Maelstrom Strand

by Rick Partlow

He fired, shuffled sideways, dragging an uncooperative left leg, and fired again once the capacitor banks recharged. One of the traitors went down, a Golem, hunchbacked and ugly and now a burning ruin, its pilot trapped inside. How many enemy mech pilots had he killed today?

  Not enough.

  Anders went down first, a laser slicing through his mech’s left arm, amputating it at the shoulder. The loss of tons of weight threw the general’s Sentinel off balance, sent it stumbling to the right and directly into the line of fire of someone’s ETC cannon. The cannon rounds pierced the reactor shielding on the strike mech’s back and Logan thought he might have seen an ejection pod burst out of the Sentinel’s chest and hurtle into the smoke before the mech’s reactor blew in a starburst of plasma plumes.

  Logan had been too distracted by the loss of Anders’ machine. He didn’t see the missile until it was too late, until it was so close all he could do was try to turn. It hit his Sentinel’s already-balky left leg and everything was light and intense heat and a vibration violent enough to slam his head against the cushioned collar. He felt everything tilting, and thought for the briefest of moments that he had a concussion until he realized the mech was collapsing, its left leg blown off at the hip.

  The fall took an anguished eternity and when it finally ended, he was thrown against his restraint straps with enough force to drive the wind out of him. The impact of the fifty-ton goliath smashing into the dirt reverberated through his gut, rattling his teeth, one dull pain merging with another and leaving him hanging, helpless, too stunned to even cut loose his harness.

  Through the cracked and scarred transparent aluminum of his canopy, Logan could see the enemy mecha thundering across the ravaged valley floor, heading for him, ready to smash his cockpit underfoot and put an end to everything he’d ever imagined. His father’s Sentinel interposed itself between Logan and impending death, as looming and legendary and larger-than-life as Jaimie Brannigan had always been to him. His weapons fired in quick succession, ETC cannon, then laser, then 20mm Vulcan, timed to keep any one of them from overheating.

  Cannon rounds were streaking only meters from his cockpit, ionized flares through the smoke-filled air, passing on either side as if he were favored by God, protected by the hand of the Beneficent Spirits, the Spenta Mainyu.

  “Son, get out of there,” Jaimie told him, his voice staticky and garbled over Logan’s damaged communications gear, barely audible over the roar of the Vulcan and the chatter of incoming fire. “You have to make it, you and Terrin. You have to…”

  Whatever divine will had been protecting the Guardian of Sparta melted away. Tungsten slugs from Electro Thermal Chemical cannons, propelled to hypersonic velocities by their plasma ignition systems, converged on his father’s Sentinel, at least three sizzling vapor trails terminating in the strike mech’s cockpit.

  Logan’s mind was shaken, concussed, perceiving the world through a fog of unreality, and he tried to convince himself he was hallucinating. But the nightmare wouldn’t end. Gouts of sun-bright plasma streamed from the ruptured fusion core of his father’s mech, consuming what was left of the cockpit and blowing the left arm off from the torso. The severed limb crashed to the ground; Logan felt the vibration through the ground, through the metal and BiPhase Carbide of his cockpit, but he couldn’t hear the sound over the roaring in his ears.

  The Guardian of Sparta was gone.

  And he was next. He could see the mech that was going to kill him, an Agamemnon, focused on him like a laser, its Home Guard camouflage pattern mocking him with the familiarity of an old friend. It would lumber past, crushing him as an afterthought, and that would be the end of the Brannigan line and the successful end of the coup…whoever was leading it.

  Is it worse to die not knowing who’s killing you?

  The Agamemnon made it to within fifty meters of him before the sky ripped open and Mithra destroyed it with the wrath of his holy fire.

  That was the first thought through his concussion-addled brain when the lightning-bolt streak of ionization lanced into the enemy mech. The second, fighting its way up through clouds of haze, was that an assault shuttle had just fired a laser from somewhere above him. He couldn’t see it, but he could see its handiwork. A line of divots in the earth tracked their way to the next mech running through the clouds of black smoke, the 20mm Vulcan cannon rounds hammering into the torso of the enemy Peregrine, cracking its armor and penetrating through to the cockpit. The ostrich-legged scout mech stumbled and went down in a heap, legs snapping off and tumbling away.

