Embers of War

by Gareth L. Powell

  Feeling stiff and battered after having first been shot in the arm and then thrown across a table, I carefully lowered myself into the command chair.

  “Open a channel to Camrose,” I told the Dog.

  * * *

  Ambassador Odom had left his jacket off, the top button of his shirt was undone, and the corners of his eyelids drooped like the leaves of a neglected houseplant. Glowing numerals in the corner of the screen informed me that local time on the station was a little after midnight.

  Briefly, I told him about the warning message the Dog had received, the events at Northfield, and Ashton Childe’s futile attempt to hijack the ship.

  As I talked, the ambassador’s expression grew more and more concerned. When I had finished, he puffed his cheeks and made a face. “And here was I thinking you’d called to complain about Preston.”

  I felt my face flush. “You knew he wasn’t qualified?” By supplying me with a useless medic, had he been trying to set me up? Was this his way of finally getting rid of me?

  The old man cleared his throat. “I had an inkling.”

  “Then, why—?”

  “A favour to his father.” Odom waved a gnarled hand. “But you have more pressing concerns.”

  I raised an eyebrow, surprised by the ease and speed of his admission. “Indeed we do. How do you think we should proceed?”

  “With great caution.”

  “Do we have your permission to tool up?”

  The ambassador gave a series of rapid blinks. He opened and shut his mouth a few times. “The Trouble Dog is a decommissioned warship.”

  “But if we’re walking into a trap…”

  He harrumphed. “All right,” he said after a moment’s thought. “You have my permission for the Trouble Dog to start the manufacture of replacement weaponry. But please, for the love of God, try not to do anything precipitous. The Gallery’s a powder keg. One wrong move and you could start a war.”

  “Or stop one.”

  He looked pained. “Just come home safely.”

  * * *

  After the call ended, I remained in the control couch and watched the external screens. The peripheral ones showed various views of the Trouble Dog’s hull against the formless misty void of the higher dimensions. The main one showed an impossible computer-generated image of the stars, as if we were travelling through the regular universe at the same speed we were currently barrelling through the hypervoid. The slowly moving points of light were hypnotic. Seeing them shift position in relation to each other gave the sky a three-dimensional aspect you just didn’t get at any other time. Instead of points of light arrayed in the darkness like sequins on a velvet curtain, their movements relative to each other spoke of unfathomable depth and distance, especially when I pictured the impalpably tiny planets wheeling around each one like mosquitoes wheeling around a ship’s lantern on a dark and endless sea.

  The Trouble Dog’s face appeared in a corner of the screen, her features superimposed on the shifting starscape.

  “Any further transmissions?” I asked her.

  “None at this time.”

  “And still no idea who might have sent that anonymous warning?”

  Her forehead creased. A tiny line appeared between her brows. “I have several theories, but no evidence to support them.”

  My upper arm hurt where the shotgun pellet had winged it. I wriggled around to get more comfortable, and kicked off my boots. “What would you say if you had to guess?”

  “If I had to…” The Dog’s face scrunched.

  I reclined the couch and stretched out my toes. I’d had enough punishment for one day, and was seriously considering sealing the bridge doors and spending the night in the chair. “Give me your best guess.”

  “I have no proof of my suspicions.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  I watched her features rearrange themselves. When she next spoke, she looked calm and reasonable—at least, that was the impression she was trying to convey. “I think Fenrir sent the signal.”

  I raised my head. “Your sister?”

  “As I said, it is only a suspicion, but yes, I think she did. Probably on behalf of her commanding officer, Captain Sergei Parris.”

  “And you base this on what?”

  “Adalwolf advised me to heed the warning. He would not have done that otherwise. He would not have insulted my courage unless he knew that to allow me to proceed would have brought me into conflict with my sister.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Maybe eighty per cent.”

  Suppressing a yawn, I rubbed the side of my nose with the side of my hand. “And how do you feel about that?”

  The face on the screen froze. I watched stars drift across her cheeks and into her hair. When she eventually spoke, her words were slow and measured.

  “I have activated my dormant battle-repair packages. We will arrive in the system in fifteen hours. By that time, I will have fashioned and emplaced thirty-eight per cent of my former armaments—the most I can manage without the aid of a military shipyard.”

  “Will it be enough?”

  Her mouth kinked in a quirky, unreadable smile. Through my chair, I felt the higher dimensional winds buffet the hull. “Against a fully armed Carnivore?”

  I had the impression she was laughing at me. I closed my eyes and tried to make myself comfortable.

  “Forget I asked.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  NOD

  Put welding tools away then curled in nest.

  Good nest.

  Best nest.

  Bits of packing case.

  Fibre-optic wires.

  String.

  Best nest I ever made.

  Plastic spatulas in bottom like twigs.

  Air con unit like breeze in high branches.

  Thrum of engines like pulse of World Tree’s heart.

  Hound of Difficulty like little World Tree.

  Like home.

  Will stay with ship until time.

  Time to go back to real World Tree.

  Time to stop serving and rest.

