by Rick Partlow
The rock sloped up beneath her and she nearly fell forward, but Constantine grabbed her and helped her to climb the rise. She could see now, glaring and distorted as if she was looking through a wall of water, but she could tell they were heading for something dark and rounded, an opening.
Shelter. A cave.
It wasn’t quite even, not perfectly round. Slide rock had built up at one side of it, turning the oval into something more squared off, almost octagonal, but her view was cut short when they passed through from glaring sunlight into the deepest of shadows in just a few steps. Constantine pulled her a few meters farther into the cave before he let her go. Hard rock banged against her knees and side and she cursed at the pain, cursed at him for letting her fall before she saw he was slumped against one of the sloping walls.
“Nicolai?” she croaked, her mouth dry and full of cotton. She wiped a hand across her face and it came away wet and sticky with blood from the cut in her forehead. She went down to her hands as nausea washed through her.
“I’m all right,” he insisted, though he didn’t try to stand. He had a rifle propped up next to him, but she didn’t think it was hers. “Drink some water while you can. I’ll watch the entrance.”
She ignored him, crawling over to where he leaned against the cave wall. It was still dark inside, but her eyes had begun to adjust and the afternoon light filtered in to reveal the details of the chamber. The walls were layered, histories of the planet’s geology in miniature, their strata painted in shades of orange and red. She had brief hopes of tunnels heading under the hill, of somewhere to run to, but it was a dead end with only one way in and out.
There was enough light for her to see the blood soaking Constantine’s right side and she hissed in a breath.
“It’s nothing,” he insisted, but she ignored his protests and pulled up his uniform jacket to get a look at the wound.
He gasped at the movement and she began to mumble an apology but bit down on it to keep herself from throwing up when she saw the hole in his right side. It was ugly and ragged, though certainly not big enough to have been made by one of the Jeuta 20mm rifles. Constantine seemed to read the confusion in her expression.
“I caught a rock fragment from a near miss,” he explained. “Right after they got Adams.”
Katy’s head snapped up and she looked around them as if she’d be able to see the Ranger NCO from inside the cave. She’d been stunned and half-conscious and she’d totally forgotten about the woman. She realized the rifle Constantine was holding must have belonged to Adams.
“Adams is…,” she trailed off, not wanting to say it.
“Not before she took down two of them,” he confirmed. “That was the whole patrol, the three of them, but it won’t be the last. You need to take this rifle and get out of here.”
“I’m not leaving you here!” she snapped, scowling at the man. “That’s crazy, they’ll kill you!”
“They’ll kill us both,” he corrected her. “I can’t go anywhere like this. I can barely stand. You need to climb out of here and try to make it to the river. You can travel along it till you reach somewhere with supplies.”
She was about to insist he at least try but she shut her mouth. This was Nicolai Constantine she was talking to, the man who had spent months undergoing chemical interrogation and psychological torture in a Starkad black-site prison and hadn’t revealed a thing. If he could have walked, he wouldn’t be suggesting she go off on her own. Unless he thought he’d slow her down. But she wasn’t going to argue him out of it.
“I can’t make it,” she said instead, turning the protest into a confession. “I’m still too dizzy. Just crawling over here I thought I was going to throw up. There’s no way I can climb up the cliff face like this, not alone.”
“Well, damn it, woman, you’re going to have to try anyway!” Constantine was attempting anger, but there was more agony in his voice than anything. “Maybe dying out there’s still better than dying for sure in here.”
“Maybe they’ll see Adams and Mulloy and their dead soldiers and just think they killed each other,” she ventured with so much more optimism than she actually felt. “Maybe they won’t even check in here.”
Constantine regarded her the way her mother had used to when she’d tried to sneak in past curfew as a teenager and given some bullshit excuse.
Mom will never know I died. I wonder if she even cares. I was always such a disappointment to her.
“Even if the Jeuta were that sloppy,” the intelligence officer said, “which they aren’t, they could still just follow my blood trail up the rock and straight into this cave.” He closed his eyes, laying his head back against the wall for a moment as if gathering strength from it. “Please, Katy,” he begged her, “just go. You owe it to yourself, and to a whole lot of other people, to do everything you can to stay alive.”
It hurt to nod agreement, went against everything she was and the person she’d always thought herself to be, but she did it anyway, because he was right. It wasn’t just about her anymore and it wasn’t just her own life she was sacrificing.
She put a hand on the stock of the rifle, using it to push herself up to her feet, then held onto it to keep her balance as the world spun around her for a few seconds. Setting her feet square, she picked up the weapon and nestled it in her arms.
“Go with God, Nicolai,” she said softly, turning back toward the mouth of the cave.
She crept to the edge of where the afternoon light shined through, as if the line of brightness was a tripwire for a mine, and slowly, carefully edged forward, the muzzle of the rifle stretched out in front of her.
