Warchild

by Karin Lowachee

  I say around the blood in my mouth, “What do you want to know?”

  Evan says, “No, Jos.”

  He knows. He knows as soon as you let one thing go, everything else follows.

  “You know what I want to know. I want to know about the Warboy and your captain.”

  They’re far away but I’m here. Evan’s here. Aki and Erret and Iratxe—is dead—

  Kris. My fault.

  Falcone walks out toward the other cell.

  “No!” I strain forward against the cuffs. “No—”

  The guards stand taut. Falcone aims into Evan’s cell, toward Evan, toward anyone who tries to get in front of him.

  “He don’t know the Warboy, you bastard!” Dorr yells. “You daft or what?”

  Falcone smiles. “Well, Jos, you sure have them fooled. So what will it be? The truth or Evan’s life?”

  Their eyes lock on me.

  “Don’t believe him,” Dorr says. “Fuckin’ pirate, what d’you know? You put a gun on a guy’s bud and he’ll damn well cluck like a chicken!”

  Falcone ignores it all. His gun is set to kill and it’s pointed at Evan. The guards are statues, on edge, waiting for one command.

  Evan isn’t breathing. But he shakes his head at me, slow. I can read his eyes. Don’t give in.

  My vision blurs.

  Not these people and not by my word. They won’t die. I won’t let it.

  I can’t watch it.

  The first thing you do is stay alive.

  My father puts me in the secret compartment and my mother kisses my hair. You can be safe and so can they.

  So I say, “I don’t know where the Warboy is. I swear it.”

  Falcone walks back into my cell.

  The jets are silent.

  “When’s the last time you sent a message to him?”

  The guards move closer to the cells, rifles aimed.

  My eyes clear, but I feel the tracks down my cheeks, mingled with blood. Red edges at the corners of my sight.

  “Months ago. I can’t remember.”

  Falcone smiles.

  Erret shoves his way to the side of his cell, staring at me. But he doesn’t say a word.

  None of them do.

  But it’s only the beginning for me.

  * * *

  XIV

  Falcone asks about Niko. Luckily I don’t have much to tell him. I haven’t spoken to Niko directly in years. I never know where he is. My contacts never told me, maybe for this exact reason. But I answer what I know because Niko can take care of himself. He isn’t here, he isn’t facing this, and he will never be in this place, watching his friends in front of Falcone’s gun.

  Not just any pirate. But this one, who knows exactly where to cut.

  Falcone can know everything on Niko. But Falcone has to find him first to get him. Not even Ash will get him that far. So I tell him what he wants to know about my stay on Aaian-na and my mission on Macedon. The jets hear it. That’s all a part of it. Falcone wants them to hear it. I feel their shock, doubt, then hate. But I tell Falcone what I know about Niko so he doesn’t kill them. Niko can take care of himself. But I’m supposed to watch their backs. Even here. Even now.

  It’s all warm-up to what he wants to know about Azarcon. He knows once he gets me to betray Niko, I will betray the captain.

  I was loyal to Niko first. I am loyal to the captain at the last.

  Somewhere in the back of my mind are images of Azarcon and his son, standing in front of restaurant neon. Surely he’ll understand these things I say, these words about one ship in a fleet of ships. They’re just words and they can be lies, but the people in the cells next to mine are real. And true.

  They’re the truths in my heart that make it run. They are my vices.

  When he leaves me alone they talk to me.

  “You’re not lying, are you,” Aki says.

  I don’t answer.

  Dorr’s words are a roll of profanity and threats. It doesn’t stop. Madi chimes in. Hartman. But the ones who don’t speak are the ones I can’t look at. Aki. Evan.

  I’m sure time passes but I don’t know it.

  Then the ship’s battle klaxon starts to wail.

  I look up, look at the others. They’re all on their feet, watching the hatch.

  “It would seriously suck if Mac blows us up,” Erret says.

  Heavy footsteps run by outside. Someone has finally caught up with Falcone.

  I stare at the hatch, willing it to open. I don’t want to die on this ship.

