“Here,” Strunk said.
They’d reached a dull doorway not unlike all the other dull doorways they’d passed. It stood near the alley Ruben knew well, the one that led to the Fleshway.
Strunk rapped twice on the door, and the cliché of the moment would have amused Ruben, if not for their dire circumstances. Several locks moved in their tumblers from the other side.
“Prepare yourself,” Strunk said.
The door cracked, then opened wider, its hinges squealing. The grating sound shivered Ruben’s spine. Strunk ushered him through.
Far from the doorway, candles lit the far end of a wide, long room. Though there were no windows facing outward to the barrio, Strunk had taken the understandable precaution of keeping light around the door to a minimum. The enforcer followed Ruben in, and the hinges squealed again. Multiple tumblers re-secured the door.
Ruben took in their refuge. Long benches arranged more or less in equidistant rows stretched forward to the front of the room and the candles’ dancing light. Through the slap-dashed paint on the walls, the old UN emblem bled through. Randomly, it seemed, various examples of religious iconography hung on the walls.
“What is this place?” he asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?” The voice came from behind him, in the shadows near the door. It was young and male and angry. “Used to be a church. Can you fucking believe that?”
Strunk shambled past him and Ruben’s eyes lit on a teenager, his face twisted with sarcasm. Ruben blinked once to make sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him. If he’d made a list of people he’d least expect to see hiding in an abandoned church in Darkside, this kid would have made the top five.
“Tony?”
The young man stepped forward. “Mr. Qinlao.”
Ruben took the proffered hand, which felt supple and smooth in his own. The unmarked, untried hand of the Syndicate Corporation’s next generation. When had he, Ruben wondered, gone from being part of that group to the one it would replace?
“I want to thank you for all you’ve done to protect my pop,” Tony Junior said. It sounded rehearsed. Without waiting for Ruben’s acknowledgment, Tony Taulke’s son turned away. “Hey, Strunk, turn up the feed.”
The enforcer upped the volume on the wallscreen.
“I…” Ruben raised his voice to be heard over The Real Story. He was still wrapping his head around the appearance of Anthony Taulke III. “How?”
The expression on Junior’s face twisted again, but his eyes never left the wallscreen.
“Bought my way here from Callisto on a gashauler carrying refugees. When they took my pop’s ship, I was on the station, uh, sampling the locals.” Tony Junior found a smile. “Saved my life.”
“What about your mother?” Ruben asked.
The smile faded, and now Junior did look at Ruben. “I dunno. I wanted to help, but…” The teenager seemed to be searching for the right words to say. Or maybe the right excuse? “They’d already taken the ship. I figured my pop would want me here.”
The words made sense, but they were spoken in a thin tone. Ruben wondered how many times Junior had repeated them to himself on the long trip from the outer system. Was the regret on his face for leaving his mother behind genuine or a façade of projected emotion? Tony Taulke had been excellent at effecting the proper reaction to a given situation. As he regarded Junior, Ruben wondered if the talent was genetic.
“I gotta piss,” Junior said. He disappeared deeper into the shadows of the church.
“Volume down,” Ruben said, approaching Strunk. The enforcer slumped on the bench he’d collapsed on. He really did seem a shell of his former self. “What happened?”
Strunk roused himself, sat up a little straighter. “The ’hauler dumped ’em all here in Darkside. Junior pinged me on the black star band and—”
“No,” Ruben interrupted, “I mean, with you. Back at Point Bravo. You look like shit.”
When Strunk inhaled, it sounded wet. “You should see … the other guys.”
The humor was there, but the bravado of Strunk’s attitude—the ballsy brawler Ruben had reined in when they’d first crash landed in the Roadrunner—that was gone. Ruben had wished then for a Strunk who was more compliant, more respectful. Now, seeing the big man so less than merely made him sad.
“How did you get out of there?” The question he’d wanted to ask since first seeing Strunk in the alleyway.
“I took a partial shot from a stunner,” Strunk said. “Lucky to still be here at all. But we’ve got more important things to discuss.”
