Maelstrom Strand

by Rick Partlow

  “Is Jaimie really dead?” A long pause gave her time to consider whether she wanted to tell him the truth, but he went on. “They told me he was. That woman Laurent told me he was, that Rhianna Hale had taken the throne. Is it true?”

  “It is,” she said, deciding she owed it to him to be honest. “But Logan and Terrin are alive, and free. They’re here, along with Wholesale Slaughter, to get you out.”

  “Oh, sweet Jesus,” Constantine moaned, almost under his breath.

  “Since when are you a follower of the Old Religion?” she asked him, too surprised to contain the question.

  He eyed her balefully.

  “Mithra is a warrior god,” he told her, bitterness strong in his voice. “A god of the victors. Christ is Lord of the weak and helpless. I have been too long weak and helpless here.”

  “We’re clear, ma’am,” Lt. Grant called back over her ear bud. “Moving out.”

  She shuffled carefully down the steps to the ground floor, pulling Constantine along by the shoulder, afraid to let him go lest he collapse. It was brighter on the ground floor, the illumination coming from ornate light fixtures five meter above them in what seemed like a cross between a lobby and a conference room, with an open tile floor and a low wooden platform stage against one wall. At the center of the first floor were the elevator banks, two for personnel, one for cargo, and around the other side of them, she knew, was the loading dock.

  The lead squad had already moved around the curve of the lift station, Lt. Grant with them, and his platoon sergeant, Danielle Amato, was at the rear of the squad trailing her and General Constantine. Grant had insisted she stay at the center of the formation and, for once, she hadn’t overruled him. Keeping Constantine safe was the purpose of the mission and she couldn’t bring herself to leave him to anyone else’s trust.

  The position put her about halfway across the open area when a door on the far wall burst open, just around the curve of the passenger elevators, and Starkad Marines came pouring through.

  Another set of stairs, she had time to think. She wanted to blame Franny or herself, or someone, but the truth was, they’d gone into this mission nearly blind and this was the sort of chance you took.

  Time seemed to slow down, the classic tachypsychia of a gunfight, bundled together with auditory exclusion and tunnel vision. At the end of that tunnel was Colonel Ruth Laurent, leading her Marines, a rifle at her shoulder. Lyta could have fired first, but she had another duty. She yanked Constantine behind her with one hand, raising her carbine with the other, opening up on the Supremacy Marines, but just a half second too late.

  She didn’t hear the shot that got her. She remembered being told no one ever did.

  Ruth Laurent had never fired a rifle in combat before, never shot one anywhere but a tactical range during the training sessions Colonel Kuryakin had required for his field agents. She’d kept them up since taking over as head of Intelligence simply because it had seemed the responsible thing to do…and also because it seemed to garner more loyalty from the Marines she often brought along for support. She wasn’t one of them as Colonel Grieg had been, nor did she have the fearsome reputation Kuryakin had gained in his youth as a mech-jock, so performing well on the combat simulators and the tactical ranges was a way to earn their respect.

  The rifle seemed to kick more than it had at the range, seemed to weigh down her arms more. The targeting reticle in the optics danced around as she tried to hold it steady, but she pulled the trigger anyway, knowing she didn’t have the luxury of time, knowing if she didn’t fire first that Lyta Randell was going to.

  Incredibly, miraculously, Laurent did. She’d aimed for Constantine despite her history with Lyta Randell, simply because the man was the greater danger to the Starkad cause, but the Ranger colonel put herself between the general and danger. And paid the price. Laurent couldn’t tell where she’d hit the woman, but she thought she saw a spray of blood just before the Ranger officer spun to the ground.

  Feral satisfaction spread through her core like a shot of whiskey, warming and tingling and making her long for more. She shifted her aim. Just one more burst and she’d take out Constantine, too, and three of the biggest threats in the Spartan government would be gone: Jaimie Brannigan, Nicolai Constantine and Lyta Randell.