  Genghis Khan gives everything she’s got. The bolts in the bulkheads shudder it out. The ship itself shudders and tilts. I’m cuffed to the chair and can’t move, but the jarring goes all the way to my teeth. The jets hold on to the cell bars.

  Then the hatch opens. A figure dressed in white and gray coiled clothing scopes in, rifle aiming. She sees three cells filled by jets and turns to leave, saying something to someone outside the brig.

  “Ka’redan!” I shout. Assassin-priest.

  The face turns back. A human face, but tattooed. Guarded.

  “Oa-nadan ngali Jos Musey-dan.” My name is Jos Musey-dan. It’s choked. It’s desperation. I don’t try to hide it. I can barely remember the words but they surface in my memory like beacons on water. “Oa-nadan ngali Jos Musey-dan!”

  The battle sounds filter through the open hatch and the bulkheads, but inside the cells is dead silence.

  The hatch opens wider and eight assassins move in. Four symps and four striviirc-na.

  “Bloody hell!” Erret says.

  One of the sympathizers comes to my cell and shoots it open with her rifle. She says, “You better not be lying,” in Ki’hade.

  “I’m not,” I answer, the same. “Just take me—”

  “We will,” she says, pulling a blade from somewhere in her clothing. She slices through my wire cuffs as if they are made of string.

  They ignore the jets.

  “Release them, ka’redan. Please.”

  “We don’t have time. They’ll fight.”

  “They won’t. You can’t leave them here.”

  She drags on my arm. My legs cramp so she yanks me out.

  “Ka’redan, please. Release them, they won’t fight.” I look at the jets and switch out of Ki’hade, even as she propels me to the exit. “They’re going to let you out but don’t fight them. They’ll kill you. Just come on—”

  “Hurry!” one of the striviirc-na says, guarding the hatch with three others.

  The female symp motions briskly to the cells. The three humans shoot the locks open.

  The jets pour out, but on guard. They don’t fight. They know it would be pointless here.

  “Give us guns,” Erret says.

  The symps ignore him. The aliens look at the jets like they would at targets. They motion with their rifles. The jets must go first.

  “Move or we shoot you,” the female symp says.

  The jets go, but not before a few pointed looks my way.

  They duck out the hatch and run.

  I stumble after the symps. The strivs keep pace with the jets, firing at pirates who cross our path. The corridors swarm with assassins. I lean into a hatchway to breathe when the group stops to clear an extended passage on our left.

  A hand slips under my arm. I look up, expecting to see the female symp.

  It’s Evan.

  He doesn’t say anything, just helps me along after the jets and the symps.

  None of the others help. They would prefer to see me dead. Even Aki.

  Erret grabs a rifle from a dead pirate in the corridor. He might shoot at us.

  He doesn’t. He helps lay waste to the ship, on our way to the main airlock. He must know there’s only one way off this ship and it isn’t through Macedon. All the invading uniforms are alien.

  I can’t do anything but huddle into hatchways when the fire becomes too thick and we have to stop. Or run behind the assassins, with more of them behind us, and use them for shield
s because I’m barely on my feet. The smoke burns my eyes. There’s blood on the deck, bodies, the scent of charred flesh and singed clothing. Blurs of sound and sight that amount only to death. It throbs through the veins in my temples, underscores the scars Falcone gave me, the bruises and cuts and the debilitating pain in my ankles and wrists. But I move. I run. If Evan didn’t hold my arm I would run in circles and never stop.

  The airlock yawns open. The strivs herd the jets through, with guns at their backs. Evan pulls me in. Cold air hits me in the face, then slightly warmer air inside the striviirc-na APC. Benches line the walls, not unlike inside a Charger. Except it’s cleaner. It’s warmer. It smells like Niko’s ship.

  “Sit!” the female symp shouts.

  “Give that—” Dorr starts, but a striv wrests the rifle from his hands and takes a swipe at the corporal’s head with the butt of his gun.

  The jets push against their captors. Some of them are armed, stolen weapons from dead pirates.

  I see disaster in two seconds.

  “Erret, no! Lieutenant Hartman—stop it! They won’t hurt you if you just sit—”

  “Maybe for you, strit!” the corporal says.

