Sentinel

by Natalie Grey

  “No…time.” Heddoran grimaced. “You have to stop him. He’s going to destroy the mine.”

  16

  Crallus made his way out of the mess hall and up the sloping corridors toward his office. His steps were slow. He knew it was useless to avoid going back, but he did not want to. Since the Torcellan had come, Crallus spent his days doing more work than he had ever wanted to do—and the Torcellan treated him like a servant, to boot.

  Crallus had taken over the syndicate because he didn’t want to be treated like a servant. He was a damned mercenary. He took what jobs he wanted when he wanted. He hadn’t liked listening to his first captain, so he had killed him and taken over the ship.

  That had worked pretty well, so when old Goff had started to get a bit crazy, Crallus had figured it would work pretty well again.

  It had—until now.

  Until a few weeks ago, he’d been living the good life. He had a few fights now and again and ran missions occasionally, but mostly he just sat back and let the profits roll in. He didn’t worry much about the Yennai Corporation, because they didn’t ask much. He passed along a share of the profits and any interesting news his ships’ captains mentioned. As far as he could tell, Yennai had ignored that last part.

  And then they didn’t. Then he had a flurry of communications about the three ships that had answered a call for assistance and been summarily destroyed. Where had it been; where exactly?

  Just when he had thought he was in the clear the Torcellan had shown up. He was vain, making sure his hair hung just so…and then putting that blasted hood over it.

  Crallus supposed that was better than being expected to ooh and aah over his hair all the time. He had the suspicion that the Torcellan was that kind of male, wanting adoration for every little thing he did.

  He’d set up shop in Crallus’ office, though, and he seemed to expect Crallus to be doing things all the time.

  What was there to do? Take some profits, keep an eye on the ships’ captains to make sure they weren’t getting uppity. It didn’t take much to keep the syndicate running.

  Crallus pushed the door open and nodded curtly to the Torcellan, who was sitting at Crallus’ desk. “Good morning.”

  “It is not,” the Torcellan replied in that soft-but-threatening way of his, “a good morning.”

  Crallus grunted and took a seat on the wide chair at the back of the room. There was nowhere else to sit, with that bastard in his desk chair.

  The Torcellan swung around. “That ship has taken out more of ours, and we’ve confirmed it’s the Shinigami under the control of a man named Barnabas. Ranger One.”

  “They sent video back?” Crallus asked interestedly.

  “No. Our contact on Devon sent the information. Apparently, it’s been difficult to find anyone who will talk. He’s making headway, however, and is set to make…shall we say, an example.”

  “Of who?”

  “Of the miners Barnabas ‘liberated.’” The Torcellan said the word with deep disgust. “I hate revolutionaries. They’re nothing but anarchists, deep down. They don’t care if the world burns.”

  “Neither do you,” Crallus retorted, finally unable to conceal his dislike. “You just like the money you get from how things are now.”

  There was a pregnant silence. “Careful,” the Torcellan cautioned him finally. His voice was mild, but it sent chills along Crallus’ spine. “I think you’ll find that you don’t want to offend us, mercenary.”

  Crallus lifted one shoulder and gave his best surly smile. A mercenary never showed fear. They knew how dangerous it was to behave like prey.

  “So, this human took out how many more ships?”

  The Torcellan looked at the computer screens, annoyed. “Seven, all registered to Get’ruz Shipping.”

  “I thought Get’ruz was a pirate group.”

  The Torcellan shrugged elegantly. “They owned ships and sold cargo.”

  A mercenary didn’t bother with careful definitions. They called a gun a gun and a pirate a pirate. Crallus didn’t care enough about the definitions to fight, however. He shrugged as well, ignoring the twinge of pain from his shoulder. “If they didn’t send the video—”

  “They had several ships coming along the same route, and apparently some of the wreckage was identifiable. Seven ships destroyed, and for all we know they didn’t even manage to land a shot on the Shinigami.”