  Until then, fix ship.

  Serve ship as would serve Tree.

  Keep ship running.

  And maybe one day, ship stop being sad.

  Stop being broken.

  Find missing pieces.

  Put self back together.

  Until then, I serve.

  I work.

  And I curl in nest.

  Good nest.

  Nice and prickly.

  Best nest I ever built.

  Best ship I ever served.

  Even captain tolerable.

  For a human.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  ASHTON CHILDE

  My head hurt. The whole left side of my face felt bruised. Alva Clay stood over me. Her hard plastic boots were close enough to stomp my face. Her fists were clenched and she had the butt of her Archipelago pistol sticking from the waistband of her olive combat trousers.

  “Are you awake, shithead?”

  I turned my aching eyes from the overhead lights. “What happened?”

  “You made a damn fool of yourself. If your girl here hadn’t tranquilised your stupid ass, you’d be dead right now.”

  I swivelled my neck so I could look up at Laura. She was sitting in a wheelchair with her needle gun on the blanket covering her legs.

  “You shot me?”

  Her hands were clasped and her knuckles were pale. Her lips were a tight white line. “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “Like hell you didn’t.”

  I tried to move my arms but they were securely fastened to the deck at elbow and wrist.

  Clay watched with contempt. “I’m going to hit my bunk,” she told Laura. “If he moves again, tranquilise him.”

  She stepped over me and marched out of the room and into the main corridor. I heard the receding clomp of her boots on the deck plates, and then she was gone.

  My neck was stiff.

 
“What time is it?”

  “About three in the morning, ship’s time.”

  “And you got given the first watch, huh?”

  Laura smoothed down the sides of her blanket, tucking them between her thighs and the arms of the wheelchair. “I just wanted to be sure that woman wasn’t going to slit your throat and eject you into space.”

  “Do you think she might have done?”

  Laura pursed her lips. “If she had, you would have deserved it.”

  I frowned. I knew something had happened, but the actual events were scratchy. I had vague recollections of my own voice sounding hoarse and angry, of my fingers gripping somebody’s face. I remembered a terrible, all-consuming panic. I remembered lashing out…

  “What did I do?” I felt like a waking man trying to catch the last wisps of a bad dream, or a hung-over drunk trying to recall and parse the fuzzy degradations of the previous night.

  “You attempted to hijack the ship.”

  My eyes widened and I tried to raise my head. “I did what?” Even wearing a powered suit, such an attempt at insurgency would have been pointless. Carnivore-class heavy cruisers were designed to take care of themselves and make their own decisions. They had complete control of their internal environments, and therefore possessed a hundred different ways to kill or detain intruders. They were almost impossible to commandeer, as the citizens of Northfield had discovered to their cost. “That’s stupid. Why would I even—?”

  “You were off your face on military-grade speed. And maybe you had some kind of psychotic episode.” Laura’s fingers picked at the blanket’s hem. “You’ve been under a lot of stress.” She gave a small shrug. “I think the drugs were too much for you. You were twitching and sweating like a man on fire.”

  For a moment, she continued worrying the blanket’s seam. Then she folded her hands and her expression softened.

  “Listen,” she said, “you’ve been trapped on the fringes of a particularly nasty civil war, running supply drops through the mountains. You’ve lost pilots and other colleagues, and been wounded yourself, getting that shrapnel fragment through your bladder. I know you hated every minute of it. And then you’re out of the jungle for one day, and some ignorant fucking bartender puts a pellet in your spleen. All of that would be enough to send most people gibbering over the paranoid edge. But add to it the physical strain of wearing a suit like that, coupled with enough pharmaceuticals to power an illegal rave, and it’s not surprising you lost your shit. Give a persecuted man a sudden feeling of power, and he’s going to lash out.”

  She stopped speaking and, to my shame, I had to swallow back a sob. Everything she had said was true. I felt hot, bitter tears roll from the corners of my eyes. They ran into my ears and hair, and I flexed against my restraints. I wanted to wipe my face, but couldn’t move my arm. The suit had become a prison.

  “Was anybody hurt?”

  “You threw the captain over a table.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “If by ‘all right’ you mean royally pissed off, then, yeah, she’s just peachy.”

  “What do you think she’s going to do?”

  “I have no idea. But she’s locked herself onto the bridge for the night, so I guess she’s still worried you might get free and have another crack at taking the ship.”

  I sniffed miserably. “I wouldn’t…”

  “You did.”

  I could feel the vibration of the ship’s engines coming up through the deck plates, transmitted via the welds to my arms and legs.

  “Help me out of this thing.” I wanted to hide my face but, with my arms immobilised, I couldn’t reach the fastenings to release the straps holding in place the suit’s carbon-fibre ribs.

  Laura turned her face away. The overhead light caught the lines around her eyes and mouth, the tendril of white in her hair.

  “Sorry, but no.”

  “Oh, come on.” My voice cracked. “Please?”