  Something yanked her from behind, pulling her back towards the stairwell door, pulling her out of the way of gunfire she hadn’t heard. Rangers were running back from around the corner, firing full auto on the move and Marines were jerking and falling all around her, rounds smacking into the wall behind her until she was back around the curve and inside the stairwell door. She turned and glared at the Marine who’d grabbed her, a senior sergeant with dark, expressive eyes visible through the faceplate of his helmet.

  “I had them!” she snapped, still absorbed with the bloodlust of the moment, not even thinking about her own troops. “I could have killed him!”

  “No, ma’am,” the sergeant told her with a note of reproof in his deep and resonant voice, “they could have killed you. And it’s my job to keep you alive.”

  Laurent deflated like a balloon stuck with a pin and she finally lost the tunnel vision and noticed the wounded Marines being pulled into the shelter of the stairwell by their fellows.

  “Where’s Lt. Gault?” she asked the sergeant.

  “Out there, ma’am,” he replied, motioning with the barrel of his rifle. “Dead. Just like we’ll be if we chase after them now.”

  “Goddammit,” she hissed, slamming a palm into the wall, smooth and modern here away from the medieval façade of the exterior wall. “Goddammit! We lost.” The realization stung, a whip across her back. “We lost him.”

  “Ma’am,” the sergeant said, “with all due respect, we haven’t lost as long as we’re alive.”

  She looked at him sharply.

  “What’s your name, Sergeant?”

  “Fuchs, ma’am. Jacob Fuchs, Gunnery Sergeant,” he added, and she sensed a slight reproof there. She’d been calling him simply “Sergeant.”

  “Well, Gunny Fuchs,” she told him, “you’re on my personal guard from now on. Ranking NCO and you report directly to me. You can pick your team when we get back.” She sighed and leaned against the wall, still infuriated but unwilling to spend any more energy on a lost cause.

  “Assuming Lord Starkad doesn’t have me summarily executed, of course.”

  “In that case, ma’am,” Fuchs said with an unflappability she envied, “I sincerely hope he doesn’t.”

  18

  Logan smoothed his only clean pair of utility fatigues down, checking their gig line in the mirror. When he looked up at his own face, he thought he saw lines etched into it he never remembered noticing before.

  “I wish I had a dress uniform,” he said, shoulders sagging. “Hell, I wish any of us had dress uniforms.”

  Katy’s hand trailed across his shoulder and he saw her in the mirror as she leaned her cheek against his arm. There were still faint streaks on her cheeks where she’d been crying. He hadn’t cried. He wasn’t sure if he could, not since his father had died.

  “This isn’t a dress uniform sort of assignment,” Katy said softly. “Lyta knew that.”

  “We used to call her Aunt Lyta, Terrin and me,” Logan mused, slipping an arm around Katy, absorbing her warmth, her strength. “She stepped in after Mom died and made sure we didn’t get ignored when Dad was swamped with the work of being Guardian, of trying to repair the damage of the coup. She’s always been there for us.”

  “She was proud of you,” Katy assured him. “She was proud of the man you’d become. The leader you’ve become. She told me so.”

  “It doesn’t feel right, just…tossing her away out here in the nothing. She deserves a state funeral, the recognition for what she did for Sparta.”

  “It’s what she wanted. Recognition was never important to her, you know that.” Katy slipped her hand into his and squeezed tightly, then urged him toward the hatch. “Come on, it’s t
ime to go say goodbye.”

  The passageways of the Shakak were silent. The crew he and Katy passed were a procession, dressed in their best and each of them wearing matching expressions of shock and disbelief. Most were ahead of them, already on their way to the hangar bay, the only compartment in the ship large enough for them all to gather together. Logan had waited until close to the announced time for the service, both for decorum and because he hadn’t wanted to stand around and attempt to seem stoic when all he really felt like doing was crawling in a hole and pulling it in after him.

  He and Katy took the lift down to the bay, claiming a car for themselves. She didn’t let loose of his hand until the doors slid aside and they stepped out onto the hangar bay. There was an abrupt silence, the muted buzz of conversation only detectable in its sudden absence, and three hundred heads turned their way. Some of the faces were stricken, some were respectfully grim, others seemed unaffected. Most of those were the mercenaries. They’d only known Lyta Randell by reputation.