“Volume up,” Junior said, returning. “Jesus, look at that.”
The banner at the bottom of the screen read The Werewolf in Chains. Above it, footage ran of Tony Taulke being wheeled out of Brackin’s clinic. The doctor could be seen but not heard, protesting his own innocence as he too was hauled away in handcuffs. A commentator began to lecture over the images, praising Elissa Kisaan and Darkside’s Marshals Service for securing the most hated man in the solar system. The images rolling now beneath the commentator’s speech showed protestors around Darkside calling for Tony’s execution, their fists in the air punctuating their chants.
“Mute,” Strunk said. When the screen failed to comply, he said again louder and with effort, “Mute.”
“We gotta get him outta there,” Junior said immediately. “We gotta rescue Pop.”
Strunk started to speak, but Ruben saved him the trouble.
“We will. But we have to be smart about it.”
Junior advanced. “See, so here’s the thing,” he said, standing over Ruben. “Now that Pop’s a prisoner, I’m in charge of the Company.” The boy let that hang in the air a moment. “And what I say goes.”
Something inside Ruben settled from his chest into his stomach. It was like a wrestler finding his center of gravity as he prepared himself for the coming struggle. He stood, slowly. He felt Strunk’s eyes on the both of them.
“You are, it would seem, destined to succeed your father as the head of the Taulke Faction,” Ruben said.
“Head of the Company!”
Ruben made a noncommittal gesture. “Perhaps.” Before Junior could protest, Ruben held up a finger. “A few minutes ago, you thanked me for keeping your father alive. That took planning. And a lot of luck.”
“Luck is something we ain’t full of,” Strunk said.
Nodding, Ruben added, “And that makes planning that much more important.”
Junior’s eyes crawled over Ruben’s shoulder. “There she is.”
Ruben turned. Cassandra Kisaan sat in her chair atop the UN building in old New York. The camerabot projected a long view of her. Her hands draped the arms of her chair, and one leg stretched outward. She resembled Lincoln sitting in his underwater memorial in Washington. The almost unrecognizable slag of Elise Kisaan’s head on a pike in the foreground obliterated that association.
This could be it. Where she announced Tony Taulke’s destiny to the solar system. This could be where Ruben failed in his sister Ming’s request that he protect the man who’d founded the Company and done whatever it took to keep it unified. This could be the true beginning of the end of the Syndicate Corporation.
“Volume up,” Ruben said softly.
“…we are breaking your chains, one link at a time,” Cassandra said. The camera zoomed in, and the grotesque trophy of Cassandra’s ascension passed from the frame. “Anthony Taulke II, the lead tyrant of a nest of tyrants, is now in our custody. He will stand trial for his crimes, and his fate will be sealed by a simple vote of the citizens of this solar system. True democracy will mete out justice.”
Ruben breathed again. A trial would take time. A vote of nine billion people—that wasn’t something that could happen quickly either. Assuming all or any of that was true.
“However,” she continued, “we have one link of that chain, a very recognizable link, to face summary justice today.”
The image shifted. It took a moment, but Ruben recognized t
he luxurious board room aboard the Pax Corporatum. In the center of the room stood Helena Telemachus, her hands bound before her in gravity cuffs. Around her, SSR troopers stood at attention, rifles held at the ready across their chests. To Helena’s left, another of the deceased Elise Kisaan clones, Elinda, stood with her hands clasped behind her back.
Helena appeared haggard, out of it. She had the look of a person who’d been isolated and tortured. Denied sleep, likely food and water as well. Ruben wondered if she even knew where she was. The green eyes she was famous for looked dull, like dusty emeralds. Her elfin ears, a bodymorph pretension from her youth, poked through her greasy, disheveled hair.
“We are cutting off the heads of the Syndicate Corporation,” Cassandra’s said. “And when you cut off the head, the mouth can no longer speak.”
Elinda’s right hand appeared, holding a stunner. She placed it against Helena’s temple.
“What are they doing?” Junior demanded. “They can’t do that!”
Strunk snorted. The sound of an older generation appalled at the younger’s ignorance of the way of things.
