“Thank you, Dell.” Tin left the compartment, and no one spoke for almost a minute. Cusabrina broke the silence by sliding her stool back and taking Tin’s place in the center of the room.
“I’m your new assistant squad leader. From time to time, the squad will break up into two elements, one led by Sergeant Tin and the other by me. In the meantime, when Sergeant Tin isn’t with us, I’m in charge. Understood?”
“Yes, Corporal.” The chorus came from every Banshee present, and Ayliss guessed Cusabrina had given this speech before.
“You’re all equal in my eyes, as long as you pull your weight. Anybody slacking off will get my special attention. Anybody giving one hundred percent will get my full support. Any questions?”
The silence continued for only a few seconds.
“Good. Now let’s drop the chitchat and get done with these rifles. We’ve got a debriefing after this, and I don’t intend to miss chow for that.”
“Slow. Slow. There. That’s it.” Ayliss only heard the words, because her entire field of vision was deep inside the armored leg of her fighting suit. “Now tighten it down.”
She twisted the locking mechanism using a set of long forceps, and felt the click when it seated home. Ayliss stepped back from the lower half of her suit, looking at a tall armorer named Jerticker. The support soldier was stooped over an internal monitor that magnified the channel where she’d just replaced a tiny heating coil.
All around them, mechanics and other specialists worked on the squad’s equipment in a large maintenance bay. Following the debriefing and a hot meal, they’d all joined the support personnel who kept their suits up and running.
“Jerticker, how do you know so much about our gear? First Sergeant Blocker said you were running a repair bay on Larkin when we were there.” Following the killing of Vroma Rittle, several veterans who had served with Blocker had decided it was wise to leave Larkin, re-enlist, and join him with the Banshees.
“Oh, I’ve always been good with machines. Cleaning them, fixing them, taking them apart.”
“Don’t forget stealing them.” A deep voice spoke from behind them, and Ayliss happily turned to see Dominic Blocker. The senior-most NCO in the support company, he wore the camouflaged fatigues from his earlier service as a combat soldier.
“If I hadn’t been a little light-fingered as a civilian, the Force never would have gotten the benefit of my talents.” Jerticker grinned at Blocker while disconnecting the feeds on the monitor. “You gotta admit, First Sergeant, you’ve taken full advantage of my skills.”
“That I have. Now let me borrow Private Mortas.”
“Not a problem. We’ve done as much as she’s allowed to do, anyway. Now I gotta watch a video on how to re-route her elbow camera’s wiring.”
“I won’t ask if you’re allowed to do that.”
“Allowed. Not allowed. Those are just words.”
“I didn’t hear that.” Blocker took Ayliss by the arm and steered her away from the work line.
“How did it go out there?” Blocker asked, once they’d stepped into the shadows.
“Have you ever been in one of these things?” She pointed back to the line. The bay was purpose-built for Banshee suit repair, and segments of armor passed overhead while others stood up on racks where robot arms worked on them.
“Yes, I have. They’re not just for the ladies, you know.”
“I really enjoyed running around out there. So much power. The air was freezing, but I didn’t feel it at all.”
“How about your squad? They teaching you and the other newbies?”
“Sergeant Tin’s making sure of that. I’m paired off with this old hand named Cusabrina. She’s a little sarcastic, but I think we worked well out there.” The image of the struggling doe returned, its unheard calls for help rising from its straining throat. “I . . . saw something happen, and I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Tell me.” The big man studied her with fatherly concern.
“There were these ice jellyfish things, sliding over the snow. The rockets spooked this family of stag-looking creatures, and they trampled them.”
“What else?”
“One of the does bolted away from the pack, and the jellyfish things . . . they got her. The rest of them ran off, and it was left behind, trapped in these horrible tentacles, fighting to get away. It died right there, because of something that shouldn’t have happened.”
“It bothers you. The randomness of it.”