  He stepped through the crowd, returning nods and handshakes, until he reached Terrin, Franny and Kammy. They huddled together for support, shoulder-to-shoulder. Franny sniffled fitfully, wiping the back of her hand across her nose, while Kammy seemed so much smaller, shrunken in on himself. His broad-featured face had collapsed like some giant stone monument, broken and fallen amidst the ruins of the past.

  Logan offered Terrin a hand, but his brother swept him into a hug and held him tight with an arm around his neck. He felt the sob shaking the younger man’s shoulders. Katy was there, too, embracing them both and he wished he could have kept his head buried between theirs, shielded from the reality he had to deal with. But hundreds of people were waiting, not just to pay their respects but to receive some sort of reassurance.

  And who the hell’s going to reassure me?

  He broke away from Terrin and Katy and turned back toward the crowd, looking past and over them at first, not quite ready to meet their eyes. The hangar bay itself drew his gaze, so marvelously different than anything else he’d ever seen on a Dominion starship. The assault shuttles and the dropships in a conventional ship were nestled into niches surrounding the pressurized section of the bay, open to the vacuum and accessible only through airlocks. The armor there, at a warship’s ventral hull, was some of the thickest, and centimeters of it wrapped the shuttles and landers up, keeping them safe during combat.

  The Shakak had no such worries, since the stardrive itself shielded them from attack. She also had no need for evacuated niches and airlocks because the same technology that had allowed Terrin to give her artificial gravity could be used to create an impermeable atmospheric seal across the mouth of the hangar bay. They didn’t leave the bay doors open when not launching shuttles, but that was more for psychological comfort than physical safety.

  It was awe-inspiring to stand beside the massive drop-ships, towering nearly fifty meters above him in the largest open space he’d ever seen inside a starship, and think that the whole bulk of the Shakak had once been underground on Terminus, had blasted up and off the planet’s surface and up through the atmosphere. It had taken very nearly all the antimatter the ship had retained after centuries in hiding on the Imperial outpost, but something this huge had flown in the sky. He wished he could have seen it, since it would likely never happen again.

  The shuttles and the drop-ships and loading equipment all looked down observantly at the silvery metal capsule set below them, just in front of the gathered crew, near the bay doors.

  Major Lee, Lyta’s Executive Officer caught his eye, looking a question at him, and Logan nodded. It was time.

  “Rangers!” Lee bellowed. “Attention!”

  The company had already been gathered together on one side of the gaggle of the ship’s crew and as one, they snapped to attention.

  “Lt. Grant!” Lee snapped.

  “Here, sir!” Grant responded.

  “Sgt. Preston!”

  “Here, sir!”

  The roll call went on through the whole company, each man and woman sounding off at their name and rank, until Lee finally hesitated before calling one, last name.

  “Colonel Randell!”

  No response.

  “Colonel Lyta Randell!”

  Logan wasn’t certain, but he thought he heard a break in the man’s voice as he called her one, last time.

  “Colonel Lyta Ellen Randell!”

  There was silence.

  Lee did a perfect about-face and saluted Logan.

  “Rangers lead the way, sir!”

  “Indeed they do,” Logan agreed solemnly, returning the salute.

  Now it was Kurtz’s turn, looking out over the mech-jocks, both those who’d come with them from Sparta at the beginning of all this and the ones who’d come aboard from the mercenary units they’d signed on.

  “Wholesale Slaughter Armored Corps!” There was just the hint of a drawl in his tone, the accent of his colony-world youth coming through when he yelled. “Attention!”

  His about-face was not nearly as textbook as Lee’s, but the salute was just as heartfelt.

  “Armored Corps present, sir.”

  Tara Gerard piped the ship’s crew to attention, a ceremony none of them had ever participated in before, Logan knew. They’d had to practice it in small groups during the flight into the system. Once they were all in some semblance of order, Tara saluted Kammy who, in turn, saluted Logan.

