Forbidden Suns

by D. Nolan Clark

  “It’s fine. You’d better come in,” she said. The hatch pulled back and Maggs climbed inside the bunk. As befitting her rank, it was a bit larger than those of the enlisted class. The two of them could fit inside without bumping each other’s knees.

  Ehta looked deeply distracted. She seemed barely aware of Maggs’s presence, in fact. “Did you hear? About Bury, I mean?”

  “I did,” Maggs said. “Such a terrible shame.” He had been sincerely moved when he heard the news, actually. For all of his tussling with Bury, Maggs had actually liked the Hellion. Perhaps because they were such polar opposites. Bury had lacked any mote of guile in his small, plastinated frame. He wore his heart very much on his sleeve. It had been almost refreshing. It had also been great fun to push Bury’s buttons, perhaps because it always got a reaction.

  Perhaps, even in death, the child could help him. Perhaps this was a way to get the conversational ball rolling, Maggs thought.

  “He’ll be missed. So few of us left from the old days, eh? Lanoe certainly takes a toll on those closest to him. I wonder sometimes if it’s worth it, the price we pay to stay in his orbit. Admittedly, my life has never lacked for adventure since I met him, but—”

  “Maggs?” Ehta said.

  “Yes?”

  “Shut the hell up.” Ehta grabbed her knees and pulled them up to her chin. She rocked back and forth a little, staring at absolutely nothing. “It’s always talk talk talk with you, and yet you never really say anything. You know?”

  Botheration, Maggs thought. She’s not in the mood for chatting. Well, that limited the possibilities, didn’t it? He reached down and put a hand on his ankle. He could feel the combat knife he’d hidden there, tucked inside his boot.

  She was bigger than him. Faster and most decidedly stronger. He had one advantage, though. He was absolutely ruthless. When the time came—

  “Actually, though. I’m kind of glad you’re here,” she told him.

  “You … are?” he asked.

  “I have a problem,” she told him. “I’m—I’m kind of wrestling with something. With a tough decision. It’ll be good to talk it out, right? Things sound different when you say them out loud sometimes. Different from how they sound in your head.”

  “What manner of decision?” he asked.

  “It doesn’t matter. It just—doesn’t, okay? Let’s just keep it all, you know, abstract for now. Let’s say I’m thinking of … betraying somebody. That’s something you know about, I guess.”

  She looked over at him with a wary eye. He made himself look as innocent as a little lamb.

  She almost, but not quite, cracked a smile.

  “I’m no good at it. My whole life I’ve been in the services,” she said. “Following orders, obeying people, it’s in my bones. How do you do it? How do you decide that maybe … maybe you need to say no, for once?”

  “You do it because you think it’s more important to be right than obedient,” he told her. “If your cause is righteous—”

  “It might save some lives. Might.”

  Maggs put his thumb on the pommel of the knife. This was a critical moment, he realized. This could be exactly what he’d come here for. It could also be a trap.

  “You’re talking about Lanoe,” he said.

  “I said we were going to keep it abstract,” Ehta insisted. But she looked away from him. It was one of the more obvious tells he’d ever seen.

  “You’re saying that you think Lanoe needs to be relieved from duty. Because if he isn’t, he’s going to kill us all.”

  She said nothing.

  In all of the scenarios he’d worked out in his head, in all of the different ways he thought this might play out—this had never come up.

  The possibility that she might already be on his side.

  Unless this was a very convoluted, very carefully laid trap. Unless Lanoe had caught a whiff of the oncoming tide of revolt, and had set Ehta to catch him—

  But no. She would have to be an incredible actress to pull this off. And Maggs, who knew bosh when he smelled it, detected no bosh here.

  “I can help,” he told her. “Let me help.”

  A blue pearl rotated in the corner of Ehta’s eye.

  Blue. That was weird. Blue pearls indicated an incoming signal from an automated server. Typically they were advertising messages or alert notifications. You got them mostly from civilian drones and government computers, and everybody learned to block the ones you could and ignore the rest.

