Embers of War

by Gareth L. Powell

  “So much for your covert operation,” I said. “Best guess is we’re looking at a Graal cruiser, two Nymtoq heavy assets, an Outward long-range scout, and a Conglomeration battle group.”

  For a second, I thought his image had frozen. Then the wolf’s head exploded outwards in a puff of pixels, revealing beneath it the thin white face of his previous avatar. His lips were pressed together. “That is unfortunate.”

  My laugh held a nervous edge. “Three Carnivores were bound to attract attention,” I said, “especially when we started firing at each other.”

  He dipped his chin in acknowledgement, conceding my point. “Another reason I had hoped you would stay away.”

  “So.” I put my hands on my hips. “What now? You can’t very well complete your mission with all these potential witnesses about to arrive.”

  “Can’t I?” Beneath his lowered brow, Adalwolf’s eyes burned like stars. He raised his face. “We have ships inbound from at least four of the factions claiming ownership of this star system. My guess is they’ll come in with targeting computers on high alert, and we’ll be in the midst of a four-way shooting war before anyone has time to worry what our mercenaries are doing on the surface.”

  He paused, and folded his hands.

  “And besides,” he said after a moment, “I’ll be with you a lot sooner than they will be.”

  “Really?” I tried to keep all emotion from my voice. “You don’t even know where I’m going to drop out.”

  His lips curled in amused contempt. “It doesn’t take a genius to know you’re heading for the Brain. You have a landing party to recover.” He shrugged. “But you won’t succeed.”

  I tried to look defiant. With my torpedoes gone and my armour compromised, all I had to fall back on now was my ability to bluff. “What,” I asked with all the bravado I could muster, “makes you think that?”

  Unimpressed, he pulled himself up to his full height and his pupils blazed. “Because,” he said, “I am only a few seconds behind you.”

  FIFTY-NINE

  SAL KONSTANZ

  The combat alarm frayed the stillness of the bridge. Laura Petrushka’s head had been lolling forward as she dozed against her straps, lulled by a combination of painkillers and nervous exhaustion. Now, I saw her jerk awake at her console, her professional reflexes responding to the siren by snapping her to attention before her conscious mind had time to properly wake and assess the situation.

  She blinked at me. “Incoming?”

  “The ship thinks so.”

  “But we’re still in higher dimensional space.”

  “Yeah.” I could feel the pulse at the back of my throat. “But we’re dropping out in half a minute.”

  She turned to the forward screen and frowned at the mists swirling before the Trouble Dog’s prow. “And we’re expecting a rough reception?”

  I tried to swallow but my mouth was too dry. “The ship says the other Carnivore’s right on our ass.”

  Laura grimaced.

  “What’s the plan?”

  I sat back and exhaled. I didn’t have one. “Go in, see how many of our people are still alive, and then get the hell out.”

  The Trouble Dog bucked, buffeted by the hypervoid tide, and I wiped my palms on the cotton fabric of my jumpsuit. We were going to die and I still didn’t fully grasp the reasons why—save there was some vast cavern buried in the Brain that the Conglomeration warships were keen to keep for themselves. I had let the Trouble Dog off the leash; now all I could do was hang tight and pray she knew what she was doing.

  A second alarm announced our impending emergence. My heart leapt in my chest like a startled salmon. I checked my straps and tried to steady my breathing.

  Okay, here goes…

  The deck lurched and we dropped back into the universe with all the grace and finesse of a gut-shot hound tripping over its own feet—coming out sideways, in a sparkling cloud of venting gas. I knew the Trouble Dog’s attention would be occupied with scanning the immediate area for its hostile sibling, so I used the manual controls to fire the starboard manoeuvring thrusters, correcting the slight tumble we’d picked up and aligning the bow with our direction of travel.

  On the screen, the slanting light of the distant sun threw the twisting rilles and gullies on the surface of the Brain into pin-sharp contrast. The Dog’s instruments picked out the blackened remains of our shuttle, scattered across the floor of one of the canyons. Were any of our people still alive down there?

