain in your general direction.”

  “Of course,” Clarke said. He sighed. Of course he was the second most wanted. Isabella Reiner was in his Task Force. Until he reached Independent at least. Then, it was anybody’s guess.

  “You think he’s telling the truth, Navathe?” he asked. “In your opinion. About her, I mean.”

  “Too young, isn’t she?” Navathe said. They’d both seen her. An Alwinter thug who called herself a ganger, wearing a tasteless miss-match of neon candy colors and her own assortment of scars. She barely left her quarters these days. Didn’t go to the funeral. In a way, it was for the best. Her presence made the sailors nervous.

  She makes us all nervous. The mental image of Isabella Reiner, atemporal refugee of the Monsoon, had been shattered by the real woman.

  “Yes. The Newgen ship she traveled as a baby matches her paper trail. Somehow.”

  “Tal-Kader’s claiming those are forgeries,” Navathe said.

  “Of course they are. Hell, I’m not sure if I believe it myself,” Clarke said.

  If all those men and women had given their life for a clerical mistake…he didn’t dare follow that train of thought. Not now. Not today.

  He went on. “Hirsen gave us a disk before he lost consciousness. Claims it’s from Alwinter’s rebel sources. That may lead to a clue about her…nature, I guess. At first, we thought she may have been subjected to anti-aging procedures as a baby, or genetic manipulation. The disk, however, shows that her ship is as young as she is. Like time paused for either of them until seventeen years ago.”

  “Seems like a puzzle for scientists to figure out,” said Navathe.

  Clarke nodded. “The EIF is short on those. I think our best shot is to get the disk to one of our Backwater Systems sponsor corporations. Let them have a go at it. The other option is to steal Tal-Kader’s DNA records from Jagal. They won’t get away with claiming those are forgeries.”

  “It seems like you’ve got your next mission cut out for you,” Navathe said. “But you don’t seem so sure. What’s worrying you?”

  “I…” Clarke couldn’t find the words. He gestured at Hirsen helplessly.

  Navathe grinned. “You’re so good at inspirational speeches and terrible at expressing your emotions. Typical. Unless I’ve greatly misjudged you, it’s not Hirsen who worries you, Clarke. You’re worried about Reiner. About what she means for the Edge. And for you. After all, aren’t you now her protector?”

  Clarke grimaced. Was he so easy to read?

  “I studied Hirsen’s file on her. She’s a wild animal, Navathe,” he said. “Killed her first man when she was eleven. Many more after that. Absolutely no empathy for people outside her tribe. Now that tribe is dead. Where does that leave us? If we keep going as we are, Isabella’s going to get a lot of power and influence over the lives of billions. We…I…could be about to release upon the Edge something far worse than Tal-Kader.”

  And with the Mississippi standing watch over Jagal like a match resting over a powder keg, it’d be only a matter of time before planets started dying. Clarke knew he wouldn’t be able to intercept the kinetics forever.

  “That’s what you’re thinking, Clarke,” Navathe said, still shaking her head. “How do you feel?”

  Clarke studied Hirsen’s broken body before answering. “I’m scared, Navathe. I scare myself. I keep thinking, we should play this hand, go all in. You see…she reminds me of us. Of me. Hell, of the Edge. She’s a survivor. Has been one all her life. What she w
ent through with that adoptive family was…damn. And it didn’t slow her down. And those gangers, her tribe, they gave their life for her, according to Hirsen’s report. That kind of loyalty does not happen by accident. Isaac Reiner dreamed of a free Edge, independent from Earth but united as brothers. He died because of that dream, and we lacked the moral strength to see it through without him. Maybe, just maybe…for better or worse, Isabella Reiner is exactly what the Edge deserves.”

  The blip of the medical machines around Hirsen filled the silence between Clarke and Navathe. The woman looked thoughtful, somber, her eyes lost in memories that Clarke couldn’t read.

  Finally, she asked, “And what is, exactly, what the Edge deserves?”

  Clarke opened his mouth to answer, but a machine warned about a rising heartbeat. Navathe and Clarke turned to face a grimacing Hirsen, gray eyes like a knife’s edge staring at them.

  “I can tell you what the Edge deserves,” Hirsen whispered with a rasp. “Restoration. Or conquest. Either is coming, lady. It’s inevitable. And people like the three of us will make them happen.”