“Yes. Yes, that’s it. It was meaningless. That doe just took a wrong turn, and it died for it.” Ayliss realized that the bay had dissolved around her, and that for a minute she’d been down on the snow planet again. Coming back, she remembered she was talking to someone who’d survived two complete tours in the war zone. “Well listen to me, going on about a life form I never saw before, like what happened to it was important.”
“It was. To that creature, it was the most important thing that ever happened.”
“It just looked so helpless, so scared, so . . . forlorn.”
“I know that feeling. I got cut off once, when I was a private. Big fight, I got turned around in the smoke and spent the next two days trying to find friendlies.”
“You telling me you messed up in combat, Dom?”
“I’m telling you I almost got killed, while doing everything I was supposed to. In the middle of all that chaos out there, nothing you do is guaranteed to be safe. Jumping left has just as much chance of getting you hurt as jumping right.”
“That can’t be it. You’re saying it’s all luck?”
“I’m saying you have to put this out of your mind entirely, or come to terms with it. Anything else, and you’ll be too scared to move. Which makes you a hazard to your squad.”
A flash of anger. “I will not put my sisters at risk. No matter what.”
“There’s the answer. Keep thinking of the Banshees right next to you, and you’ll do fine.” He patted her on the shoulder, and walked away.
Chapter 3
Jander studied the terrain beneath him as the medical shuttle flew him back to the war. The transport ship that had brought him to Celestia had offloaded dozens of replacements in standard shuttles from orbit, but a fussy technician had insisted that all returning medical cases rode on the medical bird.
As the only passenger, he’d found a comfortable seat that allowed him to prop up his leg brace while looking out the porthole. His handheld kept updating his location, and the medics on the shuttle had assured him that the capital city of Fortuna Aeternum was his correct destination. Apparently the Orphan Brigade was operating not far from the city, and he would have little difficulty catching a ride back to his unit.
A medic passed, and he waved the man over. Pointing out the porthole, he observed: “We seem to be following a chain of Force units and refugee camps.”
“We’d better, sir,” the man answered. “There are so many ex-Forcemembers with the rebels that nothing flying this low is safe. It ain’t like fighting old Sammy the Sim. We got too comfortable with Sam not understanding a single word we say. So when this thing started, everybody was still broadcasting in the clear. Locations, arrival times, entire mission orders, and the Rogers were listening the whole time.”
“The Rogers?”
“Roger the Rebel, sir. What we call them. It’s creepy, knowing our opponents speak our language, know exactly how we operate, all our vulnerabilities . . . sometimes you can’t be sure if the uniform next to you is one of them or one of us.”
He headed up the aisle, and Jan went back to viewing the ground. Like so many of the settled worlds, much of Celestia was uninhabited. Great expanses of untouched territory passed beneath them, in between the sprawling bases with their towering defenses and the temporary encampments of the troops hunting the rebels. Despite the large numbers of Force units redirected to Celestia, the refugee camps dwarfed the military sites. Most of them seemed to have been thrown together, with acres of ramshackle
roofs made from all kinds of discarded material ringed by watchtowers and miles of anti-personnel wire. From this height, it was hard to tell if the wire was meant to keep the enemy out or the occupants in.
His handheld announced the approach of Fortuna Aeternum, and he pressed his temple against the porthole. He’d once visited the capital city as a boy, as part of his father’s entourage, but already knew that place was long gone. Once the most opulent metropolis in the galaxy, the rebellion had turned Fortuna Aeternum into something out of Earth’s Dark Ages. The ground outside the city looked like a mud flat, denuded of trees by people desperate for fuel and churned up by thousands of patrol vehicles. The blue waters of the River Bellona were now a murky brown, filled with the refuse from the stricken city’s inhabitants. The wide river passed right through the metropolis, feeding numerous canals that were likewise polluted.