  Ehta started to flick her eyes to the side to dismiss this one, when she caught a glimpse of its metadata. The signal was flagged as coming from Valk.

  Hellfire, she thought. The big guy had been acting more and more like a computer with each passing day, since he’d learned he was an artificial intelligence. If he was sending blue signals—instead of the green ones people used—it must mean he’d given up on being human at all.

  She considered answering it, but this was hardly the time. Whatever Valk might have to say, it was going to have to wait. She’d listen to it once she’d dealt with the main problem at hand.

  The problem of Lanoe.

  She could hardly believe she was even considering it. Sure, she’d thought of it often enough. When he’d pointed a gun at her head. When he’d found her ready to kill Rain-on-Stones, and threatened to kill her—she’d considered spinning around, getting the drop on him, firing—

  She thought maybe she could have even done it, then. In the heat of the moment. Now, though, what she was considering was cold. Ice-cold.

  It meant keeping her people alive. It meant preventing what could only be called a war crime, if you broke it down. Lanoe was planning on committing genocide, and even for an old soldier like Ehta, that didn’t sit well.

  Betraying Lanoe meant doing the right thing, on that she was clear.

  And all it was going to cost her was everything she believed in.

  “Come on,” she said.

  Maggs’s eyes went wide. Damn it, he was so hard to read sometimes. Which was the point, of course. He was rotten to the core, and the only way he stayed alive was by hiding that fact, so of course he would be good at it.

  If she didn’t need him, right now, if she didn’t need his expertise …

  “Come on,” she said again. “We need to move. Before I change my mind.”

  “But where exactly are we going?” he asked, as she yanked him out of her bunk, into the corridor.

  “To see Candless,” she told him.

  “What? Oh, no, no, I don’t believe that’s necessary.” He laughed at the idea.

  She could see why. Candless was Lanoe’s right hand. If anybody was still loyal to the old bastard, it would be her. Ehta had her own reasons to not want to talk to Candless. There was nobody in the galaxy she hated more. But it wasn’t going to work, otherwise. “She’s the only one who can do it. Officially, I mean. She’s the next highest-ranking command officer, right? She can declare him mentally incompetent. Or say he’s acting contrary to his official orders. If I try it, she could have me thrown in the brig or just blow my brains out, and then we’ve accomplished nothing.”

  “I see that, but if she refuses—”

  “It’s got to be this way. What’s our option, otherwise? It’s not like we could arm my marines and take the carrier by force. That would be mutiny, for the devil’s sake.”

  “I … suppose it would,” Maggs said.

  She pointed him down the axial corridor and shoved him along. “You know the penalty for mutiny? It’s pretty simple. Execution. No questions, no lawyers. Just every one of us would get executed, the second we showed our faces back in civilization. So, yeah, we’re doing this the official way. Got it?”

  “I suppose,” Maggs said.

  They’d reached the level of the vehicle bay. Ehta pushed inside and checked out what ships were available there. There were a few BR.9s still, the ones that Valk hadn’t destroyed. They were useless, since they only seated one. There was a troop transpor
t. That would do, she guessed.

  “This is the part I need you for,” she told him.

  “I’ll do my best,” he said. “But can you be more specific?”

  “We need to get over to the carrier. And I can’t fly. I need you to pilot that thing.” She pointed at the transport.

  Maggs looked like he’d been hit by lightning. Like he couldn’t believe any of this was happening. She could sympathize. He recovered quickly, though, and got in the cockpit of the transport while she strapped herself into a seat in the main cabin. In a minute they were moving. Ehta fought back her usual panic attack whenever she flew in small ship, and tried to focus on what came next.

  “You know Candless will take a great deal of convincing, yes?” Maggs asked, once they were clear of the cruiser.

  “Yeah,” Ehta told him.

  “Would you like me to take the lead there? I’m rather good with words.”

  “No,” Ehta said. “No. I know exactly what to say to her.”

  “You do?”

  “I do,” she said. “I know something that’ll get Candless on my side. Don’t worry.”