  Was Clay?

  Fear gripped my chest with sharpened talons. I flashed back to the freezing moment I’d lost George from the wreck of the Hobo. Had I now lost more of my crew?

  How I wished George was beside me. I had always drawn great comfort from his fatherly presence, and the peppermint and antiseptic smell of his medical fatigues. What would he think of me now? Would he be sympathetic and understand I’d only put myself and everybody else in harm’s way because I’d been trying to prove something to Ambassador Odom and the rest of the universe—or would he hate me for bringing the ship he loved to ruin?

  Would he find me a disappointment?

  I sucked a ragged breath.

  Would my parents?

  What about my great-great-grandmother, Sofia? Would she have approved? I had failed to save the crew of the Hobo and the passengers of the Geest van Amsterdam. Instead, I had lost George and allowed the ship to kill an unknown number of would-be hijackers in Northfield. Then I had allowed the Trouble Dog to retool and engage in a dogfight that had ended with the consignation of the men and women on board the Fenrir to a fiery death. In direct contravention of the ideals of the House, more people had died under my captaincy than had been saved. The fact that I was unlikely to survive this next battle was of little comfort. And yet, I found it hard to regret all my actions. Certainly, the Fenrir had deserved to die for its part in the downing of the Geest van Amsterdam, and those morons on Cichol had been stupid enough to attack a heavy cruiser with handguns and grenades. By wiping them out, I’d probably done the universe a favour, and taught the rest of the town a valuable lesson. At least, that’s what I told myself. The next ship to land there would be able to go about its business without fear of interference. I might have failed according to the strictures of the House of Reclamation, but without those pirates or the Fenrir the galaxy would be a safer place, and, in the long run, lives would be saved because of it.

  Or would they? Maybe next time, the occupants of Northfield would simply use larger weapons? Maybe all I’d done was perpetuate an escalating cycle of violence?

  “I’m not seeing any sign of survivors.” Laura’s voice broke into my thoughts. “But no bodies, either.”

  I shook myself, suddenly ashamed of my introspection. “So, they could still be down there?”

  “Should we signal them?”

  “Why the hell not? Everybody knows we’re here. There’s no point trying to be stealthy.”

  “Roger that.”

  She bent over her console and I switched my attention back to the main screen and the tactical overlay.

  If we could only—

  One moment, the skies were clear; the next, the Adalwolf filled my view, his knife-sharp prow facing us from two thousand metres ahead of our own, and with all his torpedo tubes open and primed.

  I cut off the alarm. Everything on the bridge went quiet, and I felt like a rabbit in the crosshairs of a poacher’s shotgun.

  If the Trouble Dog and her brother were talking to each other, their conversation would be happening many orders of magnitude faster than I could possibly follow. All I could do was check the defence cannons were armed—not that they’d be much use if the other ship fired its torpedoes at such close quarters—and brace myself for destruction. My fingers squeezed the arms of the control couch and my ears filled with the oceanic roar of my own circulation. My chest rose and fell, and I realised my next breath might be my last. Unwilling to exhale, I bit my lip. The moment stretched into an agony of dreadfu
l anticipation…

  And then the Adalwolf lit up.

  For a second, I flinched, thinking the light had come from its launch tubes. But then I realised a third ship had joined us, and the redness painting the side of the Carnivore came from the newcomer’s targeting laser.

  “Holy…”

  The ship was easily twice the size of the Adalwolf and the Trouble Dog put together, and shaped like a rugby ball. Its armoured hull bristled with weaponry—torpedo tubes, rail guns, missile batteries—and I could see the starry banner of the Conglomeration Navy sprayed across its flank. I had heard of these ships in the war, but never seen one with my own eyes. They were called Scimitars, and they weren’t heavy cruisers; they were fully fledged capital ships, the largest of any human faction, and capable of delivering enough firepower to rival half a dozen lesser vessels.

  A soft chime informed me the brute had locked a second laser onto us.