  “Absolutely not.” She held up a finger. “For one thing, that suit’s the only thing holding your innards where they should be. It’s not coming off until you get to a hospital.” She held up a second digit. “And for another, I’m not entirely sure I can trust you, or that you’re entirely sane.” She let her hands drop to the blanket. “There could be lasting psychological damage. So, you’re staying there until the suit’s flushed all the crap out of your bloodstream, and we can work out the best course of action.”

  “When you say ‘we’, you mean you and the crew?”

  “Yes.”

  My head throbbed. “I thought you were on my side.”

  She laughed. “I’m your friend, you know that.” The laugh guttered like a dying flame. She looked down at the fists clasped in her lap, where the nails were digging into the skin of her palms. “But we have never, ever, been on the same side.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  SAL KONSTANZ

  I saw the barman fire his shotgun at me, and felt again the sting as a pellet took a bite from my arm. Mulch leered across the room. He wanted to take my ship. I wanted to shout at him but, before I could open my mouth, he morphed into Sedge, his frozen face rimed with frost. I leaned over him, trying to breathe warmth and life into those blue features, trying to let him know I was still alive, but he changed again, becoming Childe, and his mechanically enhanced fingers closed over my face…

  The bridge console chimed. Curled semi-comfortably in the command couch, I had been drifting in and out of a restless and fidgety sleep for several hours, my thoughts eddying with the almost subliminal howl of the void beyond the ship’s external hull.

  The console chimed again. I rubbed my eyes. Somebody wanted access to the bridge. I checked the security feed, and when I saw Preston waiting, I reached out and reluctantly released the locks. I sat upright and straightened my clothes.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Were you asleep?”

  I scowled at him. “What time is it?” My mouth felt drier than an old leather boot at the side of a desert highway.

  “A little after eight.”

  “What do you want?”

  Preston scratched the side of his nose, looking nervous. “To talk?” He moved his weight from one foot to the other, like a child desperate for the toilet. I stretched my neck, rolling my head from side to side. The vertebrae crunched and crackled.

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  “There seems to be a certain…” The back of his neck reddened.

  “A certain what?” Sleeping in my clothes had done nothing for my mood.

  “T-tension,” he stammered.

  “Tension?”

  “Between us. As if I’ve annoyed you.”

  I sighed, and gestured toward the co-pilot’s couch. “You’re a good kid.” I paused as he perched on the edge of the seat. “And I’m your commanding officer. I can’t have you knocking on my cabin door every time you have a nightmare.”

  His face flushed a deeper shade of red. “I’m sorry, Captain. I’m trying. I really am.” He rubbed the side of his nose again, and scraped a hand through his hair. He looked as if he wanted the deck to swallow him. “When I was at home, before the Academy, one of my father’s staff used to sleep in an adjoining room. She kept her light on and her door open in case I got scared.”

  “Your father gave you a… nanny?”

  “No!” Preston shook his head. He looked wretched. “Not a nanny, more like a… personal assistant.”

  “An assistant?”

  “Yes.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. “And how old were you when you left for the Academy?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “So, you had a nanny right up until then?”

  His head sank between his hunched shoulders. “I wouldn’t put it quite like that, exactly.”

  “I don’t know whether to laugh or feel pity.”

  “But you understand?” I saw hope flicker behind his misery. I wanted to be angry with him, but couldn’t summon the emotion or the energy
to power it. He wasn’t qualified for his position and had no right to be here; when I looked at him, all I saw was a nervous young kid.

  He took my silence for disapproval.

  “I know you’re going to throw me off this ship,” he said, looking at his hands. “But I haven’t got anywhere else to go. My father won’t take me back after the way I embarrassed him at the Academy. And I don’t want to be alone.” A tear spilled from his eye and drew a line down his cheek. “I’m not cut out for it.”

  I closed my eyes, remembering how it had felt at that age to be suddenly parentless and alone. If I hadn’t had my studies at the Academy—and then later, my duties aboard the medical frigate—I couldn’t begin to guess what might have befallen me. And now here Preston sat, snuffling onto the sleeve of his uniform, and all he had to cling to was this post, on this ship. I knew in my heart I couldn’t deprive him of it.

  I muttered an expletive under my breath.

  “Captain?”

  “By rights, I should kick you off this ship as soon as we get back to Camrose.” I fixed him with my most piercing stare. “But I’m not going to do that. My parents died on a scouting mission. During the war, Clay crawled through the jungles of Pelapatarn. The Dog served on the front lines in the final weeks of the conflict, then resigned her commission.” I shrugged. “We’re all here because, like you, we have nowhere else to go.”

  He blinked at me. I could see he didn’t want to get his hopes up, only to see them dashed. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “I’m saying you can stay, kid. I won’t report you, and you can be a part of this crew.” I held up a finger. “But there are conditions.”

  He swallowed and sat up straight, flicking the tears from his eyes with quick swipes of his fingers.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Firstly, don’t call me ma’am. I don’t like the way it makes me sound like somebody’s maiden aunt. ‘Sir’ or ‘Captain’ will suffice.”