Alva’s response was as cold as the ghost winds buffeting the hull. “I know more than you do about ground operations,” she said. “I know how to look after my troops. I was on the front line, down in the mud with all the other poor bastards. I commanded a squad.”
“And I commanded a frigate.”
Her lip curled. “Those ships fly themselves.”
I felt my fingers close around the pommel of a ceremonial cutlass I no longer carried. “Fuck you.”
We glared into each other’s eyes, our faces close enough that I could smell the mouthwash on her breath. She had been close to George. He had helped her with her rehabilitation. He had taught her to play chess. I wanted to tell her that George had died while we were on the ground, not in space, and that the creature that had taken him had struck with such suddenness that not even the ship had had time to raise the alarm. I wanted to tell her of the lives I’d saved on Bone Beach and Big Hill, and the way I’d spent the whole of those engagements cocooned within the command decks of my ship; that, when we were operating planet-side, I relied on her expertise because I wasn’t used to ground operations. But I suspected that in her eyes, to admit that would be to admit my unfitness for command.
During the war, I’d taken fire and commanded my ship when all hell had broken loose around us; I’d faced death and failure and somehow kept my shit together and kept the ship flying. But—despite participating in over thirty rescues during my three years with the House of Reclamation—I’d never been on the ground during a firefight, never been responsible for a squad of fragile human bodies beyond the armoured confines of a ship. I knew I should have had the wherewithal to tell George not to unroll his stretchers at the water’s edge, but I’d been too distracted.
Alva was angry with me because she thought I was to blame for his death. I was angry in return because I feared she was right.
When the Trouble Dog docked at Camrose, she walked off the ship without a backward glance and I breathed a sigh of relief. She was still a part of my crew, and would be back aboard as soon as the ship had been refuelled. In the meantime, I wouldn’t register a disciplinary charge against her for insubordination and she’d have a chance to blow off steam, to vent her anger in the bars and hostelries of the station’s lower decks. She would drink and fight and, when she returned, would be calmer.
As a former marine, she had an ingrained respect for the chain of command. But that didn’t mean I had any right to expect her to respect me personally. In the House, respect had to be earned through deeds. As a commanding officer, you were always accountable for your actions, and if they were found to be unacceptable you would be reassigned or—in the most extreme cases—bounced from the House altogether. As hot-tempered as she might be, I sincerely doubted Clay’s dislike of me would ever erupt into outright mutiny. I doubted she would even file a report.
I watched her retreating back for a moment, and then turned to Nod, who was waiting on the ramp. One of its faces looked up at me with fingers splayed, like a sunflower turning its petals to the light.
“Where are you going?” I asked. Nod had a thick cargo harness strapped around its midsection.
“Much work. Need parts. Also supplies.”
“We can order anything you need.”
Another face curled around to peer at me. “Need special things also.” Its shoulders flexed and rippled. “Also company.”
“Other Druff?”
“Always others on other ships. Always some in port.”
“Friends?” The idea of Nod socialising seemed somehow incongruous. Its habits aboard ship were so solitary and self-contained it had never occurred to me it might need to be around anyone, even other members of its own species.
“All blown from same World Tree.” It gave an approximation of a human shrug. “All welcome.”
The fingers rippled around the edges of both of its raised faces. The four on the floor drummed their tips against the deck. I had no idea what the gesture meant, if anything. It could have been impatience or excitement, or maybe even a mixture of both.
“You want to go right now?” I had so many other questions. For instance, I wanted to know where the Druff gathered. Walking around Camrose, you only saw Druff when they were engaged on an errand. They never seemed to stop to pass the time of day with their fellows, and I couldn’t recall ever seeing one in a bar or café. Did they have their own designated spaces, or simply congregate in the station’s dusty maintenance ducts?
“Work underway. Ship healing. Much to do.”
I noticed a grease smudge on one of its legs, a smear of dust on another. Nod spent most of its time crawling through access panels and wiring channels, keeping the Trouble Dog fit and flying, and it asked very little in return—just the chance to use scraps and bits of old wire to build itself a nest in the engine room. The least I could do was let it out to spend a couple of hours with its brethren.
“Go on, then.”
“Aye, Captain.” Nod dipped its heads in gratitude, then turned and slouched away on four legs. It held the other two aloft, turning them this way and that as it took in its new surroundings.
I watched Nod follow Clay through the door connecting our hangar bay with the rest of the station. When they had both gone, I tapped my hand against the side of the ship.
“Be good while I’m gone.”
* * *
When I arrived at the House of Reclamation’s embassy on the upper concourse, a harassed-looking adjutant in a crisply ironed uniform ushered me through the foyer and into a back office. He was young and had little drops of sweat on his upper lip.
“You’re expected,” he said, and showed me into the ambassador’s office.
Framed prints graced the walls, depicting snub-nosed naval carriers shaped like baton rounds. A fish tank bubbled in one corner, diaphanous jellyfish wafting in its artificial currents.
“Sally.”
Ambassador Odom rose from behind his desk and we shook hands.
“Ambassador.”
He gestured me to a seat, and then returned to his chair. A pot of tea was waiting. He poured two cups and pushed one over to me. It was green and steaming.