  “I’ll … endeavor not to,” Maggs replied.

  Maggs was uncertain whether he had just received the greatest stroke of luck in his surprisingly lucky life, or whether he’d just botched things so irredeemably that they could never be recovered. As he steered the transport back to the carrier he glanced occasionally down at Ehta where she sat in the passenger compartment. The marine looked grim, though he supposed that might be her fear of flying. She’d seemed confident enough that they could get Candless on “their” side.

  Remind me now, Maggsy, which side are you even on at this point?

  My own, Father. My own. ’Twas ever thus.

  Ehta was the ally he needed, the keystone that held up the arch of his prospective mutiny. Candless, on the other hand, was the force of gravity that could bring that arch down. She would never agree to let Bullam take command of the puny fleet. She would certainly never let Maggs have the bridge of the carrier.

  Maggs’s greatest hope at this point was that Candless would refuse to be swayed by whatever information Ehta brought her. That she would attempt to have Ehta arrested for even suggesting they remove Lanoe from duty.

  At which point, of course, Maggs could step in and gallantly save Ehta from persecution. By the swift and final application of that oldest of dirty tricks. Namely, stabbing Candless. Repeatedly. Preferably in the back.

  With Candless dead, Ehta would have to see that Bullam was the only rational choice to lead the ships home. Wouldn’t she?

  Maybe there was another way forward. He wasn’t seeing it, but—

  A green pearl spun in the corner of Maggs’s eye. “Troop transport three zero niner,” a voice said, “you are not scheduled to return for another six hours. What’s going on, Daniels?”

  It took Maggs a moment to emerge from his reverie—and to realize that the voice belonged to the carrier’s traffic controller. Who seemed to think he was some chap named Daniels, presumably the last pilot of this particular ship.

  He made no attempt to correct this misapprehension. “I’m bringing Major Ehta over. You know, Commander Lanoe’s big marine. She asked me to.”

  “Okay, bring it in easy. The flight deck’s damaged, and—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Maggs said, affecting his best working-class accent. “I know. Setting down in ten.”

  He parked the transport easily near the top of the flight deck, rather close, in fact, to Bullam’s yacht. As he climbed out of the cockpit he glanced over to see if he might catch a glimpse of the woman he’d pinned so many hopes upon, but she wasn’t out on her dome-covered deck. He moved to help Ehta, who looked distinctly shaky as she emerged from the transport’s docking hatch. She slapped away his hands, as he supposed he might have expected her to do, though not with any real vehemence.

  The two of them headed inside the carrier. Ehta did a search for Candless’s cryptab and announced that their quarry was in her cabin. Maggs was happy to hear it. If he’d had to cut the priggish woman’s throat in the middle of the bridge, it would have felt like a scene out of some melodramatic video opera—and it would certainly have entailed silencing some witnesses as well.

  This way it could be done in relative privacy.

  Ehta called ahead, and by the time they’d reached the cabin, Candless was waiting for them. She looked tired and, like everyone else Maggs had seen in the last few days, deeply distracted by unpleasant thoughts. Haunted, frankly. She let them come inside, though she gave Maggs quite the look down the bridge of her long and pointed nose.

  “May I ask what precisely led you to think I was interested in seeing this man again, in what remains of my life span?” she asked.

  Ehta shrugged. “He’s part of this,” she said.

  “Are you?” Candless asked, turning to face Maggs. “What role are you playing, then? Speak up.”

  Maggs wasn’t exactly sure how to answer. “Moral support,” he said, trying to pepper it with a little ironic detachment.

  Candless shook her head and flapped her way over to her bed. She sat down and pulled a strap across her waist. Good. It would make it harder for her to get away when the knife came out.

  “I suppose we’d better get on with it. Ehta, I know you may not understand the duties of an executive officer like myself, as you’ve never performed them. So I’ll forgive you for not understanding that my time is actually worth something.”

  “Hellfire, Candless, just listen for a second—”

  “Captain Candless.”