  34

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Isabella

  Vat-grown eyes had no tear ducts. For most of Lotti’s life, that had been a welcomed advantage, not a curse. Crying was an admission of weakness that could’ve gotten her killed.

  But in this ship’s quarters, she could be alone all she wanted. No one to bother her. And now she couldn’t cry.

  Without an outlet for her hatred, it was like her blood boiled in her veins.

  Droplets of blood fell from her hand onto the gray bed sheets. There had been a mirror in her room, a real one, not a holo. She had smashed it as soon as she got a look at herself, in the middle of all this gray, all alone without her gangers, her candy hair slowly losing its color. A sad visage indeed, like a dead clown.

  “Hirsen,” she whispered. “I should have killed him.”

  Maybe she still could. Maybe she would. Who was there to stop her? She had seen how these soldiers looked at her. Fear and horror, both flattering coming from ones with so many guns. They thought her a caged predator, safely tucked away until they needed her.

  For what, she wasn’t sure. Hirsen had said they’d give her parades, money, whatever she wanted.

  She wanted her gangers back.

  Lotti paced around the bed, staining the carpet with drops of blood. A static holo of a star map beckoned to her from across the room. The soldier who brought her here had explained it was a map of all the Edge’s Star Systems.

  So many, and she didn’t recognize most of the names. Elus Star System was near the bottom, spear-heading a group of Systems known as Backwater Worlds.

  That’s where we’re headed, Isabella, the man had said. You’ll be safe there. Late forties, easily twice her size, shoulders so wide he may have been an ox in another life. The way the other soldiers reacted to his presence reminded her of her gangers, only better dressed, but with none of the style. The man, Clarke, looked at her the way some of her foster parents had looked at her at the start of their short-lived association. The ones who hoped they’d do a good job raising a troubled teenager, but were nervous after reading her file.

  That had been a long time ago. Lotti didn’t like to dwell in the past. Angst was not in the gangers’ creed. It was one thing to take a breather to recover after she got her ass kicked, it would be another entirely to languish in this gray room forever.

  Loyalty was the keystone of the gangers’ creed. The duty to do good to her people. To move forward, and prosper, whatever it took. It was gangers against everyone else because everyone else didn’t give a shit if a ganger lived or died.

  Lotti gave a shit. Her family was gone. She was the only one who remained, and she’d make sure the rest of the world never forgot. For that, she required action.

  She’d either kill Hirsen, or she wouldn’t. She would either run away from the EIF with as much money as she could get her hands on…or she wouldn’t.

  But what she wanted most of all was on that star map. The Systems Alliance was chock full with people like the enforcers and AlSec. Joseph Clarke said they were still hunting for her. For the first time in her life, Lotti could fight back.

  She could’ve an entire fleet. Wasn’t that better than a thousand hovercycles?

  Nerd had called her a space princess before he died. Lotti had been queen of the gangers. To her, princess status was a demotion.

  The Edge had so many stars. Maybe, hiding in those Star Systems, she’d find her boys and girls again, waiting for the call of their queen. She’d build her gangers again. Stronger, this time, much stronger. And when the time came to charge against their enemies…this time, her gangers would win.

  “I’ll make it spectacular, my boys. That’s a promise.”

  The star map beckoned to her.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you for reading Edge of Conquest. It was the hardest book I’ve written so far, but also extremely rewarding. Clarke, Hirsen, and Lotti’s fight for the Edge will continue in the Restoration Armada series. If you want to read them as soon as possible, consider leaving a review of Edge of Conquest. A couple sentences are enough to help get the book into the hands of readers that will enjoy it (and to keep me fed so I can write better and faster).

  If you want to contact me, you can do so in author@hugohuesca.com or in my site hugohuesca.com

  Any corrections on Edge of Conquest math (travel times, non-oryza related physics, etc) are greatly appreciated and I’ll add you to the Acknowledgments of the next book.

  Until next time!

  -Hugo Huesca

  Also by Hugo Huesca

  RUNE UNIVERSE

  Space Opera meets Cyberpunk in this action-packed thriller.

  There are infinite worlds in Rune Universe, but only one of them holds the key to Cole’s salvation.

  The Complete Rune Universe Trilogy is available now. Click Here to go to it.

  Don’t want to miss Edge of Conquest’s new releases? Click Here and I’ll let you know the instant they come out.