  “The crew of the Shakak is present, sir,” Kammy told him. The words held the weight of worlds.

  “At ease,” Logan told them.

  He took a breath and was about to begin when he noticed movement at the back and nearly did a double-take when he saw General Constantine shuffling up from the lift banks, supported by a medical orderly. The medic didn’t seem happy about the man being out of bed, but wasn’t arguing with him either. The General had found utility fatigues somewhere that fit him and his hair and beard were neatly trimmed. He still had a gangly, skeletal frailty to him, and would until he’d gotten another week or two of steady rations into him, but he seemed almost human.

  Logan wondered for just a moment if military procedure demanded he turn the formation over to the general, but he dismissed the idea immediately, and not just because the man was still in a fragile state. This was his crew, his mission.

  Logan sucked in a breath, forced his breathing and heartrate slower, and looked the gathered men and women in the eye.

  “We are here today to honor a soldier,” he said. Franny had offered to set up an amplifier, but he’d learned long ago how to pitch his voice to carry. “For all she accomplished in her life, Lyta Randell was always proudest to have been a soldier, a Ranger in service to Sparta and her Guardian. She devoted her life to it, sacrificed everything for it.”

  His throat seemed to close up on the words, the pain squeezing at his chest. He closed his eyes and steadied himself.

  “And in the end, she sacrificed herself to accomplish her mission because she believed with all her heart that the mission comes first. It defined her. She once shared with me a quote from an empire of old Earth known as Japan, from a class of warriors called the samurai. ‘Death,’ they said, ‘is as light as a feather, but duty is heavier than a mountain.’ I was just starting the Academy at the time, and it seemed obvious to me. Duty, honor, sacrifice, that was what all of us believed in. Death was far away and glorious, something that might happen to someone else, not to me or my friends. Or my family.”

  Logan shook his head.

  “I should have known better. Lyta knew. She knew and yet she kept going, kept fighting. And the best way we can honor her memory is to do the same. I won’t lie and tell you Lyta is the last of us who’ll fall in this fight. But I will swear to you that I will not give up on the cause Lyta fought for and died for. I’m going to take back Sparta. I am Logan Brannigan and this I swear to you, and to her.”

  He regarded the silvery lozenge-shaped capsule, the final home for her physical remain
s.

  “If it were up to me, I would take her home with me when I go, inter her in the holy ground of the Resting Place of the Guardians. But her wish, recorded on the day she’d joined the Spartan military, was to make her home here, among the stars. Today, we honor her wish. But when the time comes, when we’re back home, when Sparta is no longer under the thumb of the Starkad usurper, there will be a monument to her right beside the one I build to the memory of my father, the Guardian.”

  He came to attention.

  “Wholesale Slaughter, attention!” Every man and woman straightened, even Constantine and his medical orderly. “Present, arms!”

  Logan saluted and the others followed, except Kammy. He walked slowly, deliberately to the docking bay control station and touched a panel. The bay doors began sliding apart, curtaining in on each other as they melted into the sides of the bay, and beyond them was harsh, white glare of Saraswati, the system’s primary star. It washed out the other stars, jealously claiming the blackness for its own. The light flooded in, but the atmosphere remained trapped, kept in with an energy field he couldn’t begin to understand. He wasn’t even sure Terrin understood it. They just knew it worked.

  In the front rank, lined up with the bridge crew, Terrin spoke softly, and it took Logan a moment to realize he was saying a prayer for the dead.

  “Death has freed them from the material bondage,” he murmured. “They have shed their frail earthly clay and departed this life to live hereafter in the realm of the spirit. Their earthly work is done and they have laid down the burden that pressed heavily on them.”

  Katy was praying as well, her lips moving silently, her left hand sketching a cross even as she held her salute.

  Lyta’s burial capsule slid forward, propelled by the electromagnetic launch strip built into the flight deck, gradually building speed as it traversed the three hundred meters between the formation and the open bay doors. There was an almost imperceptible shimmer as it passed through the field and kept going, its momentum carrying it slowly outward, bound eventually for the star.