  Ehta’s face darkened with rage. Maybe she could be goaded into killing Candless herself. Yes, that would be tidy. “Okay, Captain Candless. Maybe you’ll be good enough,” Ehta said, mocking the other woman’s haughty tone, “to shut up for a second and hear what I’ve got to say, with all due respect, your ma’amship.”

  Maggs stroked his mustache and tried not to stare.

  He’d known there was a certain animosity between Lanoe’s two most trusted officers. He’d heard stories of altercations—his favorite being the time Candless had actually slapped Ehta across the face for using a profanity in front of their worshipful commander. They’d mostly kept things bordering on civil, given the need to appear professional in front of the enlisteds, but apparently the real venom had been simmering under the surface the whole time.

  He was so busy enjoying the sparring match that he almost missed what came next. Which would have been—unfortunate.

  “I brought Maggs because he wants to relieve Lanoe from duty,” Ehta said.

  “I—I do?” Maggs asked, trying to project a saintly countenance. “I thought that was rather, I mean, that is to say, your idea. In fact—”

  “In fact, I think he wants to kill Lanoe. He’s been working for some time,” Ehta went on, “at inciting a mutiny. Getting the Centrocor folks to rise up against us.”

  Maggsy, his father warned. Maggsy—

  Not bloody now, Pater, he told the voice in his head. Not now!

  “Come now,” Maggs sputtered. “I mean, really. Really!”

  “What,” Ehta asked him, “you think you’re the only one who’s got spies around here? Part of my duties as leader of the PBMs is shipboard security, Maggs. Did you really think I was that lousy at my job?”

  He rather had. He couldn’t say as much, though, not yet. Not while there was still some hope of surviving this.

  Some slim hope.

  “Don’t,” Ehta said.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You’re reaching for a weapon. Don’t. Lift your hands.” Before he could even comply, she was on him, grabbing his right wrist and pulling his arm around behind his back. With her other hand she grabbed his knife.

  Maggs looked across at Candless. She was breathing heavily, her nostrils flaring like the thruster cones of an overheated cataphract.

  She lifted her wrist and activated the display there. No doubt to call security and ha
ve him clapped in irons.

  “Not yet,” Ehta said. “Don’t call anybody. Don’t you call a damned soul,” she told Candless.

  “Why on earth not?” Candless demanded.

  “Because no matter what sort of underhanded snake this bastard might be,” Ehta said, yanking Maggs’s arm back until he grunted in pain, “he kind of has a point.”

  Maggs didn’t put up much of a struggle. Maybe he was smarter than Ehta had thought. He went limp as she put more pressure on his arm, and didn’t resist when she pushed him into a corner of the room. She shoved his knife into a loop on her belt and drew her sidearm, in case he got any ideas.

  “Lanoe’s changed,” she said. She didn’t know how else to put it.

  “He’s been under a great deal of stress, that’s true,” Candless said. Ehta couldn’t read her eyes. She’d come down off her high horse a little, anyway, so that was something. “I’ll admit I haven’t agreed with every decision he’s made recently, but what you’re talking about is a very serious measure. You don’t just relieve a commanding officer from duty unless you have excellent reasons. And an ironclad paper trail.”

  “How many of your people did he get killed? It doesn’t even matter,” Ehta said. “Because I know there’s just one that really matters to you. Bury. He let Bury die.”

  Candless’s mouth tightened into a nasty pucker. “The cause of Lieutenant Bury’s death was enemy action.”

  “I watched the whole damn battle on a display,” Ehta told her. “Yeah. One of those interceptors got him. I noticed, though, at the time Lanoe was busy finishing off the dreadnought. Instead of leading his people. He let Bury lead the fighters out there. Bury, who’d never commanded so much as a floor-mopping detail before in his life. He didn’t care if Bury died, only if—”

  “That,” Candless interrupted, “is more than enough, Major. I won’t listen to this kind of insubordination.”

  “Even if you know I’m right? Or because you know I’m right?”

  “Ladies,” Maggs said, his hands up in conciliation.

  “Quiet,” Candless shot at him. Ehta just pointed her sidearm at him.