  The sympathizers don’t have patience. One shoots the corporal on stun and moves with intent toward the others. But the others don’t move. They’re outnumbered. Dorr lies in a heap on the deck.

  “Sit,” the female symp says again. “Or we vent you.”

  The strivs collect the guns.

  The jets sit reluctantly, watching the assassins. Evan eases me over to a seat. I sit harder than I mean to.

  “Disengage,” the symp says through her pickup, to the pilot.

  The APC shakes and jerks violently.

  We are free.

  * * *

  XV.

  I know it’s Turundrlar the moment we step out of the APC. The hangar bay, about the size of Macedon’s, has the faint spice smell that I associate with Aaian-na and Niko. The striv symbols decorate the bulkheads. I read Deathstrike high up near the ceiling and lights. The design specs of the striv ships all come from EarthHub sources. It isn’t that strange. There are a couple dozen striv fighters and APCs on the deck, and aliens everywhere. The jets need prodding to move down the ramp. They know the ship’s reputation.

  I catch the female symp’s arm. “Take me to Nikolas-dan. Please.”

  “I will ask him.” She shakes off my hand.

  I grab it again, hard. “You’ll take me now.”

  Her eyes widen, affronted. She’s young and probably wasn’t a crewmember when Niko handed me off to Cervantes.

  A tall striv walks up. “I will take him,” she says.

  It’s Yli aon Ter’tlo. My former classmate. I stare at her white face, her long white hair, the caste tattoos on her cheeks and forehead.

  “I will take you, Jos-na,” she repeats, because I don’t move.

  All the jets stare at me. It stuns them when I speak Ki’hade. To see me talking with the enemy. It stuns them that this enemy knows me.

  I don’t have time for it now. I walk off with Ter’tlo.

  “Jos!” Evan says, behind me.

  “Don’t hurt them,” I say to Ter’tlo-dan.

  She signals the other assassin-priests. “We won’t. They’ll go to the brig for now.”

  They are jets. It’s the only place they belong on this ship.

  Ter’tlo doesn’t help me in the long walk through Turundr-lar’s familiar painted corridors, even though she has to slow down to match my hobbling steps. My feet and ankles are swollen in my boots; I don’t know that I’ll ever get them free. My hands are numb, the wrists crusted by rings of blood.

  She leads me to the threshold of the bridge hatch and I see Niko’s back.

  “Kia’redan bae,” Ter’tlo says.

  Niko turns away from his navigator and stops, seeing me. But it isn’t the fact of my standing there that surprises him; I’m sure the symp commed ahead. I think it’s my appearance that gives him pause. Bloody and bruised.

  “Where is Genghis Khan?” I ask, against that silence between him and me. The bridge itself is not silent. The ship is not silent. Ships are firing at one another. The bridge is alive with the data of it.

  But Niko won’t make a scene in front of his people. “The Khan is behind my brother’s ship,” he says.

  “Ash is here?” I move forward toward the scan.

  “I tracked him.” Niko holds my arm. Maybe I look like I will fall over. I don’t really feel it now. “He left Aaian-na a couple weeks ago. Apparently to set up another communications satellite. I suspected he might be going to meet his pirate contacts. It so happened it was to meet Falcone himself.”

  “Why would he risk it now?”

  Niko nods to the scan data, scrolling on the console. “A very large shipment of weapons. Genghis Khan was offloading when I jumped them.”

  Lines of light travel across the screen. Niko brought three other striv marauders with him, a standard attack group. Against us is Ash’s ship, and the Khan, and another blip on the screen that isn’t friendly. Another pirate. Maybe the same one that attacked Macedon.

  A blurt of numbers and symbols appear in holo in front of the scan operator. Niko lets go of my arm.

  “Another ship has leaped in,” the striv at the post says, as Niko leans over her shoulder. “Signature—EarthHub vessel. Macedon.”

  I don’t need to hear it. I see clear enough that they fire— not only at the Khan, but at Turundrlar.

  “Evasive,” Niko orders. “Tell the others not to fire on Macedon?”

  The grav-nodes stay online. Turundrlar rolls to avoid the shot. I don’t feel it. But I see it on the display.