The city’s size had actually increased during the war, and its outskirts looked like just another refugee camp. First he saw acres of tatterdemalion shelters, connected in a quilt of necessity so tight that it was hard to see if there were any streets or even alleys. Next came the burned-out shells of the outermost neighborhoods, destroyed in the initial bloodletting, likewise covered with anything that could serve as a roof.
Following the river, they passed through a ring of checkpoints that appeared to be the first lines of defense for the city’s core. Armored vehicles, stone pillars jutting out of the ground, and rolls of anti-personnel wire surrounded each of the strongpoints. The buildings inside this ring had seen a lot of repair work, and Jander decided the checkpoints were a demarcation between the haves and the have-nots.
“Some things never change.” he muttered.
The shuttle descended until he could make out the high wall that encircled the Seat of Authority, also known as the SOA. Though fighting on planets in distant solar systems, Jander had heard of the infamous compound where the planet’s former rulers now held court. The wall itself was completely new, surrounding several square miles in the city center where Horace Corlipso and the other oligarchs had once lived. Towers stood out from the gray battlements, loaded with heavy weapons and festooned with surveillance gear. A two-hundred-yard killing ground had been cleared all the way around, and the River Bellona had been diverted to form a stinking moat on one side.
The shuttle passed over the wall, surprising him. Mortas looked down at his handheld, and felt sudden apprehension at seeing it had gone blank. He saw the same medic approaching.
“We’re being diverted, sir. Right to the roof of the Security Ministry.” The man’s earlier openness had been replaced by cold distance. “Apparently Governor Asterlit wants to meet you.”
“Lieutenant Mortas. Welcome to Celestia.” The man was taller than Jan’s six feet, with the physique of a stevedore. His tunic was jet black, with a high collar that pressed against a bull neck supporting a shaved head. “I’m Damon Asterlit.”
Mortas extended his hand, wary of the individual who had been Horace Corlipso’s chief assassin. Asterlit had regained control of Fortuna Aeternum by ruthlessly crushing the slave rebellion in its streets, earning the unquestioning gratitude of the surviving oligarchs. It was Jander’s understanding that Asterlit had effectively replaced Horace as the ruler of Celestia.
“Do you greet every replacement lieutenant who comes through?” he asked, trying not to look away. They stood in an empty corridor one level down from the Ministry’s long roof, where the shuttle had landed. The uniformed attendants who had escorted Jan had been terse in their greetings, and they’d disappeared as soon as Asterlit approached.
“You’re hardly a replacement.” The words were bloodless, the eyes probing. “Your record with the Orphan Brigade is quite commendable. But no, I don’t greet every Force officer on arrival. Just the ones who knew the traitor Hugh Leeger.”
Jander fought the flutter of panic that had started when the medical shuttle flew away. The Orphan Brigade knew he was due to arrive that day, but not that he’d been diverted to Asterlit’s headquarters. In the months since the rebellion’s start, Jander had heard the rumors flying around the war zone about Asterlit’s cruelty and his iron rule on Celestia. A man in such a position could cook up any story he liked about why Jander Mortas never reached the Orphans.
In the back of his mind, Mortas remembered the voice of a Force interrogator, telling him he could be made to disappear if he didn’t cooperate. Asterlit had clearly done his homework, so Jander decided there was little chance of successfully lying to him about Hugh.
“He practically raised me until I went to boarding school. But in my family that happened when you turned twelve.”
“He was your father’s chief of security after that, and then your stepmother’s. Also an impressive record, until he conspired with the servant girl Emma to murder my friend and mentor, Horace Corlipso.”
“I was in the war zone when that happened. I have no idea what occurred.”
“I’m surprised by your lack of interest in one of the key leaders of the rebellion.” The tone never changed, carrying neither emotion nor urgency. “You do know that Leeger has risen to command a large band within the Orange?”
“Excuse me, the Orange?”