  “There’s no way to know it even was the Shinigami.”

  “It was,” the Torcellan stated darkly. “Who else would have destroyed seven ships and not even have mentioned it? If it were a business rival there would be gossip right now. There is none. We’ve checked.”

  Crallus considered the Torcellan’s point. That, at least, made sense.

  “Get’ruz’s ships were registered to us,” the Torcellan informed him pointedly. “If they noticed that, they know who we are.”

  “Which means they’re coming for us,” Crallus finished. He accepted with reticence that his syndicate was part of the Yennai Corporation. It didn’t seem very fair that he’d sent in those profits for years and now he was being asked to go up against the corporation’s enemies, but that was just how things shook out when you weren’t in power.

  Maybe he’d kill whoever was in charge of the Yennai Corporation and move up. It had worked twice now, so it might work again.

  “Yes,” the Torcellan agreed. “We’ve seen how the humans respond to such things. Once provoked and attacked, they come after anything and everything their enemies own. We must be ready. They will either come for the central Yennai base as soon as they find out where it is, or yours. I have already ordered both to be placed on high alert, and we should withdraw there as soon as possible. I’m having both of them stocked with food and ammunition as well.”

  Crallus sighed. “I’ll go tell the captains to leave this base. It can be cleared by tomorrow morning.”

  “Give them six hours,” the Torcellan advised. “No more. Once they come for you, humans do not hesitate. That base is one of the few secure places they can go. If the humans catch them here or on one of their ships they’re as good as dead.”

  “I’ll call Fedden back in, then.”

  “No.” The Torcellan had stood and now he looked at Crallus, and the Brakalon had the sense of narrowed eyes. “Fedden must earn his way back into the syndicate or die trying.”

  “He will die trying! If seven ships couldn’t take on the Shinigami, how is he supposed to—” Crallus broke off as he understood. “You never believed he’d survive it.”

  “Of course not.” The Torcellan brushed a speck of dirt off his sleeve. “But allowing someone to earn redemption and have them fail is much less unpopular with the sort of people you employ. It was the only smart thing to do.”

  Do you not care about anyone? Crallus grimaced and held his tongue rather than spit those words out.

  He knew the answer anyway.

  “They’re mobilizing forces,” Shinigami reported later that evening.

  “Oh?” Barnabas looked up from the table, which was strewn with documents and the remains of dinner. He and Gar had been poring over lists of companies affiliated with the Yennai Corporation, and the documents were now covered in Barnabas’ handwritten notes. He’d rolled his sleeves up to work and he ran a hand through his already-disheveled hair as he waited for more information.

  “They’ve given the order for about half their various guards to come to the Yennai HQ, which I have no idea how to find. The other half is supposed to form a unified fleet, I’m guessing to search for us, and Crallus has issued orders to his ships to go to their fortified base. They’re leaving soon. I’d say they’ll probably be backup for the fleet if necessary.”

  “Ah.” Barnabas chuckled with great satisfaction. “Well, that’s just…convenient.”

  “What is?” Gar frowned. “I’ve seen what this ship can do, but those bases are heavily fortified. It will be difficult to infiltrate them.”

  “We
don’t have to.” Barnabas was smiling now. “And indeed, we shouldn’t. A few centuries back—well, more than that, now—humanity would lay siege to cities. It would have been quite effective but for the fact that the army also required large amounts of supplies. The lesson, in short, is not to besiege cities. In this case, however…they’re going into seclusion on their own.”

  “So?” Gar looked confused.

  “He means we’ll just wait them out,” Shinigami interjected. She sounded pleased. “Bomb off, do something unrelated.”

  “Bomb what?”

  “She’s saying we would leave,” Barnabas explained. “Given her near-constant mentions of bombs being used for their intended purpose, I can see how you would be confused.”

  “It’s not that. It’s the fact that your language is insane.” Gar crossed his arms. “I keep trying to learn things, and then you use words in ways that make no sense.”