“Helena Telemachus: you have been judged by the Soldiers of the Solar Revolution,” Cassandra said. “You have told the Company’s lies for decades. You have deceived the people by pouring poison into their ears. Your lies stop here. Today.”
Here, at the end, awareness seemed to dawn in Helena’s eyes. Was that fear or relief or acceptance that Ruben saw in them? He could see the skin rippling over her cheeks, her jaw setting. He thought he could see a woman reviewing her life while she still could. Her eyes glistened. But she shed no tears.
“They can’t do this!” Junior screamed at the screen. He turned first to Ruben, then to Strunk, a child looking for adults to provide the answers.
“Judgment to be carried out immediately,” Cassandra said.
Elinda Kisaan pulled the trigger.
The stunner catalyzed the electromagnetic field surrounding Helena’s body, overloading her nervous system. She jerked upright once, as if dropped through the trapdoor of a hangman’s scaffold. Then her body folded to the deck.
Ruben stood, dazed, in the silent aftermath. He’d seen people die before. His own sister, Ming, from a long, wasting illness. Mai Pang, his lover, viciously murdered by Elissa Kisaan. But never had he seen someone executed outright. It was a chilling demonstration by the woman whose power over their solar system was growing by the day.
“Now is not the time for soft hearts,” Cassandra said. The camerabot floated backward, filling the screen with her seated image and her mother’s decomposing head. “We will break your chains, citizens of Sol. One link at a time.”
The commentator returned, as did the banner at the bottom of the screen. He used the words justice and long time coming.
“They can’t do this,” Junior said again, now in a disbelieving whisper.
“They just did,” Strunk said. Even he seemed rattled.
The image on the screen flickered. Interference or maybe sunspots. Then it coalesced into the face of Gregor Erkennen. He stood in what looked like a high-tech control center or laboratory. The hazy aqua-orange of Titan’s surface hung in the window behind him.
“Titan stands,” he said without prelude. “The rumors of mass genocide on Earth are true. Mars is rising up. The rebels are on the run.”
Erkennen’s last pronouncement was followed by footage of the Pax Corporatum fleeing from Masada Station, the tracer fire of corporate starships urging it on.
“Galatz is alive!” Ruben exclaimed.
Strunk sat forward.
“What does that—” Junior began.
“Quiet!” Ruben’s voice bit like a whipcrack.
Erkennen stepped aside, replaced by a black man with a sharp scar running along his jawline. Ruben recognized him. Jabari. The man Tony Taulke had branded the Hero of Mars.
“I don’t know what to think anymore,” Jabari said into the camera. “But I know Cassandra Kisaan is a liar. Like the snake from the Garden of—”
The screen fritzed again with SynCorp’s old broadcast pattern. Sometimes sunspots or subspace interference would disrupt the subspace signal. The network defaulted to projecting SynCorp’s corporate logo, the five-pointed star with each tip representing one of the ruling Five Factions, surrounded by a circle connecting all. Ruben suspected it was Cassandra or the SSR throwing up a test pattern while they attempted to regain control of the signal. By doing so, they’d inadvertently broadcast the symbol representing all they were fighting against.
The irony made Ruben smile. His implant pinged, and the blinking black star startled him. It’d been so long since he’d used his SCI for communicating. Answering it was risky—if the SSR was monitoring the frequency, it wouldn’t take long to track them down.
The signature showed the Erkennen Faction’s logo.
“I’m receiving an incoming request for contact,” he said. “Strunk, loop in.”
“Loop me in too!” Junior insisted.
Ruben complied. But instead of Gregor Erkennen’s face, Ruben found the five o’clock shadow of Eugene Fischer.
Chapter 30
Stacks Fischer • Masada Station, Orbiting Titan
After the enemy tucked tail and ran on Tony’s stolen starship, Stuart, the doctor with Jabari, helped us both to the infirmary. She and Daniel Tripp reintroduced me to Erkennen’s fast-healing miracle. I didn’t really trust Stuart, and I really didn’t trust her Traitor of Mars boyfriend. But Cassandra’s troops were on the run, and I was too goddamned tired to care about much else. My body ached, and my hearing still had a layer of ocean waves crashing from the blast.