“That’s the name we gave to a particularly difficult faction among the rebels. They’re hiding in the mines west of here, and once you stay underground long enough your skin turns orange.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Your Captain Pappas will no doubt fill you in when you rejoin your unit.”
“I expect he’ll brief me along with the other officers. It’s part of his job, as the battalion’s intelligence officer.”
“He’ll have a lot to tell you.” Asterlit raised a large hand, indicating that they should walk down the passageway. “The Orphan Brigade is being redeployed from their current duties, and their new area of operations is a well-trafficked rebel corridor near Orange territory. Any information you could provide about Leeger would improve their chances of success.”
Although his left leg was encased in a brace that allowed the knee joint to bend and his recovery was progressing, Mortas emphasized his limp as they walked. The dead stillness of the corridor seemed wrong to him, and he realized he was comparing it to the busy hubbub of Unity Plaza, his father’s headquarters on Earth. Unlike Unity, there seemed to be no one else around.
“The brigade’s been here for over a month, so I expect they’ll be telling me more than I’ll be telling them. About Leeger or otherwise.”
They turned a corner, and he was actually relieved to see two armed guards standing on either side of an ornate double door. He didn’t recognize the uniform—forest-green fatigues and black boots—so he assumed they were some kind of special security detachment for Asterlit. The governor hadn’t slowed down to match his labored gait, and so the man stopped just short of the tall entrance.
“I might be able to help you there.” Asterlit said, before waving a hand at the sentinels. They both wore helmets with darkened visors hiding their eyes, and one of them tapped the side of his headgear before giving the order to open the hatch. The two doors swung silently, and Jander followed the governor through them.
He stopped just inside, baffled by the layout. The chamber was a large, long rectangle with tiered seating to either side facing inward. At the far end, roughly fifty yards away, a set of stairs led up to a broad platform and a chair that could only be described as a throne. Low and broad, it looked like it had been carved out of a single piece of black stone. Although the seats on either side of the approach were accoutered with all of the electronic equipment the governor’s staff would need during a conference meeting, the throne itself was bare.
“What’s this room used for?” Jander asked, studying Asterlit’s reaction. He was only mildly disappointed, as the big man finally responded with something akin to emotion. His bald head canted a millimeter, and his brow furrowed.
“I would think that was obvious. I hold staff meet
ings here.” Reaching across one of the nearest desks, he produced a remote control device. “You may want to sit down.”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
Asterlit clicked the remote, and the lights in the cavern dimmed. A familiar sight coalesced in the center of the room, a swirling ball of light that gradually expanded until the seats and walls were replaced by the ghostly image of a three-dimensional recording. This one was gold in color, from a bright sun that had been shining overhead and the yellow of the open ground. A moment later he stood in the middle of a crude road, with military trucks spread out on either side. Freeze-framed images showed drivers bailing out with weapons while their infantry security force raced up the road. Somewhere in the distance, the cannon on an armored car blossomed into what looked like the flaring of a match.
“This video was recovered from an ammunition convoy ambushed by the Orange not long ago. It’s a composite of multiple camera views.”
Sounds erupted all around them, and Mortas flinched. He recognized the blast of the shoulder-fired HDF rocket launcher known as a boomer, and then the armored car was tossed bouncing out of view. All around him soldiers took up firing positions around the trucks, shooting madly until the air was filled with the roar.
Another boomer round hit something behind him, and Mortas turned to see another armored car belching flames at the back of the column.
“Notice anything?” He heard Asterlit, but couldn’t see him.
“No incoming small arms fire. They don’t want to blow up the trucks.”
“Or kill their own people.”
As if materializing right out of the ground, a bare-chested figure leapt up next to Jander and then raced for the nearest soldier. Wearing light-colored trousers wrapped tightly to his legs by strips of cloth, the wraith appeared to be covered head-to-toe in the soil of the ambush site. Sprinting forward, he swung his arm at the back of the trooper’s neck. Jander managed to see the fighting knife just before it punched straight into the muscle.
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