  The exhaust of landing jets began clearing the smoke away, sending streams of it billowing out to the sides in roiling swirls as the assault shuttle descended. The laser fired again, spearing through a Nomad strike mech and passing on to sever the left arm of the assault mech directly behind it, and the charge lost steam. The remaining machines began to dig in and turn, heading back to their landing zone.

  Logan squeezed his eyes shut for a second, forced his fingers into fists, trying to slug his brain into motion. He managed to find the quick-release for his harness and yank it, gasping as he spilled out of his seat and his shoulder hit the canopy. Pain ignited like a brushfire in his chest and he thought he might have cracked a rib during the crash, but the discomfort helped him to focus. He pulled the latch for the canopy and kicked it open, gasping at the pain in his chest and then choking from the breathtaking, oven-like heat outside.

  His vision swam with the pain in his ribs and the concussion and the lung-searing heat and when he saw a shadow approaching from his right, he clawed blindly at his shoulder holster, trying to pull his pistol before a hand grasped his shoulder.

  “It’s me, Logan.”

  He blinked tears from his eyes and finally saw Terrin’s soot-stained face above him. He felt an instant’s relief, and then a renewed pain for the news he’d have to deliver.

  “Dad,” he said, barely able to utter the words. “He’s dead.”

  “We know,” Terrin told him, his long, lean face twisting with grief Logan could tell he was barely keeping in check. “We saw from back at the facility.”

  “We,” he’d said. Logan abruptly realized Franny was with him, along with Dr. Kovalev.

  “Where’s Lyta?” he asked, letting Terrin help him to his feet.

  “She and the Rangers who survived,” another paroxysm of pain on his brother’s face, “are trying to round up the pilots who ejected. We’ve already radioed the others to abandon their mecha and get into the assault shuttle.”

  “Come on, sir,” Franny urged him. “We have to go now, before the enemy regroups.”

  She was carrying a case, and he realized it was the same one she and Terrin had used to store the data crystals from Terminus.

  “We’ll lose everything,” Logan said, looking around them at wrecked machines and dead men. We’ve already lost everything.

  “Not as long as the two of you are alive,” Dr. Kovalev interjected, nodding toward him and Terrin. “As long as a Brannigan lives, the fight isn’t over.”

  Logan saw Lyta Randell leading a handful of mech pilots toward the opening ramp of the assault shuttle, thought he saw Valentine Kurtz among them. He forced himself to breathe, no matter how much it hurt. He still had people counting on him.

  “Let’s go,” he agreed, nodding to Terrin. “Let’s get to the Shakak while we still can.”

  “You need to be in the sick bay,” Katy told him.

  She was a solid support under his right arm, and he needed it just to walk. Logan never thought he’d regret the artificial gravity Terrin had conjured up for them, but right now he could have done without it.

  He shook his head and kept walking toward the bridge.

  “The docs are busy enough right now,” he told her. “They can take care of me later.”

  Lyta was already on the bridge, leaning against the railing, her head hanging. Logan had never seen her look so utterly defeated, but he understood. They’d failed. The bridge crew seemed to sense it
; none looked up from their stations, none would meet his eyes. Except Kammy. The big man shuffled up to him almost reluctantly, putting a massive hand on his shoulder.

  “I’m so sorry about your father, man,” he said.

  Logan nodded his gratitude, unwilling to try to speak. It was, he thought, a statement on how the spacer looked at things that he’d considered the personal loss before the fact they’d lost the head of their government.

  “Did the fleet catch up with you?” Katy asked him, helping Logan over to one of the auxiliary fold-down acceleration couches and depositing him gently in it. “Did you have to fight them?”

  “No,” Kammy told her, and Logan could see the relief on his face. “We were able to outrun them by making them think we were heading for the jump-point, then doubling back. They’d already built up enough momentum, it took them hours to catch up and you guys were on board by then.” He winced. “Well, the ones who came back. Damn, it sucks about the drop-ship crews. And Captain Ford…”

  He fell silent and Logan slumped back into the chair, eyes closing, trying to keep from crying in front of the bridge crew. But it needed to be said.