“I was sorry to hear about George Walker.”
“Thank you.” I cleared my throat. “He was a good man. We’ll miss him very much.”
He dropped a sweetener into his drink and stirred it with a spoon. The metal clinked against the inside of the china cup. He frowned at me across the wooden desk. “Was it your fault?”
I clasped my hands in my lap. “I didn’t have him in sight when the creature took him.”
“He was on his own, then?”
“I was with him.” My lips and tongue were dry, but I couldn’t face the tea. “I had my back to him. I warned him not to get too close to the water’s edge, but…”
“I take it you had conducted a risk assessment of the local fauna?”
He knew I hadn’t. The Trouble Dog would have told him, been forced to when she submitted a report.
“No, sir.”
With finger and thumb, Odom smoothed the ends of his moustache. Like most of us, he had once served in the military, but now, instead of a uniform, he wore a charcoal-grey business suit and a high-collared white shirt.
“I see.” He picked his cup from its saucer and inhaled the steam.
“The Hobo was taking on water,” I told him. “By the time we got there, she had been wallowing for three days. We only had a few minutes’ grace before she sank for good.”
Odom sipped his tea. “So,” he said, “you knowingly placed your crew and yourself in harm’s way?”
“I took a calculated risk.”
He sat back in his chair and drummed his fingers. “No, Captain.” With his fingertips, he pushed his cup and saucer aside. “You lacked the data to make a calculated risk. The decision you made was stupid and uncalculated, and it resulted in the death of one of your crew.”
“I’m—” My voice faltered. “I’m sorry, sir.
”
I braced myself for a tirade, but instead he made a visible effort to control his temper. Fingers to his temples, eyes closed, he sighed, “What is our motto? The motto your own great-great-grandmother coined for us?”
“Life Above All.”
“Above all, Captain. Above all.” He settled back in his chair. “There will be a full inquiry,” he said. “By rights, I should ground you until then, but…”
“The Geest van Amsterdam?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Do we know anything more?”
“Only what was contained in her original signal: that she was under attack in the Gallery.”
“No ID on the assailants?”
“Nothing.”
I brushed a speck of fluff from the knee of my fatigues. “I’ll need a new medic.” We were already operating with the barest skeleton of a crew.
“When do you leave?” Odom’s fingernail sketched a rectangle on the desk and a screen appeared.
“In four hours, as soon as we’re refuelled.”
He peered down at the screen’s blue glow and impatiently tapped a couple of icons. “I’ll have one with you in three.”
“Thank you, Ambassador.” I rose to my feet. “Will there be anything else?”
“Not for now.” When he spoke, his voice was gruff. “Just come back with your crew and your ship in one piece.”
He didn’t need to tell me that when I did, he’d throw the book at me.
SEVEN
ASHTON CHILDE
The airfield consisted of little more than a few buildings and a cleared strip of bare earth, surrounded on all sides by dense, foul-smelling jungle. As I stepped from the relative cool of my office, the evening air hit my face like a stale, piss-soaked flannel. Beyond the perimeter fence, the trees sweltered, their shaggy tips bent over by the weight of their own drooping leaves. Animal yelps and hollers cracked the fetid air, and flocks of silver manta-ray-like creatures beat skywards on wings of drum-taut skin.
Pushing through the overbearing heat, I made my way to the civilian trading post at the far end of the compound. I had to walk the length of the runway, past the hangars and the half-dozen chubby cargo planes lined up on the tarmac, ready for loading.
I’d been stationed here on Cichol’s equator for eighteen months, ever since the start of the insurgency, but had yet to reconcile myself—and my digestion—to the humidity and the pervasive reek of putrefying foliage. I longed for the colder climates up north. By the time I reached the post, sweat plastered my hair to my head, and my nose and throat felt coated and slimy with the jungle’s stench.
The trading post was a large, single-storey structure constructed from corrugated iron and bamboo. Inside, a counter took up most of one end of the available space, behind which could be seen shelves of canned goods, bottled water and other jungle equipment. The rest of the room had been given over to chairs and tables. An antique jukebox stood against the back wall like an altar from a lost civilisation. Lazy ceiling fans did little to disturb the thick, hot air.
Agent Petrushka was sitting at a corner table, dressed in civilian clothes. When she saw me in the doorway, she stiffened. “Hello.”
I held my hands out to the sides, to show I wasn’t armed. “I’m not here to kill you.”
She let herself relax. “I never thought you were.”
I pulled up a chair and gave her an indulgent smile. “We lost a plane over the southern range this morning. I’m guessing that was down to your lot?”
“I don’t think so.” She worked for the Outward, monitoring our little clandestine operation. “Who was flying it?”
“Harris.”
“Well, there’s your answer then. He was in here until dawn yesterday, drinking bourbon and smoking barracuda weed.”
“You promise?”
She gave a bored shrug. “Those new stealth planes are good. I had no idea you had anyone in the air yesterday. That is, until I noticed the smoke plume from the crash site.”
I signalled to the barman and he brought over a pitcher of beer and a couple of clean glasses.
“Okay, then.”