  “Mmm. In any case, she’s quite right. I propose we let these people hide away in their bunkers. We have all the time in the world, after all. We can let them drain their resources and begin to get complacent and go stir-crazy while we go after the parts of the corporation they didn’t bring with them. When they finally emerge and give us an opening, they’ll find that most of their corporation is gone—and in the meantime, they will have gotten rusty.”

  “So they’re…they’re afraid of you coming to kill them, so they’re hiding away and you’re just going off to kill other people?” Gar reminded himself how little he wanted to get on Barnabas’ bad side.

  “Precisely,” Barnabas agreed.

  “And I’m guessing from his tone that he already has someone in mind,” Shinigami added.

  “I do indeed. If you would bring up the files on the Boreir Group, please?”

  “Ah, him again. He was involved in munitions, wasn’t he?” Shinigami whistled as she brought up the file. “Damn, he really is. You don’t think small, do you?”

  The Boreir Group was presently owned by a third-generation employee named Mustafee Boreir, a Yofu male. The company provided munitions to several governments and major mercenary groups. Their production facilities, which were scattered across several sub-corporations, made them one of the largest munitions manufacturers in known space.

  “They haven’t been sent after us and they haven’t been called to the base,” Barnabas informed them. “But I’m betting that if push comes to shove, Yennai is going to want more munitions to throw at us. I suggest we wait until we have confirmation that Yennai’s head honchos are in the last steps of their retreat to the stronghold. In the confusion, we attack the headquarters of the Boreir Group, and Shinigami takes up communications so that Yennai is unaware anything has gone wrong. From there we dismantle the whole damned thing. Over the course of the next few months, we shut down all of their facilities and sell them and offload any cargo ships they owned and any remaining inventory—as much as possible to the Federation—thus cutting off one of the most profitable and dangerous parts of Yennai’s holdings.”

  Gar nodded. “At a few months per group, though, we’ll be here for quite a while.”

  “We won’t need to have much active involvement day to day,” Barnabas explained. “Shinigami can handle most of it once the stronghold is secure without even taxing her processing powers. Isn’t that right, Shinigami?”

  “Quite correct. I’ll also be diverting Yennai’s incoming payments into untraceable accounts. When they finally come out of their hidey-hole, they won’t have any money left.”

  “Destroy them from the ground up,” Barnabas agreed. “I like it.”

  “You want something else to like? I think I have an idea to get you into the headquarters…”

  17

  Two days later Rald headed out of Tethra on his way to the mines. He took no one with him, just a battered old vehicle and some supplies.

  He wasn’t fool enough to risk all the forces he might call on just yet, but he had left instructions behind. Many of the miners, it turned out, had come to Tethra after their contracts were up, and they had built lives here. They were rebuilding the mine as their own now, so they had left their families and businesses unprotected.

  Idiots. Rald smiled coldly. Did they not think anyone would figure out what they had done here? Did they not think they had put targets on themselves?

  They were going to be too dead to learn their lesson, but others would see it.

  As for the humans everyone was so afraid of…let them come over here if they cared. It was clear that this continent wasn’t their priority. They had freed the mines and then gone off somewhere else.

  Rald was betting that they weren’t going to come back. He’d heard some stories of big battles on the other side of the planet. The humans were all occupied. They weren’t going to bother themselves with this, and by the time they did, their forces would be battle-weary and the people who really owned Devon would be strong again.

  After all, he had the backing of the Yennai corporation now, didn’t he?

  He thought he heard the distinctive chitter of one of the rodent-creatures nearby—what had the guards called them, ‘Ubuara?’—but when he turned to look he saw nothing. They seemed to make a point to stay out of his way, though he saw them everywhere.

  Good. They knew he wasn’t to be trifled with.