  The blips on the screen start to break apart, avoiding torpedoes. Macedon is all the distraction they need. One of the blips suddenly darts off scope.

  “Ash is heading out of the system,” one of the strivs reports.

  “Pursue him,” Niko orders.

  “No,” I say. “Niko, that’ll leave Macedon with the two pirates.”

  “They are not my concern. I’m sure reinforcements will follow them.”

  “Until they do, Mac is open to the pirates. She’s injured, she was boarded—” I can barely breathe. “Falcone is on that pirate. If we leave he’ll run.”

  Niko stares at me, one deep, quick second. Then he waves his arm, briefly.

  “Belay that. Return fire to the pirates. Tell In’tatliar to follow Ash.”

  “Yes, bae. Returning fire. In’tatliar is in pursuit.”

  Three striv ships now. And two pirates and Macedon. Azarcon must see Turundrlar fire on the Khan. The pirates attempt to break but the other two striv marauders block them. The holo readouts above the scan station billow sudden light, a flash. But the striv there reads it like she’s mapping stars.

  “Beowulf is down,” she says.

  Comm says, “We have incoming from Macedon.”

  Not a missile. A message.

  Niko goes to his command chair and sits. I find a place on the extra bench at the side of the bridge. The pain floods up my legs. Blood pulses in my head.

  “Link us,” he orders the comm officer.

  Captain Azarcon’s voice comes through. It’s calm, as if he’s speaking from across his desk.

  “Turundrlar, this is Macedon.”

  “Macedon, Turundrlar. I am reading you,” Niko answers in accented words. “I have Genghis Khan in my fire line.”

  “Do not fire. I want that ship alive.” There is no negotiation in his tone; there isn’t even a question. Even though he is a Hub ship in facedown with three strivs.

  But they haven’t fired on him.

  “I have boarded her,” Niko says. “They began their self-destruct. The search is incomplete, but I believe Falcone is not on board.”

  “Was he on the other pirate?”

  “No. I believe he is on my brother’s ship. It has fled.”

  Silence.

  “Captain, please wait on the link,” Azar
con says, and breaks his end of the connection. Niko turns slightly to his scan officer.

  “Where is Ash?”

  “He’s outbound toward Hub space, bae. In’tatliar won’t pursue alone.”

  “No, they can’t. Comm, tell them to hold position inside the DMZ. But continue to track him.”

  “Yes, bae.”

  Scan: “Bae, Macedon is firing on Genghis Khan.”

  The holo blooms again, briefly.

  I can’t move. The Khan is dead.

  Scan again: “Bae, there are two battleships inbound. Earth-Hub signatures… Trinity and Arabia.”

  “Those were sent by Admiral Ashrafi,” I say.

  It is like all of EarthHub, right in those three ships.

  “They are tracked to fire on us,” scan continues.

  “Azarcon will tell them not to,” I say, hoping.

  “He’d better,” Niko says. “Hold position. Hold guns.”

  “Captain,” Azarcon’s voice comes through again. “Are you there?”

  “I am here, Macedon. Please tell your comrades to stay out of my way.”

  Nobody’s gunports are closed.

  “They won’t move without my order,” Azarcon says. “Falcone wasn’t on Genghis Khan, according to his late crew. Now what is this about your brother’s ship?”

  “He is now in Hub space,” Niko says. “Escort my battle group through and you can find out. I have delayed pursuit to guard you.”

  An EarthHub carrier escort the Warboy?

  “Before the Khan died, the pirates said you had my jets,” Azarcon says.

  “I do.”

  “I’d like them back. In one piece.”

  “Captain, they are safe. My brother gets farther away. Soon he will be out of scan range.”

  “Niko,” I say.

  He holds up a hand to me. Shut up.

  Azarcon says, “I want my jets, Captain. I want to know why you’re chasing down one of your own. I want to know that whatever the Khan was transporting hasn’t landed up on your ship—or on the one that got away. Did it skip payment to you? The pirates I captured on my ship said they were going to meet some strits at Slavepoint, behind the DMZ. And here you are. I want answers before anybody goes farther.”

  “Captain, your ship is injured. Ours are not.”

  I know how Azarcon will interpret that.