The room trembled as another cargo plane lumbered skywards, carrying food and ammunition for the rebels in the mountains. We listened to the sound of its engines fade into the jungle’s evening chorus.
Wreathed in mist, the mountains were treacherous to navigate at the best of times. If Harris had been flying tired and strung out, it was quite possible he’d simply flown into the ground, or hit one of those huge manta ray creatures. It had happened before, to other pilots under similar circumstances. These guys were civilian contractors operating in a combat zone. They weren’t used to taking fire while flying at low altitude through difficult terrain. When the stress finally got to them—and it inevitably did—they either bought themselves out of their contracts or they ended up like Harris.
I poured a beer from the pitcher.
The rebels could print their own guns, but they didn’t have the facilities or time to manufacture the quantities of ammunition and medicine needed to support their campaign. Instead, a Conglomeration freighter passed through the fringes of the system once a fortnight and released a cargo pod on a slow, unpowered trajectory that eventually brought it parachuting down into the ocean a few kilometres from the mouth of the delta. From there, local fishermen recovered the anonymous crates within and brought them here, to this airbase, where they were loaded onto planes and dropped once again, this time into the mountains.
In the early days of the operation, I’d ridden along on most of the sorties, establishing relationships with some of the local guerrilla chiefs, negotiating the terms of our aid. Then, about two months after first setting foot on this rock, I’d made the mistake of landing on the outskirts of a village recently “liberated” by the rebels. Palls of ash-white smoke lingered in the turgid mid-afternoon air. Nothing else moved. Most of the villagers had perished as their dwellings were burned. Their remains were blackened sticks among the smouldering piles of their former homes. The dozen or so that had survived had been tied to stakes in the village square. Some had been shot, others eviscerated, and their entrails spilled into the dust at their feet. Their corpses sagged against their damp restraints, heads bowed. From the way the stakes had been set in a rough semi-circle, I guessed that, before they’d been killed, they’d been made to watch as their livestock had been impaled, one on top of the other, on a long bamboo spike.
And when the livestock had run out, the rebels had made a second spike and started impaling children, starting with a boy of around thirteen, and then working down by age, from oldest to youngest…
My left eye twitched. I hadn’t been into the mountains since. I cleared my throat, pushing the memory aside.
“Have you heard from your bosses recently?”
Petrushka smiled. She wiped her thumb through the condensation on her glass. “Not since last week. You heard from yours?”
“Just now.”
“And?” Her glass was empty. She reached across the table for the pitcher’s handle. I glanced around the room. Apart from the barman, we had the place to ourselves.
“And I’ve got a new assignment.”
“About time too.” She poured a drink and sucked the froth from the top of her glass. “Because you suck at this one.”
She said it with a smile but I knew she was right. I had known for eighteen long, uncomfortable months.
I had known the minute I walked into that village.
“I just go where they send me.” Even to my own ears, it sounded lame. She raised an eyebrow.
“And you do what you’re told like a good little soldier?”
I felt my left eye twitch again. My head felt like a thundercloud. I drew myself up in my chair. “I don’t see how I’m any different from you.” As agents, we were both past our prime, and that was one of the commonalities that had drawn us together.
We were both veterans. I had been working for Conglomeratio
n Intelligence for close to twelve years; she had been an Outward agent for ten. The implants I’d had placed in my skull, that had made me feel wired and special at the age of twenty-five, were now, at thirty-seven, an anachronism. Direct connection had become something of an anathema. When I’d first started out, Conglomeration ship captains had been permanently wired into their ships; now, they did everything via vocal commands. Invasive neural upgrades were yesterday’s news, and the integrity of the skull had become, once again, sacrosanct—at least, within the confines of the Generality. Of course, I couldn’t speak for all the factions and species of the Multiplicity, some of whom were more machine than organism.
Most of the hardware in my head was obsolete, but so firmly embedded as to be impossible to remove without fatal complications.
Her eyes darted to the left; her teeth scraped her lower lip. “Things work a little differently in the Outward. We don’t get orders, we bid for assignments.”
“You mean you chose to come here?”
She placed one hand flat on the table, covered it with the other. I could see the beads of sweat on her upper lip. “What can I say? I’m a masochist.”
I knew enough about Laura Petrushka to know that wasn’t true. I’d read her file the same way I’m sure she’d read mine. At university, she’d majored in political theory and economics, excelled in archery, fencing and chess. In her third year, she’d been recruited into Outward Intelligence by one of her lecturers and, upon graduation, had immediately been put to work on the fringes of diplomacy.
She hadn’t set out to be a spy. We had that much in common.
Unlike most of the operatives in the Conglomeration Intelligence Service, I’d never served in the armed forces. I’d been a rookie cop, running down criminals in the filthy warrens of Europa’s decrepit undersea cities. I’d got mixed up in the wrong investigation—a simple alley homicide that led right back to the police commissioner’s office—and found myself bounced, and bounced hard. Three broken ribs, a shattered kneecap, four broken fingers. Two days later, a couple of suits pulled me from the backstreet clinic where the cops—my former colleagues—had dumped me, and asked me if I wanted a real challenge.
Embers of War Page 4