  “Ford and the entire Arbalest platoon,” he listed, as if he were carving the names on a memorial. “Tracey, Mercouri, Paschal and Corraface.” He could see them as they passed in review in his memory and faded out, taking a piece of his soul with them. “Paskowski…” He couldn’t keep his voice from breaking. “Prevatt. Coughlin.” They’d been with his platoon before he’d even formed Wholesale Slaughter, back when he’d been in the Spartan Mobile Armor Corps. They’d followed him along with Marc Langella and now all of them were gone.

  Katy’s hand grabbed his, squeezing it tightly.

  “The rest made it, but a couple of Hernandez’s people are pretty badly injured.”

  “Plus Kallias, Benitez and Butler from the squad I took down,” Lyta contributed, not looking up.

  Silence fell across the bridge, perhaps awkward, perhaps respectful.

  “We’ll, uh…,” Kammy stuttered. “We’ll be at the jump-point in a few minutes. No one’s close enough to stop us.”

  “Sir.” It was Shelly Nance, the ship’s communications officer. She looked up, her eyes wide. “Colonel Conner, there’s an incoming message from Sparta. It’s for you.”

  “Put it on the main screen,” he told her.

  The face on the screen was familiar. He couldn’t place it at first, but he knew he’d seen it before. Attractive in a harsh, cold sort of way, like a naked blade, her blond hair pulled back tight into a bun, her eyes as cold as the core of an ice giant. She wore a Spartan military uniform, Mobile Armored Corps, and suddenly he remembered her name.

  “Logan Conner,” the woman said, her voice as smooth and cold as her eyes. “I am Rhianna Hale.”

  “Shit,” Lyta hissed. “Of course it would be her.”

  “Wait, pause it,” Katy said. Nance seemed hesitant, glancing between Katy and Logan, but she touched a control and the glacial eyes froze on the screen. Katy turned to Lyta. “Who’s Rhianna Hale?”

  “She’s Duncan Lambert’s niece,” Lyta told her, almost spitting the words. “Her mother, Duncan’s sister, swore up and down she wasn’t involved in the coup, begged the Guardian to be lenient with her family, promised they would be the most loyal citizens of Sparta and support him in the Council if he didn’t exile them.”

  “And they were,” Logan admitted. “The Hales have backed Dad in every Council vote for the last twenty years. And Rhianna…she’s a decorated officer in the Mobile Armored Corps, no black marks on her record at all, as far as I know.”

  “There weren’t,” Lyta declared sourly. “Keeping track of her career was one of the responsibilities General Constantine shifted off on me in an attempt to groom my future career…once I got tired of playing in the dirt, he always says. She’s had a spotless career, never shown any hint of being disloyal. But I never liked her.”

  “Play the message, Nance,” Logan ordered. The woman nodded and resumed the playback.

  “Colonel Conner,” Hale went on, then paused with a hint of sneer on her lips. “So convenient that the Guardian’s son is the youngest colonel in the history of the Mobile Armored Corps, isn’t it? I’m sure there was no nepotism there. That won’t be a problem anymore, of course. I have a proposition for you, Logan, one you’d be wise to consider. Leave here, leave Spartan space and never return and we won’t come looking for you.” Now the sneer was outright with no attempt to hide it. “You can even maintain your little make-believe mercenary company.”

  A breath caught in Logan’s chest. She knew. She knew about Wholesale Slaughter, which meant she probably knew about Terminus. And if she knew, that meant Starkad knew.

  “If you do that for me, Logan, if you stay away and don’t interfere, we won’t have any more unpleasantness and no one else has to die. If you’re stubborn, though, if you’re so full of your own ego and self-importance that you put your own aggrandizement over the good of Sparta, like your father and his grandfather before him, then it’s the people you’ve left here on Sparta who you care about who will pay the price.”

  “Who the hell is left?” He hadn’t meant to say the words aloud, didn’t like how they sounded when he said them. Rhianna Hale couldn’t hear him—the message had been recorded and sent out nearly an hour ago—but she had an answer for him, nonetheless.