Sandstone splintered and burst, exploding into a powder, microseconds ahead of the chest-deep roar of a Jeuta rifle. Katy stumbled backwards, gasping only because she lacked the breath to yell. A haze of dust filled the front of the cave, lit a pale orange in the rays of the system’s primary and the echo of the shot rumbled back from the depths of the chamber. Katy had seen Adams loading the under-the-barrel grenade launcher on the rifle earlier, and she fumbled awkwardly with the safety for the single-shot weapon then fired it out the cave exit without trying to aim.
The rocket-propelled grenade shot out of the launch cylinder with a wash of exhaust flame and barely cleared the left edge of the doorway. The explosion rolled back down the canyon like a kettle drum and she heard guttural shouts in the Jeuta language. She slid open the chamber of the launcher and tried to work a fresh round free from the pockets of the tactical vest Adams had procured for her.
Katy fell into a crouch beside Constantine, finally pulling another grenade out of its pouch and pushing it into place, sliding the chamber shut with trembling hands. She felt as if she were on the verge of hyperventilating and tried to force herself to calm down. She glanced aside at Constantine and saw no fear, only fatalistic acceptance.
“Too late,” he murmured. “They’re coming.”
She brought the rifle to her shoulder, tamping down a deep, terrible sadness with the same determination she’d used to face down death so many times before.
“Then we’ll give them the fight we’re looking for.” She caught his eye and felt a crack in her certainty. “If they’re coming in and it looks like they’ll take us alive…”
He shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut.
“Don’t ask me,” he pleaded. “I can’t. I couldn’t save Logan’s mother, and if I were the one to kill you…”
Katy pressed her lips together hard to keep herself from cursing. Instead, she simply shrugged.
“I’ll just have to make sure they don’t get the chance.”
“There’s one other thing we could try,” Constantine said. His expression was bleaker than his tone and he didn’t seem to want to meet her eyes. “You won’t like it, but it’s the only way I can think of that you might get out of here alive.” He nodded to her. “Help me to the mouth of the cave.”
She grabbed him beneath his left arm and pulled him up, wincing at his
involuntary gasp of pain from the motion. He leaned into her heavily and she had to edge forward centimeter by centimeter to keep from tumbling over. When they were close to the edge of the light, he planted his feet, stopping her with a hand on her arm.
“Does anyone out there speak our language?” he yelled.
Katy frowned at him, but said nothing, listening for any reply from the Jeuta but expecting only another volley of shots as an answer. Instead, there was silence, stretching out long enough for her shoulders to begin cramping from supporting Constantine.
“Is there anyone who speaks Basic?” he repeated, louder this time, his whole body shuddering with the pain the shout cost him.
“I speak your tongue, human.” If a rock could talk, Katy thought, this was the voice it would have. “Do you wish to surrender? Do you think you can bargain with us?”
Something that might have been laughter hooted in the background, a sound not quite human but eerily familiar.
“Tell your commander that Kathren Margolis, the wife of Logan Brannigan is in here with me.”
Katy’s eyes went wide and she nearly let him drop, but he wasn’t through.
“Tell him,” Constantine went on, “that she’s pregnant with his child. And tell him we want to make a deal.”
“They’re up there, Primus Pilus.”
Alvar spared the soldier a scowl.
“My thanks, Centurion Teemu,” he said. “Were it not for your timely aid, I might have gone off searching for another cave, rather than the only one in this canyon.”
Teemu seemed to shrink in his armor and Alvar might have been worried about alienating the officer with the caustic remark if he hadn’t already known the Centurion was despised by his superiors and subordinates alike. Alvar picked out each step with deliberate care, knowing that to fall or show weakness now would make him appear doubly foolish after his barb at the infantry officer. He also couldn’t stop too far away or he would seem too fearful of the humans.
“I am Alvar,” he said in Basic, enunciating carefully to make sure his voice carried, “the commander of the Confederation forces here. I understand you wished to speak to me.”
He could just barely catch the muted tones of an exchange in the cave above him, too softly spoken to pick the individual words out but enough that he understood neither of the humans speaking was happy with the other. Several seconds passed before everything went quiet and he began to wonder if the humans had changed their minds and would simply stay there until his troops went up and killed them.
“I am General Nicolai Constantine,” the pronouncement echoed off the canyon walls. Alvar nodded slowly to himself. He recognized the name from intelligence reports. “Kathren Margolis is in the cave with me. She’s what your people would call the mate of Logan Brannigan, head of Wholesale Slaughter and rightful heir to the throne of Sparta. She carries his child and he would do anything to get her back alive, including himself.”
Alvar bared his teeth in satisfaction, feeling as if the Purpose itself had blessed his plans and brought them to their ultimate fruition.
“If it is as you say,” Alvar told the man, “then I would be willing to guarantee her safety if she surrenders. No harm will come to her or her unborn child in our custody, contingent, of course, on Logan Brannigan accepting our conditions.”
“I know the Jeuta have no scruples about lying to humans,” Constantine replied. “It’s nearly required by your religion, if I remember right. Perhaps we would be better off letting you try to take us out of here by force and dying in a blaze of glory.”
Alvar nodded, appreciating the human’s honesty as well as his spirit.
“If you know this much,” he countered, “then you also know of the Purpose.”