  The Trouble Dog’s avatar appeared in the corner of my screen. “We have been ordered to stand down,” she said with a shrug.

  “And the Adalwolf?” I couldn’t understand why one Conglomeration vessel should be targeting another.

  “Him too.”

  “What’s going on?”

  Instead of answering, the Trouble Dog opened a new window in the display. It showed the image of a Conglomeration flag.

  “We have an incoming transmission from the Scimitar,” she told me. “From Admiral Menderes of the Scimitar Righteous Fury.”

  The flag disappeared and I found myself facing a round-faced man with grey stubble on his scalp and a neck almost thicker than his cranium.

  “Reclamation Vessel Trouble Dog,” he barked. “This is Admiral Jacob Menderes of the Conglomeration flagship Righteous Fury. You are hereby ordered to cease manoeuvring and disengage all offensive and defensive weapon systems.”

  His right eye drooped but his left remained wide and glaring. As he was being projected onto the main screen in high definition and several times larger than life, I could see every capillary in his eyeball, every crater-like pore on the tip of his flattened nose.

  My heart was still hammering from the confrontation with the Adalwolf. I cleared my throat and took a deep breath.

  “This is Captain Sally Konstanz of the Reclamation Vessel Trouble Dog.” I swallowed hard and moistened my lips. “We have no intention of engaging you in combat, except in self-defence. We are here on a purely humanitarian mission, and ask that you allow us to continue about our business.”

  On the screen, Menderes looked unimpressed. He glanced to the side, consulting something I couldn’t see, and said, “Konstanz. You were an Outwarder during the war?”

  “I captained a medical frigate.”

  “And now you’re commanding a former Conglomeration cruiser?”

  “Funny how life works out.”

  His face registered annoyance at my flippancy. “Are we going to have a problem?”

  I felt the heat rising to my own cheeks. I squeezed my fists. “Only if you try to prevent me finding my people on the surface.”

  “You’ll power down and do what you’re told.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I won’t.”

  He glowered, but I spoke again before he could interrupt. “We are representatives of the House of Reclamation,” I said, reciting the words I had been taught to use in situations such as these. “And if you impede us during the execution of our lawful business, you will find yourself in violation of the Treaty of Generality, appendix fourteen, articles seven though eleven.”

  The admiral’s face darkened by several degrees, until I began to wonder if his head would explode. “Never mind all that legal bullshit,” he snapped. “I have four torpedoes locked onto your ship, and only two questions.”

  He leaned in until his face filled the screen, and I fancied I could almost smell his breath.

  “Where,” he asked, his hoarse voice enunciating each word individually so there could be no question of misunderstanding, “is Ona Sudak?”

  His frown deepened.

  “And where is my son?”

  SIXTY

  ASHTON CHILDE

  There wasn’t enough room in the elevator for Clay to lie flat, but Preston and I removed our jackets and wadded them into pillows to make her as comfortable as we could. Every time Preston’s eye caught the tube protruding from her chest, his face blanched and he had to look away.

  “How does it feel?” I asked.

  “The painkillers are working.” Clay’s eyes narrowed. “Now, where’s my gun?”

  “We lost it.”

  “For fuck’s sake.” She let her head tip back until it was resting against the wall. “I don’t suppose you know where we’re going, either?”

  “Not a clue.”

  I glanced at the elevator’s transparent hatch. Because I couldn’t feel any sense of motion, it seemed the wall outside was moving, zipping upwards at a tremendous rate while we remained stationary. Preston had his nose almost touching the glass. He spoke without turning around. “We’ve misplaced the food and water, too.”