  The camera angle had been a closeup of her face and shoulders, the wall behind her blank and featureless. Now, it widened out and he saw she was in the Guardian’s private offices in the palace. He knew the room well, had spent most of his formative years in and out of it. The Brannigan family portraits had already been stripped off the walls and replaced with a poorly-done painting of Duncan Lambert.

  Soldiers dressed in Home Guard body armor, their faces hidden behind the darkened visors of their helmets, pulled a tall, powerfully-built man into the room. His head was covered with a dark, cloth hood, his hands bound behind his back with plastic flex-cuffs, but he wore a Spartan Mobile Armored Corps uniform and there was something familiar about his gait and his carriage. The guards held his arms while Hale reached up and yanked the hood off.

  General Donnell Anders had survived the ejection from his mech, though the bruising across the right side of his face showed it hadn’t been pleasant. He was gagged beneath the hood, a broad strip of tape across his mouth, but in his eyes was pure hatred. He struggled against the hands holding him once he saw the camera pickup, but one of the guards put the muzzle of a carbine under his chin and jabbed him sharply. Anders grimaced and fell still in their grasp.

  “I’m sure you remember General Anders,” Hale said, running a gloved finger down the bruised side of the man’s face. “He’s just one of the officers loyal to your father who we’ve managed to capture alive. How we deal with these men and women is entirely up to you, Logan. If you’re a good little exile and keep your nose clean, they’ll eventually be allowed to settle somewhere comfortable, possibly one of the more remote colonies, once we’ve established they won’t be trouble. If not…” She shrugged. “Well, we could simply keep them locked up in an off-world prison the way your father did. But that seems cruel. We’ll likely just kill them, quickly and mercifully.”

  The camera zoomed in again, pulling in close so all Logan could see was her face.

  “Logan Conner,” she said, eyes narrowing as if she were considering the significance of the name. “Conner. You were so afraid of people knowing you were your father’s son you wouldn’t even use his name. You’ve been running from your legacy, running from your responsibility, running from your family’s heritage for years now.” She snorted a humorless laugh. “Well, now you can just keep running.”

  The view drew back out as if to show him the painting of Duncan again, to drive the point home.

  “Sparta,” she declared, “belongs to the Lamberts.”

  7

  Nicolai Constantine hadn’t expected to wake up.

&nb
sp; He supposed, if he’d had the time to think about it before the drugs had kicked in, he would have wound up in some sterile, white-walled cell buried deep inside Argos or, worse yet, Stavanger. So, perhaps waking up with his head against a cold, damp stone floor in a cramped, darkened room was an improvement, but not by much.

  His mouth tasted like some small mammal had crawled inside and died, and he spat reflexively, wiping at his lips with his jacket sleeve before he realized what the motion signified. He wasn’t restrained and he was wearing the same clothes he’d had on when he’d gone to visit that traitorous bastard Wesley Martens. He sat up and began patting himself down, searching for the various weapons and communications devices he kept hidden in his clothes as a matter of course. He scowled. They were gone. He’d likely been thoroughly searched, probably scanned. They hadn’t left him so much as a throat lozenge.

  Or shoes, he noted, staring down at his stockinged feet. The light in the room was natural and came from the only window, along with a chill, damp breeze and the unmistakable crash of waves on a coastline. He moved over to it, trailing fingers along the slick surface of the bare stone walls. The window was narrow, so narrow the builders hadn’t bothered with bars or grating.

  It was night and the sky was shrouded in grey clouds, backlit by a moon somewhere behind them, giving just enough of a glow to make out some of the details of the rocky cove below.

  Far below. He was in a tower or turret of some kind, ancient grey blocks polished smooth by the centuries, looming at least a hundred meters over the jagged rocks of the coastline. It wasn’t just the splash of the tide hitting those rocks, either. There was a whirlpool out in the cove, roaring its defiance to the shore, daring anyone to test its resolve.

  They could have made the window two meters wide. No one would try to escape.

  Unless the designers hadn’t wanted to leave room for suicide. That thought was discomfiting. He turned away from it and away from the window, examining the door instead. It was thick wood, strapped with steel and seemed as ancient as the rest of the construction. No electronic locks to hack, no ID plates to spoof, just a door several centimeters thick and bolted from the outside.