As soon as the Corporatum vacated the system, Gregor Erkennen fast-tracked shuttles from Prometheus Colony, repatriating personnel back to Masada Station. I was in the War Room with Bekah and an excited Tripp when Erkennen entered. He had the delighted, relieved air of a captain returning to the bridge of a ship that hadn’t sunk after all.
“Stacks, my old friend!” I had no choice but to surrender to a bear hug. “You look like shit, but alive shit.”
“According to the station plans, I’m in shit central,” I wheezed. The knife wound in my shoulder, miracle cure or no miracle cure, thudded against his Cossack bulk. “How else should I look?”
Erkennen laughed, releasing me. “Bekah, I’m so glad you’re well!” She endured her own Russian greeting. “And Daniel! I heard the good news.”
Tripp smiled wide. “I finally figured out how to penetrate the myelin sheath. Finally!”
Erkennen clapped him on the shoulder. “Well done, well done. Now all we need is the delivery mechanism, yes?”
Tripp tossed a wink and a smile to Bekah, like they were sharing some for-geeks-only secret.
“I still can’t believe you left him up here,” I said.
“Leaving Daniel here to do his work was my best option,” Erkennen said, “protected by Bekah’s team and off the grid.” Then, with a sly look: “You were here, weren’t you? You and Richter.”
“Yeah, about that…”
His expression dampened. “I apologize for that, Fischer. Bruno Richter never gave me cause to doubt his loyalty to the death.”
“Or, in his case, almost that long,” I said, attempting a grave joke. That would have to put a bow on how close Richter had gotten to killing the Company. Busting Erkennen’s balls over that wouldn’t do anyone any good, least of all me. And hell, Richter had even fooled me, blinded as I was by assuming he shared my dedication to the enforcer’s code of loyalty.
Live and learn. And, if you’re lucky, learn and live.
“Sir?” A young, techy type motioned toward the big screen. “Transmission from the SCS Sovereign. Admiral Galatz.”
“Put him through! Put him through!”
A man with iron-gray hair and lots of stripy braid on his shoulders appeared. With that handlebar moustache, I thought he might take off if he ran too fast. His hair was cropped short in the military style, and h
is eyes were hard and heavy.
“Admiral!” Gregor Erkennen exclaimed with enthusiasm. “You do know how to make an entrance.”
Admiral Matthias Galatz stood coolly. He was a low-key alpha type. Good to know.
“Glad to be of service, Regent. We were on our way to relieve Callisto, but Regent Rabh diverted us. She’s hard as Belt rock, that one.”
“Truer words were never spoken,” Erkennen said with admiration. “What about Cassandra’s fleet?”
Galatz made a dismissive, sideways gesture with his hand. Cool and conceit were roommates inside the good admiral, looked like. “We chased them away from Pallas, destroyed their base there. They were hardly worth pursuing. So I turned my attention to preserving corporate assets.”
As usual, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.
“I saw a lot of debris around Pallas when I was in the Belt. A lot of broken hulls and dead crews hanging around. The victory seemed about fifty-fifty to me.”
Galatz turned his head, and his stone-cold eyes found me. He smiled, and I thought of one of those skulls with wings on both sides you see on Old Earth tombstones.
“That collection of SSR ships was hardly a fleet to begin with. I assure you, as a viable force, it is no longer a threat.”
“You might say that again, Admiral,” someone said from off-camera. “Fischer’s ears are so old, they forget to hear half the time.”
A woman’s voice.
A familiar, sarcastic voice.
The camera panned to find the speaker.
Daisy Brace stood on the upper tier of the Sovereign’s bridge. She was propped up by an antigrav exoskeleton, a military-grade prosthetic used for rehabilitating wounded veterans. Her half smile was sardonic, and I knew in my bones she’d have worn that expression with or without the neurological damage she’d suffered on Pallas.
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