  The wheels of the truck squelched through the mud and Rald took a look over his shoulder at the weapons he had been able to buy in Tethra. He growled softly in disappointment. He preferred his own weapons, but even Yennai Corporation’s contacts hadn’t been enough to get those on-planet.

  He could make do.

  He thought of Jutkelon as he drove. The Brakalon had been a stubborn old bastard, not much like the other Brakalons Rald had known. They tended not to run their own companies, just take posts on other people’s ships—like a lot of Shrillexians.

  Maybe that was why Rald and Jutkelon had gotten along so well. Neither of them had been sure that they wanted to run their own outfits; they just didn’t want to have to answer to rich assholes anymore. Jutkelon had eventually gone back to being part of a bigger group, but for a few years they had worked well together.

  You couldn’t go through that many firefights with someone, escape that many close calls, have them save your back and you save theirs so many times, without there being an obligation. Other mercenaries—the ones Rald had fought with once or twice—he wouldn’t do this for them. However, he had spent too long fighting at Jutkelon’s side to let him be killed like this and not avenge his death.

  They’d wanted to make a point, the bastards. They’d left that smoking crater at Jutkelon’s compound so no one would want to stand up to them anymore.

  Rald’s growl got louder and he narrowed his eyes.

  The first step was finding out what was in this mining town. Once he knew what was there, he would call in reinforcements and wipe it off the map.

  Fedden ducked under a low doorway and gave it an annoyed look.

  This space station had been made for some race smaller than Shrillexians, not to mention it was practically falling apart, it was so old. Hopefully there were some larger corridors somewhere, or Namkelon was going to have to crawl to get around.

  That mental image, at least, was funny enough to make Fedden bare his teeth in a grin.

  “You ready?” Tagurn asked from behind him.

  Both Shrillexians ducked through another door. They could hear the clamor of voices from ahead. Fedden had called everyone he could think of to this meeting and he’d told Namkelon to do the same. The Brakalon was cautious by nature, so Fedden was sure he’d only choose people who could be trusted.

  Besides, with Crallus retreating, what was he going to do if the ships’ captains started to do their own thing?

  Nothing; that was plain.

  Fedden wasn’t a fool. He’d seen the wreckage of the Get’ruz fleet. He’d put two and two together easily when Crallus and his mysterious Torcellan friend had withdrawn to the main
base that Crallus had never used before now.

  They were afraid of these humans. Clearly, they had sent Fedden to die.

  He had no intention of doing that.

  He came around a bend in the corridor and a guard at the main door nodded at them. Fedden recognized him as Namkelon’s first mate. So the Brakalon was cautious enough to have guards posted, then. The alien swung the big airlocked door into the main room wide, and as it opened the noise inside blasted into the corridor.

  Fedden had seen how many ships were outside, but he was still impressed to see how crowded the space was.

  They fell silent as he entered, and he noticed that they didn’t seem so much happy to see him as discontented with the way things were.

  He could work with that. He made a show of greeting Namkelon and exchanging a few words with him, as well as nodding to a few of the other captains he knew well.

  “You’ve gathered a large crowd,” he told Namkelon appreciatively.

  “It wasn’t a hard choice,” Namkelon told him bluntly. “Get shut up like prey in a cage with that Torcellan, making no contracts, or stay out here? No one wanted to retreat except Crallus. And his favorites, of course.”

  Fedden sighed. He had hoped that one or two of Crallus’ favorites might join them. Their ships were state of the art. It paid to be in Crallus’ good graces, but he’d chosen his inner circle long ago and it took too much ass-kissing to work your way in at this point.

  Ah, well. They’d do this with or without him and his best ships. They had numbers on their side now.

  And if those numbers were only here because they didn’t like Fedden’s rival? Well, he could work with that.

  “Thank you all for coming,” Fedden called to the group that filled the room.

  This main chamber had multiple levels with walkways around the edges of the main column, and those walkways were packed with mercenaries leaning down to watch him. He saw friends and rivals, new fighters and grizzled old ones.