“I do. It’s a combination of God and His holy scriptures, or as close as the Jeuta come to them. It’s the writings of the founders of your revolution, Romulus and Remus, their plans for the future of the Jeuta.”
“And you must also know,” Alvar continued, “that an oath sworn to the Purpose is always binding.” He turned aside, to where Turo waited with his chief officers and a squad of infantry ready to enter the cave on his orders. “Turo, attend me.”
The chief Centurion moved with the deliberate stride of a mech, his massive form a promise of violence.
“In the presence of my second in command,” Alvar intoned, feeling very odd saying the traditional words in the human language, “I swear before the Purpose and in the holy names of the Founders, Romulus and Remus, that I will allow no harm to come to the human female Kathren Margolis or her unborn child if she surrenders now, until and unless the time comes that her mate, Logan Brannigan, refuses our demands to maintain her safety. May the Purpose bring me and my entire line to a shameful and ignoble end if I break the word I have given today.”
He repeated the words in Jeuta and saw a few disbelieving glances from his troops as he did, including Turo, who was much more accustomed to him lying freely to human captives and then killing them out of hand.
When the humans responded, it was a different voice, one he recognized as female.
“What about General Constantine?”
He considered lying and promising to spare the man’s life. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t done worse before. But a lie spoken so soon after a binding oath was bad luck, not to mention it would undoubtedly give the humans cause to doubt him. Best to be brutally honest.
“I have made no oath regarding the life of anyone else,” he stated flatly. “I promise him nothing but a quick death.”
Another minute passed, another exchange of heated human words up in the cave, louder and more intense this time and he actually caught a portion of them.
“…not going to let you do this!”
“…not going to make it anyway. You know that!”
Then a sound he thought he recognized as sobbing, for long seconds. The crying ceased and a human female stepped to the front of the cave, her hands raised. She was not visibly armed and Turo barked a reminder to the infantry troops not to shoot her as she slowly and awkwardly climbed down the cracked and weathered walls of the canyon.
The woman seemed short and scrawny to Alvar, though he imagined she was around average height for a human female. It was beyond him what humans found attractive about each other because he considered them all disgusting creatures; weak, spindly and fragile. He half expected her to break beneath the hands of the infantry trooper who grabbed her by the shoulder and marched her over to him.
Alvar searched her himself, remembering all too well the suicidal human female back in Revelation City, but she was just as unarmed as she’d seemed.
“If you attempt to escape,” he warned her, “my oath is void.” He nodded to Turo. “Go take care of the male.”
Alvar noticed the woman staring at the ground, pointedly not looking at the Jeuta squad heading up the slope into the cave. The first of them had barely stepped across the threshold when the crackle of a human rifle sounded, high and spiteful, answered quickly by the deep-throated boom of a Jeuta rifle. Once. Twice. Three shots in all, and then silence.
A few seconds passed, enough time for the infantry troopers to make sure of the human, and when Turo returned to the cave entrance, it was to signal the job had been done. The woman was crying, Alvar noted. Not sobbing, but weeping silently.
Alvar ignored her, touching a control for his radio link.
“Magnus,” he said to the Praefectus once he’d established a connection using the relay aircraft. “Tell your ships to prepare for our return. We will be withdrawing most of our forces from this world in a few hours. I’m leaving the Executioner along with a company of mecha to finish off whoever is left.” He pushed the human woman ahead of him and headed back up the canyon toward where he had left his mech beside an infantry assault vehicle.
“We have what we came for.”
12
There she is,” Tara Gerard said, finger stabbing out at the threat icon on the tactical display.
Kamehameha-Nui Johansen had known the woman for twenty years, served on the same bridge crew with her for most of it. They’d been through the fire, been on the bridge of the old Shakak when Captain Osceola had died in battle, but he wasn’t sure if he’d ever seen the Tactical Officer so grim and businesslike. They all were, the entire crew, either purposefully emotionless or bleakly determined. Not one was looking forward to this, to what they might find.
Revelation was laid before them in shades of red and brown and fringes of green and blue, somehow less welcoming than before though its outline hadn’t changed. It seemed a dead world now, scoured clean. There’d been not a hint of electromagnetic communications from the planet when they’d scanned her after jumping through into the system, at least not on any of the human networks. There were Jeuta forces still down there and they’d picked up their signals in and around where Revelation City had been.
Only one of the enemy ships remained from the fleet the Concepcion had reported when she’d escaped the attack. The cruiser hung in high orbit over the desolate world, a glittering monolith of death.
“She was a Shang cruiser, once,” Tara judged, examining the sensor return with an experienced eye. “Old one, almost back to the Reconstruction Wars.” She sniffed, lip curling in disdain. “Nothing this ship can’t handle.”
“Helm,” Kammy said, “take us in at twenty gravities acceleration analog.”
It was a mouthful, but necessary, at least until they figured out some other way to describe the propulsion of the Alanson-McCleary stardrive. For now, they were stuck with technical terms designed around conventional fusion reaction drives, as inapt as those might be.
“Twenty gravities analog, aye,” Lt. Commander Robillard confirmed, fingers tracing command lines across his touch screen.