  Clay couldn’t be bothered to reply. She scrunched her face against the pain and closed her eyes. Her dreadlocks spilled out across the makeshift pillows like a tarantula’s legs. The tube I’d inserted would relieve the pressure on her lung, but it was a temporary solution at best. She needed proper medical attention, and quickly. My own partially healed shotgun injury hurt where I had pulled it while dragging the others into this cramped shelter. Every time I moved, I felt a hot tearing sensation in my gut, and worried some piece of surgical adhesive had ripped loose. I stood as close to the wall as I could, trying to keep my bulky exoskeleton from monopolising too much of the elevator’s overcrowded interior; Clay took up most of the floor, and Preston crouched by the sealed entrance. We were like three children hiding in a wardrobe large enough for two. But we weren’t playing hide-and-seek. The stakes were infinitely higher. Two of us were seriously hurt and in danger of deterioration without outside help, and we were unarmed and being hunted through an alien maze by a squad of trained killers. The loss of the food and water only underscored the fact we were running short of time. All we had to be thankful for was that Preston had somehow managed to hang on to the medical kit and the rest of the painkillers.

  I looked down at my feet. We were almost certainly doomed, and yet I felt an odd and unexpected euphoria. I’d escaped the rotting tedium of the Cichol jungle airstrip. No more flight schedules or biting flies, no more arms shipments or hot sleepless nights spent listening to animal cries while the sweat pooled on the mattress beneath me. The shackles had fallen away and left me free. I no longer had to worry about the past or future. Nothing mattered any more. For the first time in my wasted life, I felt genuinely alive.

  And then the light changed.

  I looked up as Preston cried out in surprise, and found myself staring through the glass doors at a small orange sun.

  “What the hell…?”

  I stepped over Clay’s outstretched legs to get a better look. Had we come out the other side of the Brain, into space? We were moving incredibly quickly, but surely we hadn’t been travelling that fast. And yet, we were floating in the light of a rust-coloured star. The pinprick lights of a billion other stars surrounded us.

  Only…

  “Those aren’t stars,” I said. “They’re lights on an inner surface.”

  Preston’s eyes were wide. “We’re still inside the Brain?”

  I felt a wild laugh boiling in my throat, and swallowed hard to suppress it. “Seems so.”

  “But…” He put a hand against the glass, and spread his fingers against the light of the little sun. “How can all this fit? There isn’t room…”

  I shook my head. I had no way to explain what we were seeing. Instead, I focused on the space between the light and us, in which lay rank upon rank of knife-like white vessels. Following my gaze, Preston’s jaw hinged open.

  “Are those ships?” he asked.


  I squinted. It was difficult to tell scale without anything to compare them with, but each looked to be comfortably larger than the Trouble Dog.

  “Well,” I said, “they aren’t Christmas decorations.”

  He gave a low whistle. “There must be hundreds of thousands of them.”

  “More than that.” Even though the ships couldn’t possibly hear us, our voices had dropped to a whisper. The vessels were arranged in rectangular divisions, with a hundred and seven ships along one edge of each division, and eighty-four along the other. I did a quick calculation, and worked out there were just shy of nine thousand ships in each division, and there were more than a hundred divisions visible, maybe even a hundred and fifty.

  A million ships!

  As far as I knew, there had never been a force so large. The cost of building that many would bankrupt most civilisations—let alone the ongoing expenses associated with crewing, fuelling and maintaining them.

  “Whose are they?”

  “I have no idea.” I had been trained to recognise military vessels from every star-faring civilisation in the Multiplicity, but these were of an unfamiliar design.

  “Look.” He pointed to one of the nearer vessels. It had begun to twitch like a restless sleeper. At various points around its hull, weapons began to extend and retract. Jade-hued energy fields shimmered like auroras. Sensor arrays unfurled and then relaxed.

  Another movement caught my eye. The next ship along had also stirred. In fact, the whole division seemed active, like animals stretching and flexing their claws after a long hibernation.

  “What’s happening?” Preston asked.

  I swallowed, feeling suddenly small and insignificant compared to the size of the armada before us.

  “I think they’re waking up.”

  SIXTY-ONE

  ONA SUDAK

  The bear-like thing raised its snout to the domed ceiling.

  There are others here.

  I glanced up by reflex. “On the surface?”

  Within the structure.

  My heart sank, and I hugged myself against a sudden chill. After all the discomfort, loneliness and hunger I had endured, were my pursuers about to finally overtake me?